Yosemite hike update

[Drew Wiley]

Er, I meant over the top to Crabtree. It's a wonderful but steep section, with an incredible
slab of olivine pseudo-fossil fern-like crystals up there. The rosy moutain finches were so
tame that they were eating cracked corn nuts out of our hands at the summit.

[Alan Curtis]

I conducted research on mosquitoes in the Florida Everglades for many years, I'm a retired Entomologist. There are few places in the world that have mosquitoes as bad as the Everglades in the summer and fall. The two things that worked to keep them from removing all my blood was a repellant with at least 30% DEET or a bug suit available from REI, it is sort of like wearing a net but, it works. Some of them are impregnated with permethrin, it's what he military uses.

[ROL]

Alan, my wife bought us both cheap bug suits a few years ago. I've never used mine, but she, being much more sensitive (to bugs), has used hers mostly without success. It tends to ride too close to the skin, allowing the little buggers to stick their probosces right through. I normally just don rainsuit windbreaker and pants, with head net supported by a hat when things get bad enough. It has to get really bad, or hot enough that I must leave exposed skin, to use DEET preparations. So the question is, how does one properly and effectively wear a bug suit?

[Alan Curtis]

The suit has to fit very loosely, much bigger the better and the mesh has to be very small. I made sure that I had repellant on the areas where the suit could lay flat. When there are thousands of mosquitoes after you nothing will keep all of them away except a rain suit, which is not too comfortable in the tropics. I did a couple of Discovery Channel shows with Nigel Marvin, he and his crew claimed they would rather swim with Great White Sharks than face the mosquitoes in the Everglades again.

[Two23]

I'm run into my share of mosquitos in the lake country of South Dakota and Minnesota, and they are truly epic in Arctic Canada. Wife & I have bug net suits, which we soaked in permethrin before we left. When the bugs land on that, they die. It's also the only thing that reliably repels ticks and chiggers. Our solution the past couple of years has been to simply go to Iceland. No biting insects at all.


Kent in SD

[David Lobato]

ROL, I recently finished that Bryson book and thoroughly enjoyed it.

[ROL]

Thanks Alan – I guess my wife will inherit my bug suit, potentially treated.

David – "finished", HA! I've been carrying it on every multi–day trail and river for at least 5 years (importantly, the paperback is light reading), mostly re–reading the first part again and again. Unbelievably, I made through to the second part on the last hike, but still haven't finished it.

[Drew Wiley]

Maybe an IV with DEET instead of plasma? I always know when the bugs are bad if the first squadron doesn't bite at all, but simply licks off all the repellant ahead of the main
invasion. What works way better than repellant is an attractant - like a light complexion
blonde hiking partner - the bugs will leave you alone and zero in on them. I'd much rather
have mosquitos than swarms of no-see-ums that can get right thru fabric, or big horseflies
that can stab clear thru anything. Heading over Tioga tomorrow, but will probably camp up
around Sonora Pass - the volcanic terrain up there breeds a lot less bugs than the granite
to the south.

[ROL]

What works way better than repellant is an attractant - like a light complexion
blonde hiking partner - the bugs will leave you alone and zero in on them.

Well, that settles it. Drew and I will never hike together.

[tgtaylor]

Mosquitoes are territorial. I've been in areas where they literally swarm you and not far away there are none to be found. Nothing I've found seems to be as effective as 100% deet: If you are being swarmed while having it on, they will keep at a respectable radius, about a foot or so, which they can't penetrate although trying. It's as if there exists a force field between you and them which they can't breach.

That said I once purchased a natural repellant in a glass container at a drugstore in France while on a bicycle tour. They didn't sell the deet products but the pharmacists assured me this natural repellant would work as well. It worked while I was on tour but the bottle broke before I got back to the states so I never tried it in the Sierra. I think, however, that I would work here but I would be concerned that the strong orod of banannas would attract bears.

Thomas