The returning runner…

Act 67 – Rattlesnake Summer (this is all true…)

It was July of 2017 as I eagerly took to my late morning run up Clear Creek tail – my favorite route. The trail started out in chaparral and then transitioned into pines 2-3/4 miles up. The gradient was perfect – enough to make you work going up and gentle enough to open it up and fly on the way down. The sandy soils were never muddy and just deep enough to provide some cushion but not so deep that you got bogged down. I had run this trail for several years prior to 2017 and usually saw a couple of rattlers each summer. But, this year was different…

The last few weeks I had been seeing around 1 rattler per mile on each run – even hurdling a couple as they inadvertently slithered unto the trail in front of me. Today, they were even more active – I had seen 4 in the first 2-1/2 miles and now the fifth and largest patrolled the barren slope just below the trail. A 6-footer had spotted me, his head up with tongue flickering angerly in and out. Crazily, he seemed to be dead-set on intercepting me. I smiled a wry smile. I was a runner and he was a snake. Intercepting me was ridiculous. I modestly picked up the pace. He altered his direction and went into high-gear in a real attempt to intercept me! Sprinting all-out I beat him to the interception point by a few yards. This was nuts. Snakes don’t intentionally try to intercept people…

I was glad to reach the refuge of the pines. The shade was welcome and I had never seen a rattler up this high. I could relax. The sun was directly behind me and my silhouette married with the forest shadows cast a wondrous tapestry in front of me. Then, a slender shadow darted suddenly from the embankment above. I whirled around instinctively as a rattler’s bite brushed my right calf - just in time to see a 4-footer land in the middle of the trail behind me. He writhed angrily as I estimated his trajectory. He had left the uphill embankment and, becoming completely airborne, just missed sinking his fangs into my leg – I was only saved by an animal reflex that made me react faster than I thought possible. This rattler had violated all the standard “rules” of rattlesnake behavior that I had been taught:

·       They will only bother you if you bother them;

·       They will rattle a warning when disturbed (this rattler never rattled once);

·       They can only strike half their body length (using the advantage of height above the trail this snake had struck much longer than his length).

Adrenaline drove me a ¼ mile further up the trail but rational thought crept in. Foot and bike traffic was very light this far up the trail. Cell coverage was close to non-existent. If I was bitten, might be quite a while for help… I headed back down. My 4-foot friend was now 8 feet below the trail and still mad. Further down the trail the 6-footer once again angrily altered course and speed trying desperately to intercept. Once again, my fear-inspired speed was needed to beat the viper to the interception point. I saw 2 more further down along the trail and a dead baby rattler in the middle – a victim of an encounter with a mountain-biker’s tire. At the trailhead, one mountain-biker told me a rattler had struck at his foot on the downstroke. Could these snakes differentiate the moving mechanical parts of the bike from flesh and blood? Heat vision maybe…

I tried the Clear Creek trail one more time that summer – a week later. Starting out only 70 yards or so from the trailhead, I sloppily headed toward landing my foot near the trail edge rather than the center as had become my custom (to avoid snakes in the adjacent brush). As my foot descended, the carpet of dry grass rose as a perfectly camouflaged rattler. My heart sank. There was nothing I could do. I was going to land within inches of a rattler coiled to strike – my calf directly in front of his head. Somehow, I lunged away narrowly avoiding a bite. That was it. My mom had been bitten by a baby rattlesnake while retrieving orienteering markers in heavy brush a decade before. I wasn’t going to be the second Gookin bitten by a rattlesnake. I never ran Clear Creek trail again that summer.

I have run Clear Creek trail every year since and seen no more than a couple each year rather than the hundreds of crazily aggressive rattlers I saw the summer of 2017…

Photo: An angry Clear Creek trail 4-footer hiding in chaparral.