Worst bug encounters ever

Silverfox said:

...my worse bug experiences are for sure on Madison and Adams where the hybrid mutant bugs up there are down right scary some days

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Those are called moose flies 'cause they're too damned big to be horse flies.

Marty, I remember a similar experience while backpacking in the High Peaks Wilderness in 2001. <This was a long time ago and represents how *old* I am :-( >
I believe it was late May/Early June. On day two I was hiking around Elk Lake and I had every conceivable species of flying, biting insect circling me. When I attempted to eat, they were landing on my food. Later that day, I decided to climb Dix to make a high camp, *just to get away from the insects*. I ran across a group of day hikers on my way along the Bouquet River....I literally begged them for bug spray. They gave me a can of Deep Woods Off. It was a giant can, and almost ridiculous in size to be carrying on a backpack, but I was eternally grateful.
The second worst experience was backpacking the Long Path. On a section through Harriman, I must have stuck my hiking pole in a ground nest of yellow jackets, and they swarmed me. It was pretty terrible and frightening, and I suffered alot of stings. It made for a really uncomfortable night. :-(

This summer the bugs are pretty bad. A few weeks ago we were swarmed by black flies on Resolution. Pemi Aussie-Puppy's entire face blew up. Her eyes were almost swollen shut. We had to give her Benedryl to take down the swelling. (BTW, the dose for dogs is 1 benedryl/25 pounds). You know the bugs are bad on your hike when you pray for RAIN to wash them away.

You know that cliff called Owls head over past Plymouth? I was part of two groups scouting the cliff for new routes and the black fly's where horrific. I was bathed in Deet ( Bens) but a dude in the other party used nothing. When we rappelled down, his neck looked like a swollen pin cushion, it was hard to look at.

This thread is making me itchy! I will be well-armed this weekend on the trails --- two words: Old Woodsman!!! That stuff will keep EVERYTHING including other humans away from me.

My worst was just this past June 27 on vaca up at Mont Tremblant, Canada. The summit of that mountain was infested with swarms of black flies that we couldn't even enjoy ourselves at the top. It was awful and worse than any of my NH hikes anywhere ever.

That was on a w/e before July 4th in the 70s at Lafayette Place c/g when the no-see-ums flew thru the tent netting w/o breaking formation and transported us to another universe. Then again, it could have been an UFO abduction.

I was working in my yard this weekend where the bugs wear anti-Stan repellent but this recalls the time we hiked Tripyramid in late June and encounred all that Marty mentioned plus a few biting things which may have been new species previously undocumented. There were so many and so big that when I dropped an orange during a break and it rolled down the North slide, they caught it and threw it back up ... just so's we stay in place and eat it while they dined on our blood. I whacked at them with my iron pan but the sound of swatting them was deafening. The only relief was submerging ourselves in Slide Brook until the first frost. After that, we always went out prepared with such things as deet and a shotgun ... the skeet shooting gets a few but it's the gunpowder that keeps 'em away.

My son had a big bloody smear from a bug bite on the back of his neck the day we climbed Mount Seymour in the Adirondacks, a 14-mile hike that took us 12 hours 20 minutes. My ladyfriend, Susan, killed 25 deer flies during that hike. They kept getting tangled in her hair, enabling her to crush them against her head or between her fingers.

Long before that, when I was on a July 1 hike with the Appalachian Mountain Club from Greenleaf Hut to Mount Liberty and down the old Liberty Spring Trail, the black flies were so bad I found myself wishing for mosquitoes, instead. A month or so later, of course, I was ruing that wish.

You know bugs are bad then its raining and they are still biting you-

A week ago, I was walking thru a torrential downpour in Piermont NH, and I got bit by two different horse flies. I hate those darn things!

In the Boston Lot area in Lebanon (prob the buggiest place I've ever hiked, and I've learned to completely avoid it between late April and September) I was getting bit by mosquitoes during a steady rain. They were hanging out under any hemlock tree. Resistance was futile.