Who's afraid of snakes?

I am!

Today as I ran through miles of tall, thick, overgrown singletrack on Phantom Trail, I kept reminding myself to be careful of snakes. It's that time of year. However, it's useless to watch out for snakes since I can't see the trail anyway. It's completely obscured by tall, overgrown grasses. In any case, I kept forgetting about sneaky, hidden, dangerous snakes as I ran through the wonderland of Phantom on a sunny morning. I didn't encounter any snakes at all...until I got off the skinny singletrack and back onto the spacious Liberty Canyon fireroad. I decided to head for the bridge at Grasslands for a potential photo opp. Just before the u-turn from Liberty onto Grasslands I saw a big, dead rattlesnake. It looked like it may have been regurgitated or otherwise half-eaten. The lesson I choose to learn today is that they aren't hiding in the dense, overgrown singletrack, they're out on the fireroad in plain site making them easy peasy to avoid. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.