The US Mountain Trails With The Most Rattlesnake Encounters

Rattlesnakes den in the same sun-warmed rock that pulls hikers toward a view, and on a busy trail close to a city, the two meet on the same ledge. People are paying for it. By mid-June 2026, Utah doctors had counted 17 rattlesnake bites, about double the eight or nine typical by that point in the year, and the foothill trails above Salt Lake City run straight through the terrain the state’s wildlife biologists flag for snakes.

The risk isn’t just a desert problem. Outside Denver, a rattlesnake killed a hiker at a Golden park in 2017, and that same month the county closed a trail on a nearby lava-capped mesa to keep people away from a den. In New York’s Shawangunk Mountains, threatened timber rattlesnakes still work the quartz ledges, and one was found stretched across the path at Sam’s Point with no room to pass.

South Mountain Park/Preserve, Phoenix, Arizona

South Mountain fills the southern edge of Phoenix with three small ranges, the Ma Ha Tauk, Gila, and Guadalupe. More than 100 miles of trails cross the preserve, and the highest point open to the public, Dobbins Lookout, sits at 2,330 feet. The range is a metamorphic core complex, gneiss and granitic rock pushed upward as the crust stretched and now weathered into the boulders and ledges that line the trails. Western diamondback, black-tailed, and speckled rattlesnakes live in the park.

In October 2015, a hiker in his 50s was bitten on a trail on the mountain's north side. After a ground and air search located him, Phoenix firefighters helped him down. In May 2020, a second hiker in his 50s was bitten near the top and began to feel dizzy, and a Phoenix Police helicopter lifted him off the mountain.

Peralta Trail, Superstition Mountains, Arizona

A woman hiking the Peralta Trail on April 13, 2025, was bitten by a rattlesnake and called the Pinal County Sheriff's Office herself at about 10:45 a.m. Deputies and a Border Patrol BORSTAR agent flew in and hoisted her into the sheriff's helicopter.

The trail climbs 2.2 miles up a canyon in the Superstition Wilderness east of Phoenix, past hoodoos and boulders as big as small houses, to Fremont Saddle. From the saddle, hikers face Weavers Needle, a 1,000-foot column of eroded volcanic tuff whose summit reaches 4,555 feet above sea level.

Cold Spring and Buena Vista Trails, Montecito, California

Santa Barbara County rescuers answered two snakebite calls in six days in April 2026, both on trails climbing out of Montecito into the Santa Ynez Mountains. The first came on April 6 from the Cold Spring Trail, which starts along a creek and climbs into chaparral on the way to Montecito Peak, about 3,214 feet up. Southern Pacific rattlesnakes live in these foothills, and in Santa Barbara County they overlap with northern Pacific rattlesnakes. A 22-year-old woman was bitten on the ankle about 1.5 miles from the trailhead, by a snake responders could not identify, and a county helicopter flew her out.

On April 12, a woman was bitten about three-quarters of a mile up the nearby Buena Vista Trail. She could not reach 911, so she texted a relative. Dispatchers had her blow a whistle so rescuers could find her, and crews carried her out in a Stokes basket.

That same spring, Ventura County Fire, next door, counted seven rattlesnake bites from mid-March through April 30, compared with nine in all of 2025. One victim, a 46-year-old woman bitten on March 14 at Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, died five days later.

Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California

About 10 million people visit Griffith Park each year, and its 53 miles of trails, fire roads, and bridle paths wind through the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains. Chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and oak and walnut woodland cover the hills, with streamside growth in the deep canyons. Rattlesnakes are part of the park's wildlife, and the southern Pacific rattlesnake is the only venomous snake in the Santa Monica Mountains.

A man on a remote stretch of the Toyon Trail was bitten by a snake around 5 p.m. on April 10, 2025, and the species was never confirmed. Park rangers brought him to the nearby Toyon Helispot, where a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter picked him up for a hospital that had antivenom ready.

Mitchell Canyon, Mount Diablo State Park, California

Around Mount Diablo and the rest of the East Bay, rattlesnake activity usually picks up in the second half of April and carries into May, though in 2022 a young rattlesnake turned up on the mountain's northern slopes as early as March 19. The species here is the northern Pacific rattlesnake, which suns itself on the park's rocks. The mountain rises to 3,849 feet east of San Francisco Bay, and its slopes hold grassland, chaparral, and oak woodland.

A 7-year-old boy running with his family on a trail near Mitchell Canyon, on the mountain's north side above Clayton, was bitten in June 2023. No one saw the snake, but his symptoms matched a rattlesnake bite. His mother carried him back to the Mitchell Canyon trailhead lot, where a California Highway Patrol helicopter picked him up for John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. "The rattlesnakes are out in abundance," Contra Costa Fire Battalion Chief Ross Macumber said at the time. Supervising ranger Cameron Morrison noted that the northern Pacific rattlesnake isn't aggressive and bites only when provoked or cornered.

Salt Lake City Foothills, Utah

The foothills above Salt Lake City's Avenues and the University of Utah rise in benches, flat terraces left by the shorelines of prehistoric Lake Bonneville as the lake receded. The Bonneville Shoreline Trail roughly follows one of those old beaches, and steeper routes climb from the Upper Avenues toward Twin Peaks at 6,283 feet. Utah's Division of Wildlife Resources says rattlesnake encounters cluster on rocky, high-elevation slopes, the kind of ground the Bonneville Shoreline and Twin Peaks routes cross, with the most activity in late spring and early summer at dawn and dusk. The Great Basin rattlesnake, the most common of Utah's five species, returns to the same den every winter.

Kassidy Drage was bitten on the Twin Peaks trail from the Upper Avenues that spring and needed antivenom. In late June, the Bonneville Fire burned 566 acres of foothills above the university. Fire spokesperson Sierra Hellstrom said rattlesnakes were "a big issue up in there," and crews reported close calls.

North Table Mountain and Mount Galbraith, Golden, Colorado

On October 7, 2017, a hiker in his 30s was bitten by a rattlesnake about a mile into the trail at Mount Galbraith Park, on the northwest edge of Golden, and died at a hospital later that day. Two weeks later, Jefferson County closed the Cottonwood Canyon Trail a few miles away, in North Table Mountain Park, because of rattlesnake activity at a hibernaculum, a den where snakes gather for the winter. Anyone caught on the trail faced a $150 fine. Biologists were tracking about 20 rattlesnakes in the park with radio transmitters at the time.

North Table Mountain is a flat-topped mesa capped by lava flows that hardened about 62 million years ago and have resisted erosion since. Cliffs more than 100 feet high ring parts of the top, and the park spans about 5,700 to 6,550 feet. Prairie rattlesnakes spend the winter on the mesa. In June 2023, 11-year-old Ethan Vogel was mountain biking there with his father when a rattlesnake bit him after they reached the top, around 6:30 p.m. He needed 16 vials of antivenom and time in intensive care at Children's Hospital Colorado.

Sam's Point, Shawangunk Ridge, New York

A timber rattlesnake at least 3 feet long blocked the High Point Trail at Sam's Point for about half an hour in 2022. The hiker who met it had a cliff on one side and thick brush on the other, with no way around. The ridge here is built of Shawangunk conglomerate, quartz pebbles fused into hard, mostly white rock about 420 million years ago, and near Sam's Point it rises to the ridge's high point of 2,289 feet.

Timber rattlesnakes are listed as threatened in New York. Across the state, they den in rock crevices and talus on slopes with southern exposure, and they can travel more than a mile and a half from their dens between April and October. Young are born from late August to mid-September. Sam's Point is part of Minnewaska State Park Preserve, where a dog bitten twice in 2014 died from the venom. The state Department of Environmental Conservation attributes the rise in reported sightings to more people on the trails.

Out From the Den and Back

A rattlesnake's year runs out from its den and back again, and a trail through den country meets the snakes on both legs of that trip. Great Basin rattlesnakes above Salt Lake City return to the same den every winter. New York's timber rattlesnakes can range more than a mile and a half from theirs between April and October before heading back. The outbound leg builds through late April around Mount Diablo and peaks in late spring and early summer in the Salt Lake foothills. Autumn has its own encounters. After the October 2015 bite on South Mountain, Phoenix Fire said it expected more snakebite calls as temperatures dropped. In Golden, the fatal bite at Mount Galbraith came the same month Jefferson County closed the Cottonwood Canyon Trail, while North Table Mountain's prairie rattlesnakes settled into a winter den beside it.