[pct-l] Mosquitos

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

I hiked through Oregon in July when the mosquitoes had to be at the  
peak. I had never experienced anything like that. They are insane.  
There was no relief. They bit me through my clothing. I had to wear  
two layers of shirts and a skirt over my pants plus a head net and  
deet on my hands. All that even though it was almost 100 degrees some  
days. I couldn't go outside in the middle of the night to pee. I had  
to keep my shirt tucked in because once when I bent over, a swarm  
flew up my shirt and instantly I had welts all over my chest just  
from that one second of bending over. Others I met, even a couple of  
people from Alaska said the mosquitoes are not even that bad in Alaska.

I happened to go to Seattle when I was hiking in Washington and I saw  
a NY Times article about mosquitoes. It turns out there is a new  
breed of invasive mosquitoes called Asian Tiger mosquitoes. The  
description of their appearance and behavior exactly matches what I  
experienced in Oregon. Small with black and white stripes on their  
abdomen, they bite at any time of the day or night, they alight and  
bite instantly and need almost no water to reproduce. In Oregon they  
appeared to be breeding in the margins of water on the edges of  
melting snow.

People kept telling me the mosquitoes would be worse in Washington.  
Fortunately, what few I saw there were the normal kind. The kind that  
have to think about it before they bite you. They think just long  
enough for you to smack them.


On Aug 14, 2009, at 12:49 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:55:14 -0700 (PDT)
> From: George Greer <ggreer4 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [pct-l] Mosquitos
> To: pct-l at backcountry.net
> Message-ID: <398586.41195.qm at web33202.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> We used to have large, noisy mosquitos but they were too easy to  
> find and destroy. So they evolved a smaller, quieter sub-species  
> that goes for the feet where they are harder to hear. Its a  
> Darwinian thing, I am sure.~Uncle Jake