I climbed a small cliff, used my hand to move some grass and came face to face (within 12”) with a 5‘ rattlesnake, fortunately he was asleep/sunning.
Ahh man... this reminds me of a story. I'm getting back out of this Bear spot that's like 7mi all downhill to get into it. Which means it's all uphill when you're leaving! At some point, during the final sorta leg of the trail back, I apparently missed a turn and must have kept travelling upward up a natural drainage line. But as the growth kept coming in thicker and crowding in... I realized I was no longer on the trail line. Dang it. Meanwhile the thin and fit young man half my age is already on the switchback line of the trail... a certain amount of ways up above me (Remember all downhill coming in, all uphill going out) So I pass on the idea of back-tracking and decide "Fuggit... I'll just pioneer up that way and meet back up with that trail line up there!".
1) I'd screwed up and forgotten my boots in the rush of the drive-out at butt thirty in the am.
2) In some Nike Running Shoes, I'm quickly realizing how traction on this fairly steep hill, with not a lot of growth in this particular area, is tricky to find, so using dirtbikes experience I start placing my feet on the backs of clumps of grass or weeds sticking out. And that helped quite a lot with the climbing, especially with a fairly heavy pack on.
3) Ah.... but then...but then!.... right as my face is about to crest over the last part of the steep part of this hill I decided to pioneer up... BAM!!! Seriously!? A freaking young Rattler sounding off like maybe 2-3 feet from my face.
4) And freaking now I gotta just stand there, on this like 45 Degree or steeper slope... I'm all breathing heavy from the sketchy climbinb.... and my calves are burning and trembling with each passing second it gets worse. And this young BuzzWorm is soo nervy he's like waiting forever before he finally relaxes a little bit and tries to go away. OMG!!! It was torture waiting for that little sh*t to finally go! By the end I'm like chastizing this damn snake "Just Go!! Go Already!!!! What are you waiting for??? Obviously I gave you distance, so get your sh*t and lets GO ALREADY!!" (Me all motioning to the snake to go that way, over there, opposite me, hehe)
Thankfully the younger dude was there and saw this go down so he was super nice enough to climb down that lil bit and meetup with me at the point the snake standoff went down so he could take my pack up to the trail line. After standing on that flattened crest where it all went down long enough to get some blood back in my calves... I loafed my utterly burned out calves up onto that trail line above. It was still darn hot so we hiked just a little down the trail to go around a bend for shade. First place I quickly saw that looked wide enough and didn't seem to have insects, I plopped down. To drink and let all that heat get out from that fiasco. And right about then "OW!!!" Sigh... Fire Ants... somehow in my tired state and being in the shadow I somehow managed to not notice where these Fire Ants where going into and out of a hole a little bit off the trail, cluttered with quite a bit of dead plant matter around it so maybe why I didn't key-in on it before sitting. So yeah... then Fire Ant bites me just above the pants line in the back, that was lovely!
And then there was this other time... during General Season in D15, on my way in I come across the cutest tiniest little BuzzWorm I've ever seen. Must have only been about 7" long. Looked like he got caught out there in that trail water-rut in the open the night before, and probably is just way too cold to move right now at beginnings of first light. So I just smiled and stepped over him.
