Medium-Long Run Friday - Rattlesnakes!

On today's Medium-Long Run, I was running south on the Suffern-Bear-Mountain trail, and I saw a big curvy lump ahead in the trail. I stopped short about 10 feet away from this Eastern Timber Rattlesnake that was sunning itself in the middle of the trail. It was about 4.5 feet long, and nearly 3 inches in diameter. Notice the big nasty diamond head and the huge rattle. I'm just really lucky that it chose such an open area of trail to sun itself in, and not somewhere else amongst the plentiful rocks in so many other areas of the trails I'd run.

Now the Video!

Looking east from the Egg rock formation on Suffern-Bear Mountain trail. A European guy hiking north came up to me as I was sitting on top of Egg rock. He said he was visiting for a week, but sounded like he didn't know where he was going, and didn't have a map! He said he wanted to go to the lake, but didn't know which trail to take, and had already overshot the main lake trail, so since I was going south, I led him back to that trail and pointed him in the right direction.

 Springtime in full bloom despite drought conditions

Three-quarters of the way into my run-hike, I'm running on the black trail heading toward the lake, nearing my favorite view spot, and something down to my right moved with enough rustle to make me jump out of the way to the left. I looked down and saw a SECOND rattlesnake about six feet away, laying next to a rock curled up. Another pretty big one, but smaller than the first, this one was probably a little under four feet long, but still a very formidable snake.

I tried to get it to move so I could photograph it by tossing sticks near it, but it stayed put.

It was calm for a while but then it started to rattle quite loudly and slithered around right into a hole under the rock. It was really pissed off that I was still there and it didn't want to give away it's den location, so it rattled loudly the entire time it slithered into the hole. This den is right on the trail.

After the second snake, I resumed my run, but I began to wonder if I would see a third snake -- as the superstition goes, strange things sometimes seem to come in threes -- but when I got down to the lake, I thought I was unlikely to see another on busier trails.

I caught up to the European guy, who had come the other shorter way around the lake, and he had made it well on his way down the red trail. Then a bit later, as I realized I'd run my quota for the day, I switched to an easy hike for the last part of the red trail. I met some people who said they'd seen a black snake swimming in the lake (maybe the very same snake I took pictures of a couple of weeks ago), so maybe that was the third one. No, I don't believe that, but everything is finally coming out now that it's late April.