Artemisia Geyser (Photo by NPS / Jim Peaco)

POWELL (WNE) — A Georgia man who parked on top of one of Yellowstone National Park’s thermal areas last fall has been ordered to serve a week in jail and stay out of the park for the next five years. 

Yiyang Shen, a 25-year-old resident of Doraville, Georgia, received the sentence last month in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court. 

The case started late on the night of Oct. 10, with a report that someone had parked in a thermal area near Biscuit Basin. Responding around 11:20 p.m., park rangers found a Honda SUV about 20 feet off the east side of the Grand Loop Road, near the trailhead for Artemisia Geyser. 

The SUV had left visible tire tracks and a back tire was blocking a thermal stream, one of the rangers wrote in a probable cause statement; footprints in the mud led away from the vehicle. The Honda was unoccupied, but while officers were investigating two men approached it, both with white mud on their shoes. Shen was identified as the driver. He reportedly told the ranger that they couldn’t park outside of the white lines, “so we find it safer to park off the road.”

While a massive July eruption had closed Biscuit Basin and its typical parking area closed for the rest of last season, the law enforcement officer said there was space to park on the western shoulder. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ariel Calmes said the SUV’s tires caused “severe damage” to the thermal area that was not repairable or restorable. 

Shen appeared remotely at the U.S. District courtroom in Mammoth Hot Springs on March 13 and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of operating a motor vehicle in a prohibited area and thermal trespass. Shen was ordered to serve seven days in jail, five years of unsupervised probation and pay $1,050.