Yellowstone National Park officials have closed a large section of the park near the iconic Old Faithful geyser after two hikers were injured in a bear attack Monday afternoon on the heavily traveled Mystic Falls Trail. The incident, reported Tuesday by park spokesperson Ashton Hooker, was described as a single event involving one or more bears, but the species — grizzly or black bear — has not been determined.
“Further information — including whether the victims were hiking together and whether they were hospitalized for their injuries — was not being immediately released,” Hooker said.
Park officials closed an area around the Midway Geyser Basin that includes at least five trails and several backcountry campsites pending an investigation into the encounter. The trailhead for the Mystic Falls loop lies about two miles northwest of Old Faithful and leads to a 70-foot waterfall.
Yellowstone has both grizzly and black bear populations. Grizzlies can be more aggressive and grow to twice the size of black bears, though the two species can be difficult to distinguish at times.
Bear attacks on humans are rare in the park, which records more than 4 million visits annually. Last September, a hiker suffered injuries to his chest and arm in an attack along the Turbid Lake Trail northeast of Yellowstone Lake. In 2023, a grizzly killed a woman just west of the park boundary. The park’s last fatal mauling occurred in 2015, when a 63-year-old Montana man was killed while hiking alone in the Lake Village area.
The fate of a bear involved in an attack typically hinges on the circumstances of the encounter. After the 2015 death, officials captured and killed an adult female grizzly because it had consumed part of the victim’s body and hidden the rest — behavior not considered typical for a bear defending its young. By contrast, the bear in last year’s Turbid Lake Trail attack was neither relocated nor killed because its reaction was judged a natural response to a surprise encounter.