Foot found floating in Yellowstone hot spring belonged to 70-year-old L.A. man
Updated 10:18 pm, Monday, March 4, 2013
A California man said he is happy the person he drowned in a hot spring in Yellowstone on his birthday has been identified.
His daughter, Jennifer Kasten, said her father, Richard Kasten, 70, died after he stepped into a hot spring in the northern Rockies in 2010.
About two years ago, Richard Kasten went to Yellowstone National Park to visit another son who had died during a hike in the park, his daughter said. She said that her father wanted to take a hot spring tour while he was there.
When he arrived in northern Yellowstone, he wandered into a hot spring pool and became severely dehydrated, she said. He made his way to a ranger station and asked for help.
“There wasn’t much else out there besides an emergency vehicle they could offer, so he just started walking down the trail toward the hot spring and he lost his footing on a rock,” she said.
“He fell into the hot spring. He was not trying to save himself, he was trying to save someone else because he thought it was his son.”
Kasten said her father “was gone before he hit that last rock.”
His daughter said when she learned her father had died, “I was upset, and I couldn’t even wrap my head around it.”
“It’s a little bittersweet, I guess,” she said of her father’s death.
She said she will go to his funeral, which is scheduled for this coming Saturday.
“I’m sorry that he died like that,” she said. “But at the same time, I’m very happy that he did go on with his life.”
Kasten’s sister, Angela Kasten, said her sister was in the process of writing a book about her father’s death.
“Jennifer came to me a few months ago and said, ‘I’m writing a book about my father
