Yellowstone National Park officials said Tuesday that two hikers were injured in a bear attack on the Mystic Falls Trail near the park’s Old Faithful geyser. Officials described the incident as a single event Monday afternoon on the popular trail.
Park officials said one or more bears were involved, but they did not specify which species. Yellowstone has populations of both grizzly bears and black bears, and park officials said they can be difficult to tell apart at times. They said grizzlies can be more aggressive and grow much larger—up to twice the size of black bears—while black bears usually have darker coloring.
Officials said a large area of the park near the Midway Geyser Basin was temporarily closed pending an investigation. The closed area includes at least five trails and several backcountry campsites, according to park officials.
Yellowstone spokesperson Ashton Hooker said further information—including whether the victims were hiking together and whether they were hospitalized for their injuries—was not being immediately released.
The Mystic Falls trail is heavily traveled and includes a loop leading to a 70-foot (21-meter) tall waterfall. The trailhead is about two miles (three kilometers) northwest of Old Faithful.
Yellowstone gets more than 4 million visits by tourists annually, and park officials said bear attacks by grizzlies or black bears are rare. In September, a hiker suffered injuries to his chest and arm in an attack on the Turbid Lake Trail northeast of Yellowstone Lake, and officials said a grizzly killed a woman just west of Yellowstone in 2023.
Park officials said the last fatal bear mauling in the park occurred in 2015, when a 63-year-old man from Billings, Montana, was killed while hiking alone in the Lake Village area. They said the fate of bears that attack humans is typically dictated by the circumstances of the encounter.
Officials said that following the 2015 fatal attack, they captured and killed an adult female grizzly because it had eaten part of the victim’s body and hid the rest, which they said is not normal behavior for a bear defending its young. By comparison, they said a last year attack on the Turbid Lake Trail happened during a surprise encounter between the victim and the bear, and park officials characterized the animal’s reaction as natural, leading to no relocation or killing.