A Heart Mountain hike turned into a near-tragedy for a recent Powell High School graduate last week, as Jhett Schwahn was bitten by a rattlesnake near the mountain’s summit. It became a roughly three-hour, life-threatening ordeal.

The incident

Taking advantage of a warm summer afternoon, Schwahn and his girlfriend Macey Cranfill set off to do a workout and climb Heart Mountain on July 9. The couple made it to the top around 4 p.m. without incident, but disaster struck as they started to make their descent.

“… There was a 10-yard stretch of pretty steep trail. So I just kind of started jogging down it and the snake jumped out of the bush to my right,” Schwahn recalled. “I think the combination of me running down on the hill and it being in a bush [startled the snake].”

“I guess they are molting [shedding skin] this time of year so their rattles are soft so you can’t hear them as well,” he said. “I think I got on it too quickly for it to even give me a warning.”

Not realizing that he’d been bitten, Schwahn’s initial reaction was to grab his gun and search the surrounding area to find the snake and kill it, as Cranfill was trailing behind at the top of the downslope. But the snake had quickly fled, and Schwahn was unable to find his attacker.

Cranfill said she had hoped for the best, believing that maybe Schwahn had just scraped his leg in the process of trying to avoid the attack.

“He said that it didn’t bite him,” she recalled, but “then he said: ‘Macey, my lips are getting tingly.’”

That was when they knew he’d been bit — and when Cranfill called 911.

Sitting still

She placed the call at 4:26 p.m. and the initial advice from a dispatcher at the Park County Sheriff’s Office was for Schwahn to sit down. The direction may have been one of the most important factors in saving his life.

“I went to Google, as every teenager does, trying to figure out what to do. I’m trying to stay calm but obviously panicked a little bit. It pretty much said to just sit down,” Schwahn said. “At first I wanted to go down the trail and get as far as I could, but the dispatcher said to just sit and stay where I was.”

Shortly after sitting down, Schwahn said he started to press on his leg where it was bleeding. A clear, yellow liquid — apparently some of the snake’s venom — oozed out.

As they waited for help, the numbness began to spread throughout Schwahn’s body, with the feeling growing all the way up his legs to his hips, as well as his hands.

“That was when I started to panic a little bit,” he said.

In addition to the numbness, Cranfill had been told to monitor Schwahn’s breathing and to keep him from talking, in order to avoid expending any extra energy and to circulate more blood.

She and Schwahn communicated via hand signals to gauge his condition, with Schwahn occasionally giving a thumbs up to indicate his breathing was OK. But as time passed, the thumbs up started to get lower.

“After an hour-and-a-half, the thumbs up went half-way,” Cranfill said.

Schwahn said his chest started to tighten up, and he knew things could go downhill quickly as his breathing became more difficult.

“Without Macey, I wouldn’t be here,” Schwahn said.

Staying calm

Throughout the process Cranfill had been on the line with both 911 and Schwahn’s father, Russ. He reiterated the advice to stay put and avoid stirring up the venom.

“I said the best thing you can do right now is be calm and we are going to get people on the way,” Russ recalled.

Cranfill said it was helpful to have Russ on the phone to calm both of them down.

“I think he calmed Jhett down, knowing he was there on the phone, having his family there in a sense,” Cranfill said. “Russ calmed me down at the same time.”

Russ, along with his wife Lisa, kept Cranfill informed as Park County Search and Rescue volunteers and other emergency responders reached the base of Heart Mountain and started to ascend and as a medical helicopter prepared to launch.

“I was helping the kids know that they are on their way, looking for a place to land, that type of thing,” Russ said. “Thirty-five years of coaching and getting myself to stay calm under pressure came to fruition after getting the phone call that no parent ever wants to get.”

Russ added that the ability for the young adults to call for help proved critical for Jhett.

“If this was in an age of no cellphones, he [Jhett] wouldn’t be here,” Russ said. 

Rescue mission

After spending a couple of hours trying to keep calm, Schwahn and Cranfill still were stranded near the top of Heart Mountain as it took time for the helicopter to clear checks and get in the air. The heat started to get to the two hikers.

“Time was going so slow at this point,” Cranfill said.

When she finally saw the rescue helicopter overhead, “I was screaming,” she said, and began waving both her and Schwahn’s shirts around in a nearby by field in an effort to flag the chopper down.

That was enough to garner the attention of the rescue crew, which performed a difficult landing.

“When we saw it start to descend straight down then I really encouraged them [the couple],” Russ said. “Search and rescue were amazing with how quickly they got there, and we can’t thank them enough.”

Once emergency responders got to Schwahn, he was strapped to a board and received IVs before being flown to Cody’s West Park Hospital around 7:30 p.m.

Recovery

Doctors told Schwahn he was lucky to have been wearing pants instead of shorts, and that only one fang had pierced his skin, perhaps because he’d yanked his legs back. Those factors prevented him from receiving the full amount of venom.

“If I would have been wearing shorts or gotten a full bite it would have been too late for them to get up there,” Schwahn said.

He stayed in the hospital until late on the night of July 9, under a mandatory 18-hour observation, as Russ said anti-venom can have “wonky side effects.”

Schwahn left West Park on crutches and continued to take blood tests to ensure the venom was not present.

“I’ve had to do two rounds of blood tests to check clotting and stuff with my liver,” he said, “but they have all come back clean, which is really encouraging.”

Between the flight, hospital stay and pricey anti-venom medication, there is certain to be a high cost.

“We haven’t gotten the bill yet, but I don’t care at this point,” Russ said, adding, “I’ve got my son.”

Moving forward

After being released from the hospital, Schwahn was initially limited to bed rest, with orders to keep his leg elevated and the swelling down. Alongside his family, Schwahn was able to attend Powell Pioneers games last week — including senior night on July 11 — and he made it to church on Sunday.

The athlete said his teammates have been “great.”

“The first day I was home I had guys from the team coming to check on me and tons of support through social media and texts,” Schwahn said, adding, “the whole community has played a big role in helping me and my family with meals and stuff.”

He was able to walk without assistance for all of Monday.

The Pioneers are in the final stretch of the season, heading into the postseason this weekend with the Class ‘A’ West District Tournament in Green River. Schwahn said there’s some chance he could  potentially return to the field at districts, but that he likely won’t make it back until the state tournament at home next weekend, if at all.

“I definitely don’t want to rush into anything and damage it further,” Schwahn said. “Mainly just listening to my body and doing the right thing.”

Soon after the baseball season wraps up, Schwahn will head to Rocky Mountain College in Billings, where he has a football scholarship.

“I told my college coaches [about the bite] and they were awesome. They were just making sure I was OK rather than [focusing on] the football side of it,” Schwahn said.

While the former Panther quarterback hopes to be ready to go by the start of the fall season, he expects to have to start slower. Rocky Mountain’s coaches indicated that “the worst case scenario is a redshirt freshman year,” he said.

In the wake of his ordeal, Schwahn said he’s heard people say they’ll keep a sharper eye out for snakes; he said he’d often heard about people seeing rattlesnakes but not of attacks.

“This has cemented me not liking them [snakes],” Schwahn said.

As he and Cranfill headed out on their Heart Mountain hike last week, “we were more worried about bears,” Schwahn said, “but it turns out it was snakes.”