What to do when a snake blocks a narrow trail?
Some time back I was on a very narrow mountain trail with a cliff rising to my right and a steep gorge dropping to my left. The trail was blocked by by the viper below (with the gorge just out of shot). The weather was chilly and the viper was sluggish, but quite aggressive and hissy.
I stamped my feet and clapped which normally scares snakes off, but it wasn't going anywhere and we had a bit of a stand off. I could have swept it off the trail with my walking poles, but this would have sent it over the edge of the gorge and killed it. I was short of daylight so eventually decided to rock-climb around it on the cliff above, at some risk to life and limb.
So my question is, when it's not practical to sweep a snake off the trail with a pole or stick (as recommended in the answers to this question), is there anything else I could have done to persuade it to withdraw without endangering the snake or myself?
Assume I'm carrying a sack with all the usual overnight trekking gear at my disposal. For example, could I have done something with fire or smoke?
PS - the encounter happened in the Italian Grians in the gorge above this photo - a very lovely spot!
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/13151. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
In this situation, if you wanted to preserve the life of the snake, I would have recommended you used your poles to pick it up, swing it out over the gorge side of the trail and place it back on the ground behind you. You may have also had success using the basket of your pole to hold it's head down while you walked past.
Myself, I would have simply flicked it out into the gorge, there's no sense risking life and limb for the sake of a snake, the snake would probably land in some branches and survive the fall anyways.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/13152. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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