At first, Brian Wolf thought he had just stepped on a big hose. But when he felt something shaped like a nail going into his foot, he jumped high in the air.
“That’s when I thought I might have stepped on a snake,” Wolf recalled Monday. “Then I heard a rattle and I knew what I had done.”
Hiking high up in Topanga Canyon May 6, Wolf and his girlfriend, Ali, were suddenly in a race against time.
“Right then we realized we had to get off the trail as soon as possible,” Wolf said.
Wolf, an experienced hiker, was unaware that he was ignoring expert advice by continuing down the trail.
“In hindsight, it was probably a mistake. The experts say that the more you pump your heart, the more you spread the venom,” Wolf said. “So the normal advice is to sit and wait for help. But this was a pretty steep area and my only thought was to get out of there as fast as I could.”
Within three minutes, however, Wolf could feel a tingling in his face from the snake’s venom. Then he started to stumble down the trail like a drunk leaving a party on New Year’s Eve. Soon he couldn’t even walk.
“Within 15 minutes, I was in total paralysis,” Wolf said. “I was scared, but I wasn’t yelling or screaming. Thank God Ali kept a clear head.”
Wolf, a 35-year-old Manhattan Beach resident who works as a digital artist for a visual effects company, was unable to summon help on his cell phone. He said he probably would have died right there on the trail if he hadn’t come across a fellow hiker.
“I was collapsed on the trail, and I told Ali she had to find a pay phone at the trail head, so she split off from us,” Wolf said.
Then came a heroic effort from the Good Samaritan he encountered on the trail.
“I weigh 200 pounds, while he was only about 175,” Wolf said. “But he got a big adrenaline boost, put me on his shoulders and carried me down the trail.”
By the time they got to the bottom of the trail, Ali’s call had produced several emergency medical technicians who were waiting to give Wolf oxygen and stabilize his heart. Then he was airlifted out via helicopter to a local hospital.
“From the time of the bite to arrival at the hospital took just about an hour,” Wolf said. “A lot of lucky things had to happen along the way for me to get there that quickly.”
After talking with the doctors, Wolf realized just how lucky he really was.
“If that guy hadn’t been there on the trail, at the very least I would have lost my foot,” Wolf said. “The doctors said I was really lucky to find him there and get off the trail as soon as possible.”
In fact, Wolf said, the doctors told him he probably would have died if he hadn’t received medical attention within two hours of the bite.
Recovering at home, Wolf said he wants to warn other hikers to be aware of the dangers of snakes.
“Be careful where you walk,” he said. “Always hike with somebody, know where you are and never jump over bushes without looking to see where you’re going to land.”