Two hikers encountered a rattlesnake. Then they fell in love
Emmanuel Salas heard the snake before he saw it.
“There was that rattle,” Emmanuel, known as Manny, recalls to CNN Travel today. “Immediately, we jumped back.”
Manny tried not to panic, but when the snake came writhing out of a bush and proceeded to unfurl and stand alert, Manny felt the fear kick in.
“It looked like it was kind of aggressive, it was standing up,” he recalls. “We were all freaking out.”
It was early 2019. Manny and two friends were hiking back from the Bridge to Nowhere, a remote structure built for an abandoned 1930s highway project in California’s San Gabriel Mountains.
Twenty-something Manny was born in Mexico but grew up in California, and he was familiar with the state’s more hair-raising wildlife. But it was one thing reading about venomous rattlesnakes, and another thing coming face-to-face with one in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m terrified of snakes,” says Manny. “And we were on this part of the trail where it’s very narrow. On one side you have a clearing, with a bit of a drop and a steep fall. And then on the other side, you just have a whole bunch of bushes, so we couldn’t really go around the snake.”
Unsure what to do, Manny and his friends just stopped, silent and wide-eyed.
“We were just standing there, figuring out what we could do, how to try and scare it, when another group came up behind us.”
Manny turned to see three women, each with a backpack strapped to them, each looking confused. The trio was familiar – one of them in particular – and Manny realized they’d all been at the Bridge to Nowhere together earlier that day.
“Under the bridge you can go and swim in these pools – there’s a river running underneath,” explains Manny. “We’d all stopped there and swam for a bit.”
While bathing in the pools, Manny had been struck by one of the women. She’d been sitting on a rock, laughing with her friends in between snapping photos of the view.
“I remember thinking, ‘Damn that girl looks pretty cute,’ ” says Manny.
But Manny didn’t speak to her. And when Manny and his friends left the bridge, the women were still there.
But now they’d all unexpectedly reconvened to face down a rattlesnake.
Laura’s perspective
While she was sitting on the rock at the Bridge to Nowhere, Laura Binder didn’t really pay Manny Salas much notice.
And later, when Laura and her friends ran into Manny and his group on the trail, she didn’t recognize him right away.
Laura’s first thought was simply: “Why are those guys just standing there?”
Then she saw their expressions and realized something wasn’t right.
“Be careful,” said one of Manny’s friends. “There’s a rattlesnake literally right there.” He indicated in front of them, where the snake was still standing to attention.
Laura gasped. She was from Vienna, Austria, where there is no dangerous wildlife to speak of. California rattlesnakes were new territory.
Fortunately, Laura’s two friends were a little calmer in the face of danger. And Manny and his party felt some safety in their numbers increasing.
The two groups banded together to scare off the snake by stomping their feet, clapping and shouting. Eventually, the snake slinked off into the foliage, allowing the group to continue warily along the path.
In part because of the snake encounter, and in part because it was getting dark, Laura’s group and Manny’s group made the decision to hike the rest of the trail together.
As they put some distance between themselves and the snake, the hikers started to calm down, and the two groups introduced themselves as they meandered down the trail.
The path was just wide enough for the hikers to walk two-by-two. By coincidence, Laura and Manny found themselves next to each other, and they chatted as they went.
The two discussed their shared love of the outdoors, with Laura mentioning she was new to California. She’d moved there in early 2019 – leaving behind her home city of Vienna, where she’d grown up with an Austrian mother and a South Korean father.
“Since I was a baby, we went to so many different places, and I also studied abroad in Japan and in (South) Korea,” Laura tells CNN Travel today. “I love to travel.”
It was Laura’s desire to see the world that prompted her to move to California, to pursue a postgraduate degree at UCLA.
When Laura encountered Manny and the rattlesnake, she was “still kind of new in the city.”
She was in a relationship, but her partner didn’t live in Los Angeles.
“I was a little lonely, and I wanted to meet more people,” Laura recalls. “I think as a foreigner, it’s also hard to make connections that are not just surface level.”
At first, Laura and Manny’s conversation stayed pretty surface level. But soon they were talking about Laura’s life in Vienna and Manny’s experiences growing up in California. The conversation segued into rock climbing – and Manny and Laura realized they shared a favorite hobby.
Manny, who was single, wondered if his connection with Laura might have romantic potential. Then Laura mentioned her boyfriend.
“I was like, ‘OK, this isn’t going to go anywhere romantically, that’s fine. But I may have a new buddy to go with me to the climbing gym,’ ” recalls Manny.
“And then, at the end of the hike, when we got to the parking lot, Laura asked for my number.”
“I felt like we were vibing, but in a friendship way,” says Laura. “I didn’t know anyone who was a climber in LA. So it was just cool for me to meet someone who had the same hobby.”
The two hikers exchanged details, promising to meet up and climb together some time soon
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