Distinctly Montana Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.distinctlymontana.com/i/835509
D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 18 A foreign visitor was gored to death on July 31, 1983, in hayden valley because, according to the newspapers, he wanted to get his picture taken with a bison, a solitary bull. Alain Jean Jacques Dumont, 21, of toulouse, france, was having his picture taken about six feet from the buffalo when it charged and gored him, tossing him ten feet into the air. Freezing! Wildlife! # 4 # 5 # 6 I n 1999, an elderly park visitor strangely froze to death in late May. He was Paul Hudson, 66, of Orlando, Florida, who died on May 26. Hudson and his wife, Phyllis, arrived that day at Artist Point, elevation more than 7,900 feet, late in the afternoon. They hiked up the Artist Point trail, and by around 5:00pm were hiking back to their car. Phyllis was a short distance ahead of her husband and noted that he stopped to talk with some other park visitors. She slowed her pace to allow him to catch up, but when she arrived at the parking area he was no longer behind her. She turned back to look for him and enlisted the aid of others when she could not find him. NPS rangers searched until midnight without suc- cess, and resumed the search at daylight. At 8:30am one of their dog teams located his body near Point Sublime, about a mile to the east. Perhaps Mr. Hudson became confused and walked east into the woods rather than west back to the parking lot. He died of exposure due to hypothermia. and Trees! Falling Rocks R obert Walker, 6, his parents and two sisters from Billings, Montana, were staying in the Fishing Bridge cabins on the evening of July 7, 1936, when one of the park's legendary windstorms struck. Robert was playing outside of their cabin when the first gusts hit about 8:00pm. Deafening thunder and dazzling light- ning accompanied the winds, which uprooted at least 176 lodgepole pines in the nearby campground. The Walker family became alarmed at the storm and ran from their cabin to find Robert lying outside. He had been instantly killed when a large tree came crashing to the ground and pinned him underneath it.