Snakes Alive!

While geocaching this morning in Catalina State Park, I came upon a small, 3 foot long, rattlesnake.  It was right in the middle of the trail, coiled, scared, and ready to strike.  The rattling alerted me to it's presence long before I saw it.  Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of the path, and just adjacent to a cache location I was trying to find and log.  

While I was inspecting the snake, another couple came down the path from the other direction, and also stopped short.  And, after that, two young ladies came up from behind me and also stopped.  It was an amazing sight to see this small snake, holding up five large humans.  We all just stood there, trying to figure how to get past.  Finally, I made my way around the snake by bushwhacking off the trail to the the left.  I kept careful lookout for other friends of the trail blocker.  As I looked back, I saw that the other folks were following my lead, and made it around.  I figured I would come back to the nearby cache after I went on down the trail to two other caches.  I hoped the snake would be gone by the time I returned.   When I did return, the snake had moved about 5 feet, but was still in the middle of the trail, rattling away.  Knowing I was not leaving without finding and logging the nearby cache, I carefully started looking around.  The cache turned out to be about 15 feet away from the coiled snake.  I signed the log, and headed back to the parking  lot, about half of a mile away.  As I walked down the trail,  I heard others behind me exclaiming about the little fellow.

It has been my experience that seeing a rattlesnake in the wild is actually pretty rare.  I do a lot of walking around in the desert here, and this is only the second rattlesnake I have seen.  I am pretty sure, it was more afraid of me, than I was of him.  Here is the picture I took this morning.