Snakes on Pitches

NSFW: Wild time climbing around in Yosemite Valley this last week. Shared the sunny rock with a few valley locals and saw quite the variety of reptilians. First night I jumped onto a rattlesnake while looking for a bivy just south of the park, R O W D Y. Saw a bunch of California king snakes and ran into this guy while rappelling down Super Slide 5.9. Snakes on Pitches folks

No plans for Cochise anytime soon.

Anyone have any snake stories?

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Moving slower than I was,,I was more concerned about the ticks

John, where was that?!

had a small snake (garter I think) fall square on my head from a tree. ive never been more dumbfounded

Southern CO.. a few miles south of Penitente. The new "secret" spot..like all the others in the area.

Years ago I was climbing a chimney at Smith and discovered a rattlesnake ... the route was apply named Rattlesnake Chimney.

I also once reached deep into a crack and had a rat run across my hand.

Oh yeah I got attached by the infamous ants on the third pitch of the East Buttress of El Cap.

Just about stepped on this guy hanging out at the Witch/Sorcerer notch in the Needles last week.

I know of at least one snake bite on a route I recently added to the site - it hadn't been named at the time of the incident but it quickly got its title. "Bitten" on a wall known as Snake Slab!

I had a crack in idyllwild rattle at me. The crack was too deep to see the snake, but it did make me pick up the pace!

Snakes where friggin' EVERYWHERE! I picked up my pack and there was another rattler under it waiting for me. Snakes basking on the trail, too.

I didn't get to snap a pic of the snake hanging out in the middle of the 3rd class shortcut at Annapolis Rocks. I did get this picture of another one sliding across Appalachian Trail. We ran across lots of snakes that day.



This one was at the bottom of Jackie. I was surprised to see a snake in such a busy place as the Trapps.

I wouldn't come to AZ in the summer, I see a rattler everyday on my travels, be it the trail, the rock, or the road. It's Summer, aka Snake Season, don't be suprised to share your adventures with them.

Saw a foot and a half long moccasin yesterday at jackson falls, think it was trying to mate with my rope. Then it climbed the corner of the wall i was on just left of the falls. Decent beta.

So many......
The funniest was a group of us headed to some climbs at Skytop (Gunks) with my friend in the lead. He caught a copperhead under the toe of his shoe and instinctively flicked it upwards, hard, and yelped a bit. I look up and see a copperhead at about 8' heading toward my....head. We had a good laugh.....eventually.

An approach in the upper reaches of Mt. Lemmon - my friend steps on a coral snake. It fortunately beat a hasty retreat.

Gunks again...I reach into a horizontal - on No Glow maybe? - and instead of the expected hold, grab the middle of a pretty fat black snake. Yes, screamed like a little child.

Skaha - rattlesnake close encounters too numerous to mention.

Squamish 2013: belaying my partner up the first pitch of Old Style on the Malamute. She's about halfway up when a ~3 foot snake starts investigating our pile of rope, then slithering up the rope towards my belay device.

Gunks 20??: saw two small snakes (not copperheads) between the carriage road and the base of the Middle Earth area. Start belaying the same partner up Middle Earth or Faithful Journey, and sure enough a third snake decides to check out our pile of rope. Didn't make an attempt on the belay device this time, though.

Went to ?? the next day and some other party was on one of the moderates to the left of the Survival block, and a snake decided to check out their pile of rope (conveniently stacked in the dark, dank recesses between mossy talus chunks). Only it wasn't a 3-foot garter snake, it was a 5-foot rat snake....

One of my climbing partners is a snake attractor I think, she always runs into snakes.

Ran into a pair of copperheads on the trail between some climbs at the Gallery in the Red River Gorge this weekend. Found a snake about half way up a climb at Sunnyside in Muir Valley on a ledge. Had a snake fall from the sky on her and another friend while belaying. Finds them on the trail all the time.

Here are a few that I have seen in the last few weeks. The copperhead was laying at my feet for about 5 minutes before I noticed. Luckily all the copperheads that I have encountered are pretty docile.

In college, while climbing at "lincoln lake" in Arkansas, I was belaying on a big boulder below a climb and I looked up to see something falling out of the sky. It was a six foot black snake that fell off the cliff above us. Landed right next to me and slithered off...

I had an encounter with a very aggressive copperhead while doin some business in the rhodo bushes at the red about 4 years ago. I was definitely caught squatting over what might have been a nest? Anyways, dang-ole' snake squares up and I backed the hell up. End of story.

I was on a low angle slab when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a stick I needed to remove so I could set my hand down. I tried to brush it away when I realized it was soft. A closer look made it obvious that I had just touched a copperhead. I still needed to set my hand down, without getting bit, so I picked it up and threw it down the slab into the creek below. It was only two feet long but it made the pitch way more exciting than it is normally.

In general I love the creatures but those are some frightening stories haha This was just a non venomous California kingsnake but I've heard of some unfortunate climbing encounters. The bigwall story is wild!