Spend enough time paying attention to Yellowstone in the news, and you will hear reports of people having gotten themselves into spots where they need professional extraction. When I hear them, I can't help but wonder, how did they get there in the first place. Today I got a lesson on how that's done.
So I'm at Grand this morning, sitting and minding my own business when one of Xanterra's finest interrupts my reading by asking if I can answer a question. That being, "does the powerline trail go all the way to Midway?" I tell him not only don't I know that, but i'm not taking responsibility for answering him in any case if he's going to go off established trails. Is retort is something to the effect that "but the powerline is an established trail." (If he knows that, then why's he asking me?)
He makes some comment about how he's seen me out here a lot, and because of that assumed that I knew things about the Park. I reply that I know things about the geysers, and if he wants trail information, the proper place is the Ranger Station or Visitor Center. He said he already asked them, and they didn't know, either. (You'd think he'd take that as a sign? And not just ask some guy sitting on a bench?)
So off in a huff to the goes to the north to enjoy a hike along the scenic powerline. I hope he has a good time, and we don't hear about him over the NPS radios or on the news.
What happened here, it seems, is that he kept asking for answers from people he thought knew more than him, yet when those answers weren't the ones he expected, he reacted negatively and just kept going ahead with his plans. Now if he'd asked me why I though his hiking there was bad, I could have pointed out that the powerline is deliberatly place to be out of sight as much as possible, and that the linemen use powered ATVs to service them if necessary, and that wires and poles don't care what sort of terrain is underneath and between them. They aren't designed for human hiking. But that's okay, by the time I make this posting, I figure he'll have figured both out, and not had to be rescued in the process.