Young campers rattled by hike in snake country

LIVINGSTON, Mont. — Two young tourists on a walk in Montana’s Paradise Valley found themselves on a hillside infested with rattlesnakes, and used a cellular phone to tearfully ask for help.

Izzy Effler, 13, and Morgan Beadwell, 12, climbed the hill earlier this month to see if they could make cell-phone contact with friends back home in Colorado.

“We were just going up for a hike and my dog sniffed out a hole,” Izzy said. A rattlesnake “struck at me” but did not bite, she said. Then Morgan stepped on one, ran away from it and another appeared.

As the girls from Loveland, Colo., stood together, six rattlers moved in around them.

The girls used their cell phone to call Izzy’s father, Brian Effler, who was in camp down the hill. He said that when he got the call, the girls “weren’t talking, they were sobbing.”

Effler and his teenage nephew ran up the hillside with a pellet gun in hand. They shot two rattlers before reaching the girls, Effler said. After two snakes slithered into holes, the girls saw a clearing and began making their way down the hillside.

Rattlesnake trapper Rusty Juhnke, who was called to help, said he saw 25 to 30 snakes in the area where the girls had been waiting.

This is a dangerous time of year to hike in rattlesnake country because it is the snakes’ shedding season, and they may be more aggressive than usual, Juhnke said. He advised carrying a long stick on hikes.

“This way the snakes will go for the stick and not your foot or leg,” he said.