Snake bites man on Blue Ridge Parkway

A 48-year-old man was taken to the University of Virginia Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon after suffering a snake bite on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Kurt Speers, a district ranger for the Blue Ridge Parkway, said the victim was airlifted to the University of Virginia after the incident was reported at 3 p.m.

Speers said the man came out of parkway woods at the Dripping Rocks area at milemarker 9 on the parkway. Other hikers notified emergency personnel that the man had been bitten.

As of Tuesday night, Speers was still investigating whether a rattlesnake or copperhead had bitten the man. Speers also was trying to determine the victim’s identity.

He apparently had been walking on the Blue Ridge Parkway trail used by Appalachian Trail hikers.

Speers said a snake bite is relatively uncommon on the Blue Ridge Parkway despite copperheads and rattlesnakes crossing roads on warm days and getting sun on rocky areas.

Male timber rattlers travel long distances for food and as much as a mile when looking to mate in July and August, according to J.D. Kleopfer, a wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Those venomous snakes mature to a length of more than 5 feet and feast on mice and chipmunks in the Shenandoah Valley and in other mountainous portions of western Virginia. Canebrake rattlesnakes, found in southeastern Virginia, eat squirrels.