Holy Snakes!

[tinaballina]

I am grateful that Doreen and I didn't see him, not sure what i would have done.......thank you for moving him.

Glad you joined btw. it was great hiking with you, i should say trying to keep up.

[Rick M]

Hi Mark
Magikwalt said

...Seems the majority of snake bites here in the US occur to a single group of humans. They are male, attempting to scare, catch, move or kill a snake...

That sounds like you. I have not seen many places where people cannot hike around an obstacle in the trail be it fallen tree, last ice patch, huge boulder, grizzly bear with cubs, etc. I think any rattler you come across fits in that category.

We once had a professional snake person bring a few to our fire station as a demonstration for us responding to such a call. The person let loose a Mojave Green in an open space and then tried moving it with their snake stick. This snake was like all over the place and trying its best to get at the handler before they finally got the snake under control. It moved faster than I've seen most of them move and fast enough for us to realize if we were to deal with a snake emergency we would where our structural fire gear and use the pike pole (fiberglass pole about 10 feet long with a nasty hook on the end).

My advice of those 7 things I said earlier is the best I can tell you and magikwalt calls it as I see it. Or this being April 1st, do what nobohobo says

Rick
ps In a place called "Bear Valley" in Glacier Nat'l Park we literally ran into a griz sitting on the trail in front of us digging for marmots. I thought it's good she doesn't have cubs when out pops two cubs running to her out of the brush. After calmly backing up a hundred yards or so, we waited almost an hour with other hikers now gathering and the sun going down. We ended up climbing several hundred yards above to get around the bear and cubs (there's actually more to the story but most of you know I can get long winded).

[Bivouac]

I want to thank those of you who responded to my first post.
Last year i also met with Dr. Sean Bush...out at the Living Desert. I must say that i no longer take RS's for being so laid back and innocent. . . do feel that a 5 foot stick and a nudge does wonders to possibly save the hiker coming from behind a potentially very bad day...but also feel it is a judgment call for sure.

If the snake is moving i'd always leave it alone. If already coiled up and near potential feet...i will gently prod. Seems i have a consensus on this and one strong warning contrary. I would agree that it is probably wisest to just bypass. . .

Lastly, 4 me they are as fine an adrenalin charge as running into our Alaskan Ursus Major!


Again, thanks 4 all the perspectives.

[guest]

Hey Bivouac,
I talked with a guy who was on the trail the same time as you, he ran into a guy who must have "dealt" with the same snake & here's what the guy said:

The gentleman who warned me about it told me that he had tried to kill it with a rock and didn't know if it would still be alive, but that it was possibly dangerous. He couldn't get it out of his path. The blog mentions that it was gently handled to get it off the pathway--not true initially. I'm glad that someone did move it before I ran through."[/i]

So that should explain it's temperament. Of course, this same guy would be in an equally bad mood had I witnessed it & taken same rock to him. If you can't deal with them humanly, please just leave the wilderness, they have as much right as we do to be there.
This fool possibly put others at risk (even if he was attempting to help), by aggrevating it, so as to be somewhat aggressive (of course after almost being killed) when others came by.

Wilderness has it's inherent dangers, please live & let live.

Thanks,

ss

[Rob]

Last weekend I spotted a snake in a fire pond. I didn't know we had water snakes in Southern California. Guess we do. This nice guy posed for a photo then vanished in the blink of an eye. It was my first snake sighting of the year.

[cynthia23]

Yeah, I think I have to agree with the general consensus that really it's best to just leave them be and not attempt to 'move' them, even if the intention is to 'help' the next person on the trail. Moving them just makes them madder, they may well go back to the exact same spot anyway. And killing them is completely wrong. Just "work around" them. They are not aggressive and don't want to hurt people except in self-defense. They try to avoid expending venom as it is too energy intensive for them. Many strikes are "dry" warning strikes. No one has ever been bitten by a rattlesnake on Skyline, at least that we know about (Sid from Alaska was struck at by one, but he was running downhill through a brushy area and probably startled one.) Bears are enormously more dangerous than snakes!

The most important thing to do is to keep your eyes on the ground as you hike so you don't accidentally step on one (which nearly happened to someone ahead of me on the trail one day. He leapt back just as his foot was about to come down on the snake.)

Bottom line, don't worry about them too much. There are so many more things to worry about

[Rob]

I wish there were a universal trail sign or symbol warning "snake nearby," like a particular arrangement of rocks stacked on the trail, or something scratched in the trail dust. An ideal trail warning would have a perishable date & time stamp. Maybe we should carry a piece of chalk to write and date a warning that would fade over time? Maybe carry a small Ziploc bag of sports field lime to sprinkle on the trail?

Last year I sighted only 3 rattlers (2 of them were on the same day), and all 3 were on popular trails frequented by families, and I did my best to warn hikers I met of what lay ahead of them on the trail. I'm blessed with hearing loss, so it's doubtful I would hear a rattler before he were perilously close, but it makes me force my eyes to be ever more vigilant.

Do sunglasses affect one's ability to spot rattlesnakes?

There was a study that concluded that our brains are hard-wired to detect snakes. If I remember correctly, the methodology was to show people a busy picture, and people could always find the snake in the picture rapidly. In a picture full of snakes, it took people longer to find the non-snake item. The timing results were the same for both adults and 3-year old children who are presumably too young to "learn" fear of snakes, leading to the conclusion that we're hard-wired to loath them.

[Rick M]

You might need to put out that "sign" for any time the temp rises above ~60 degrees and leave it till late fall. As you say, people have a pretty good sense for seeing snakes...easier to see it on the trail than under a bush next to the trail tread where it can get you in the ankle as you walk by...hence my thoughts on leaving it in sight as opposed to "playing with it" to get it off the trail where it might want to go again to sun itself but now in an agitated state for the next passer by.

Once with my students up Lone Pine Canyon on a "Get to Know Your San Andreas Fault" field trip they saw a lizard scurry into a bush and wanted to "go after it" (these were city kids). I said not to reach into bushes or rocks this time of year because you might find something else. A hundred feet up the abandoned dirt road was a rattler sunning itself and wandered under the nearest bush as we approached...Great Lesson!!!

ps I became a rattler in '93 and they say I'll always be one.

[Bivouac]

Guest,

Thanks for the info on the person who tried to kill the snake. I feel almost positive that i had a sort of interdiction with this guy. Won't go into detail, but there was some bad energy between us and i NEVER feel this up there!

Anyway, i have MOVED exactly (2) rattlers in my life and both times it was for the same reason...Never been inside the head of a snake, so could not debate the issue of what it's intentions were, would have done, or might do. . .just know where it was and how it was acting when i almost stepped on it. Had i not had an involuntary complete body spasm which vaulted me 10 feet away, who knows. As far as running down hill, per Cynthia23 (great memory by the way). . . I do NOT do that anymore, nor do i run in plus 60F (thank you Mark).

Keep an eye on me on the trail shortly and you will most likely see a pair of stainless steel chain mail strapped from my knees to my shoes!

[Rick M]

Bivouac said

had an involuntary complete body spasm which vaulted me 10 feet away

Sounds about right. On our way home from a search, a friend of mine (now in Iraq) and I stopped off for a climb up Stoddard Peak. It was summer evening and the snakes were coming out in the cooling temps. After close encounters with two very big reddish colored rattlers (that was the general color of the rock there (Darwinism?), I suddenly heard one rattle very close and my involuntary body spasm launched me in the wrong direction...right next to him.

I think it scared the something or other out of both me and the snake with no bite resulting (my friend said the snake was on his way away from me when I landed so was not coiled). We got to the top and with falling light, very noisily made our way back down as it sounded like every rattler in the whole Mojave was now out to get us.