[pct-l] Mosquitoes

[ALAN ARTMAN]

I'm allergic to DEET so that has never been an option for me, and I've experimented with other ways to fend off the little blighters.  Got a good chance to try these out this summer on the Oregon portion of my attempted thru-hike (due to an injury early on, I didn't hike the Sierras until September, long past bug season), and here's what I found:
(1) Wearing light colored clothing is very helpful. When I set my dark blue pack about 10 feet away during breaks, the mosquitoes tended to ignore me in my light colors and instead congregated around the pack.  I also noted that hikers wearing dark colors got swarmed.
(2)  I wore the permethrin-treated pants and long-sleeved shirt from Ex-Officio.  These seemed to be pretty effective, and I didn't have any allergic reaction to the permethrin.  The pants are lighter (in weight) than the basic REI expedition pants, but the fabric was quite durable.  The sewing, however, was not, and by the time I had done SoCal and Oregon, I had no back pockets and one of the side pockets was coming apart.  The shirt was very well made and durable, but you gotta wonder about the sense of taking a shirt with built-in mesh side vents for ventilation, then treating it with permethrin and calling it bug protected--I got a number of bites on my sides before I figured out what was happening.  Although the side vents have a velcro "closure", when you lean or twist or bend most of the closure opens up to expose the mesh. Ex Officio claims the permethrin treatment will last as long as the clothes ("up to 70 washings"); I don't know about 70, but it was true after the dozen or so washings they got along those portions of the trail.
(3) I wore a head net and hand nets.  The headnet was very effective, but sometimes I wondered--on a hot, still, day with me breathing hard on a long uphill--if the bugs were not a preferable torture to slow asphyxiation.  The handnet--mittens made of the same nylon mesh--were surprisingly effective, and did not impede hand movement and grasping, but the mosquitoes did find the exposed area between the mitten wristband and the shirt cuff, and of course, if my hand was completely stationary within the mitten, they happily bit right through the mesh.
(4) Having skipped ahead from Hiker Town to (5 weeks later) Oregon, I found myself in the vanguard of the thru-hikers--who had suffered the bugs in the Sierra and now were again having to deal with them in Oregon, due to the late snowmelt.  Uniformly, they reported that the Oregon mosquitoes were bigger, slower, and less persistent than their Sierra cousins, but more able to bite through clothing. 
(5) And here's something that surprised me:  when I stopped for a break, if I just sat quietly for three or four minutes, not swatting and slapping, most of the mosquitoes seemed to lose interest and leave.  Moving around, however, seemed to attract them again.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Alan
 
     
 
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