>>867651I was hiking a trail in Tucson, Arizona (Blackett's Ridge) that maintains a consistently steep elevation gain of 1800 feet over 3 miles.
My wife and I had been on this trail numerous times as it presented some of the best views in Tucson as well as a great workout.
Many of you may not be familiar, but Tucson goes through "monsoon season" from mid June to early September each year. Here's a video showing how heavy the rainfall can get:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew0_V0ohbdIAnyway, one day while I was hiking with my wife a monsoon hit us very quickly while we were near the top of the trail and it was as bad as I've ever seen it. The weather report didn't show rain coming to that part of town but some strong winds blew the storm off course towards us.
We couldn't turn around since we would've lost footing coming down the steep trail, so we tried to wait it out the best we could.
After about 30 minutes the rain is not letting up and some slight landsliding is starting to occur. What was the trail is now basically a river flowing downhill.
I look up the trail, admiring the torrent of water coming down when something that looks like a tree branch flows down and hits my foot.
I go to kick it off and it surprisingly comes to life, coiling up and rearing it's head at me.
As you probably guessed it was a fucking 4 foot long snake wrapped around my foot.
I instinctively stomp the snake's head into a pulp with my boot and in the process lose footing and slip into the the water running down the trail.
I tumbled for about 50 feet before I stop, waterlogged and torn to ribbons by the rocks on the trail.
I didn't know what kind of snake it was and I couldn't be sure if it bit me. What's worse was we were about an hour from anyone else on the trail.
The rain stopped and we ran the fuck back down as carefully as we could. I was thankfully not bitten but holy shit do not go hiking when there's even a chance of getting caught in a monsoon.
