Cooler temperatures seem to drive them away from what I have seen. Here is a website for those who have been bit with the bug.
http://www.mosquito.org/
Overall, it's been a good bug year in our experience (good for hikers, bad for bugs).
The worst black flies I've ever encountered were also on the Cascade Pass Trail, which usually isn't too buggy.
The horse packers running commercial tourist rides to Tumac Mountain can have the mosquitoes. Serves them right for pounding the approach trails to ankle deep dust and cutting braided, five-foot-deep trail-troughs through the fragile alpine meadows.
This weekend my girlfriend and I hit pete lake in teanaway...the only one item we forgot was bugspray. Needless to say we were in the tent right after dinner. My legs still look like a kid with chicken pox.
I went to Deer Lake on the PCT N of White Pass, primarily to check out the mosquito conditions which weren't too bad-I only put skeeter stuff on once and was hardly bothered at least not in the manner that I was being descended upon by clouds of mosquitoes back in July before I went to Montana.
"The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is my concealed weapon permit."-Ted Nugent
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"The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is my concealed weapon permit."-Ted Nugent
I was thinking...if you mix DEET, Avon Skin-So-Soft and citronilla (sp?) together, you might have a pretty powerful bug repellant. Anything else to add to the mix? My goal is to get just the right mixture of all bug repellents to actually have the bugs explode in miniature mushroom clouds when they try get near you.
The worst bugs I've ever encountered were at Monogram Lake out of Marblemount in the north cascades. It was a year ago, the middle of august, after a failed bike trip over hwy 20, driving to winthrop to get dumped by a girl, and getting stung twice by a wasp "in my shorts". One helluva vacation! My brother and I hiked up (if I recall correctly it's a 5 mile, 4000 foot elevation gain hike) with three night packs on. Once at the lake, we boiled enough water for the trip down (which was over 150 oz. of water, it took a loooong time), then hiked back and drove home the very night we embarked.
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