[pct-l] Oregon
CHUCK CHELIN
steeleye at wildblue.net
Sat Jan 26 08:18:21 CST 2013
Good morning,
The discussion of Oregon’s early-summer mosquitoes reminds me of a PCT-L
post a few years ago. It was an after-action report by a European hiker –
possibly Swiss – who had soloed northbound through part of C. Oregon over
snowpack and through the worst of the mosquitoes. I wish I had saved a
copy of that writing because her despair was almost palpable.
It also reminded me of an experience I had during my college years. I took
a summer job in the engineering department of a USFS District that included
the eastern slopes of the Cascades between the PCT and Hwy-97, just north
of Crater Lake – some really prime mosquito country – and the job started
mid-June, the prime time of the year.
I was tasked with using an optical surveying instrument to take precise
measurements, and then record the results in a data book. This was long
before the time when data was recorded on electronic media at the push of a
button.
We used lots of DEET. The survey notes were written with a mechanical
pencil on water-resistant paper to avoid ink running. The DEET on my
fingers would dissolve the plastic pencil barrel in about 3 days letting
the thing break in half. Most of the paint disappeared from my aluminum
hard-hat due to the DEET.
During breaks we would play a game to see how many mosquitoes we could each
kill with one double-handed swat on someone else’s back. As I recall,
unless the resulting body count was at least 60, that contestant was well
off the pace and had to buy the beer that evening.
To this day I can’t understand how I managed to do that job during the bug
season – all day, for about a month and a half -- in the presents of all
those mosquitoes, but that was a time before the availability of abundant
student loans, and I simply had to have work to earn money for school.
Steel-Eye
-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965
http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye
http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/
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