Posted on 03/28/2026 2:10:29 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
The woman, identified as 46-year-old Gabriela Bautista, is the second person to suffer a fatal bite in recent weeks.
A 46-year-old hiker died after a rattlesnake bit her on a popular Southern California hiking trail, the area’s second death by snakebite this year, authorities say. Gabriela Bautista was hiking at Wildwood Regional Park, a popular area near Thousand Oaks with 17 miles of trail, when she suffered a bite on March 14 at about 11:40 a.m., Ventura County Fire Department spokesperson Andrew Dowd told the Thousand Oaks Acorn. Emergency services airlifted Bautista to Los Robles Regional Medical Center, where she died on March 19. While the incident occurred earlier this month, it had not been publicly reported until this week.
Bautista’s death came just weeks after another fatal snake encounter in Southern California. On February 1, Julian Hernandez, 25, was mountain biking near Irvine. He stopped to adjust his shoe when he lost his balance and fell into some brush, where a rattlesnake apparently bit him, the Irvine Police Department told Los Angeles’s ABC7. While Orange County firefighters rushed Hernandez to the hospital, he died just over a month later on March 4.
A warm winter and spring across much of the western United States may be contributing to higher-than-usual rattlesnake activity. Dowd told Los Angeles’s KTLA that in 2025 the department recorded 9 rattlesnake-related calls, and that since March 14 alone, it had responded to 4. Following the bites, San Bernardino National Forest issued an alert warning visitors of rattlesnakes in the area.
Deaths by snakebite are extremely rare in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7,000 to 8,000 people suffer venomous snakebites every year, with only 5 or so dying as a result. In August of 2025, a hiker died from an allergic reaction to a rattlesnake bite in Tennessee’s Savage Gulf State Park. Authorities later said they believed that the hiker had picked up the snake, possibly in an attempt to move it.
I had my headphones in on the way up the mountain and I was thinking to myself "I won't be able to hear any snake rattles"...but I kept them in the whole way up the mountain.
What a bummer...you are out for a nice hike on the trails, sunshine, clean air, got the old ticker pumping, you get bit and four days later you're dead.
FTA: "Do not attempt to cut or suck venom out of a bite." -- What? My BSA training decades ago is useless?
Ping
“But as the climate warms many experts expect encounters to rise”?
Horsecrap!
When I spent months in BugSur, CA, I likked to hike up the mountain behind house I rented. Coming down the mountain, there was a rattlesnake stretched across the path.
I though about grabbing a rock and throwing it at him (her?) but what if I missed and snake attacked? So I backed up several steps and ran down , jumped over that snake.. It didn’t seem to care.
Sort of a rare death actually. I wonder how long it took to get him to care and anti-venom.
“FTA: “Do not attempt to cut or suck venom out of a bite.” — What? My BSA training decades ago is useless?”
Pretty much. Though the verdict is still out on a slug of whiskey to slow the spread.
There is also the question of comorbidities and whether it was the venom that killed him or an infection from the bite. I am thinking his system went septic and that was the actual cause of death. Similar to the cytotoxic reactions some otherwise healthy people have to viral infections like the flu.
Did you know a rattlesnake can strike the distance of its length?
What ever happened to anti-venom.
“Horsecrap!”
That’s usually my reaction, too, but we were 27 degrees warmer than usual last week. That’s a six to seven sigma deviation from the normal mid March average. Today we are only 17 degrees warmer than the March 28 average. 6-7 SD just doesn’t occur by chance.
There’s no doubt the heat has brought the reptiles out earlier than normal.
I was in Hong Kong and a 7 or 8 foot long cobra was in the driveway of my building. I told the guard and he said “yeah. I know”. I laughed and said “fair enough”. I figured it would eventually slither off into the brush and so did he.
I spotted a big one, maybe 6 ft long and almost as thick as a baseball bat, across a trail at Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills a few years back. I just stood back and waited until it finally decided to move on. I was standing there thinking “Now what?” I thought briefly about stepping or jumping over it, but decided to wait.
Gopher Snakes look a LOT like rattlesnakes and are much more common. Their heads have the same shape and their colorations are the same, but the head is a lot smaller than the rattlesnake.
I still do chomp down hard on a stick when they are digging a bullet out of me. After a splash of whiskey on the entry hole, of course.
“Did you know a rattlesnake can strike the distance of its length?”
True. They’ve done it to me. It can also strike while its head is hidden in its coils. This is a different behavior compared to non venomous snakes like gopher snakes, rat snakes and racers.
Yep, those nature hikes can be deadly, if you unaware of what is around you.
“I wonder how long it took to get him to care and anti-venom.”
I was wondering that, too. I understand the worst thing you can do is try to hike out. Your circulatory system moves the poison throughout your body. Call 911 and have Search & Rescue come to you (but that could take hours, too).
A bit OT, but there was a video on X a day or two ago of a guy holding a baby chameleon and letting it capture bugs on the wall. Their tongues can move quicker than you can see!
This emphasizes proper precautions. #1 Apparently he didn’t carry snake bite medicine. I never leave home without it. Consuming a copious amount may affect your mobility and speech but that is offset by the effect on the rattlesnake who in rattlesnake language says “damn” when he gets infected with my blood. My way of telling snakes rightbackstcha.
I got bit by a rattlesnake when I was 8.
My fault. Is was trying to capture it to sell. Lots of snake folk in So Cal where I lived near Ojai.
Quick trip to the ER and I was fine. I was very close to home in a field nearby. But I got the sucker and sold him for $20 in 1967.
As far as Mama was concerned there were only two kinds of snakes. And every chance she got, she did her part to make it one kind of snake.
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