Battle Creek Canyon to Dry Canyon Experiment Part 1: Rattlesnakes - 1 Bumps all over my arms and legs from bumping into strange tall plants - around 5,000 I finally got out to check out the Battle Creek Canyon trail. My original plan was to try and summit Big Baldy but I turned around around a mile from the top due to time constraints... This looks like it'll be a fun trail to keep running on... There was one stream crossing that I couldn't get across dry so I just walked through the water, the wet shoes didn't bother me much and dried out pretty quickly. As you near the top of the Battle Creek trail the weeds get around 6 ft tall and cover most of the trail, so that was a little annoying to deal with. Around 1mi after the "right" turn to head towards Big Baldy I almost stepped on a rattlesnake. Instead of screaming like a girl I just let out a big "ahhhhh!" and jumped back about 5 ft. & then the snake and I went our separate ways. I saw Faceless Ghost on the way down so that was cool. I read his blog occasionally and it seems like he's up in the Dry/Battle/Grove Creek area quite often. I'll have to ask him how often he runs into snakes and how to deal with that... I'm hoping to make the full Battle/Dry loop in the next 1-2 weeks. We've got a family vacation @ Bear Lake next weekend so I don't know if I'll have time for the full loop before then. - Chris |