Preventable Adirondack tragedies ....

Spring is creeping into the Adirondacks and soon we'll be seeing happy videos of climbers hiking to the cliffs in ... shorts and T-shirts !!!.

Lyme Disease is also creeping into the Adirondacks ... and can destroy your life if you catch it. 

"Prime" places to catch it ... along trails with short bushes and many deer ... exactly like many ADK trails.

Check with local health people about the risk of tick-borne Lyme disease where you climb but .... I now NEVER travel through the ADK with exposed skin ... and it breaks my heart to know that more and more people are destroying their health in preventable tragedies.

Actually you end up with more ticks and they are harder to find where you do the long pants tucked into socks routine. Shorts and sandals you pick up way fewer ticks and when you do pick up a tick it's easier to see.  Naturally you can't roll that way in black fly season. 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

. Shorts and sandals you pick up way fewer ticks 

This is just absurd

PWZ we have tested it. ticks like to cling to clothing (maybe its more like fur?) and once they get on the clothing they pretty quickly Will find a way in and once they are in they are sneaky bastards. Shorts  I can usually feel the little fckers and see them before they get up in my business.   when we climbed @ Holts  we hiked up the grassy ski slope  to get there. it was brutal.   I had long pants and sleaves. pants tucked into socks and soaked with deet. isa has shorts and sandals.  do a tick check and I had 21 ticks on me that we found. Isa had two. after that happened a few times i converted to shorts and boots with socks. way  fewer ticks and those usualy on my socks but the min them little fuckers start crawling up my legs I freak out and kill them. 

My wife informs me that she saw an add for clinical trials of Lyme disease vaccine. I’m pretty sure they already have them for dogs and horses?

You can treat your clothes with long-lasting permethrin, which I've found works quite well for tick prevention.

(EDIT: confused permethrin and DEET :D) 

Doug Swrote:

My wife informs me that she saw an add for clinical trials of Lyme disease vaccine. I’m pretty sure they already have them for dogs and horses?

I also saw a news story this week about research on white-tailed deer—the prime host for Lyme-carrying ticks in the NE, which are themselves apparently immune to the disease. So scientists are now searching to find their antibodies as a potential basis for a vaccine or treatment.

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

Actually you end up with more ticks and they are harder to find where you do the long pants tucked into socks routine. Shorts and sandals you pick up way fewer ticks and when you do pick up a tick it's easier to see.  Naturally you can't roll that way in black fly season. 

Don’t forget to check underneath your nuts!

I live in tick country too and I think the answer is none of the above.  Wear long pants treated with permethrin.

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

PWZ we have tested it. ticks like to cling to clothing (maybe its more like fur?) and once they get on the clothing they pretty quickly Will find a way in and once they are in they are sneaky bastards. Shorts  I can usually feel the little fckers and see them before they get up in my business.   when we climbed @ Holts  we hiked up the grassy ski slope  to get there. it was brutal.   I had long pants and sleaves. pants tucked into socks and soaked with deet. isa has shorts and sandals.  do a tick check and I had 21 ticks on me that we found. Isa had two. after that happened a few times i converted to shorts and boots with socks. way  fewer ticks and those usualy on my socks but the min them little fuckers start crawling up my legs I freak out and kill them. 

I have advocated this as well… I always do better with shorts than pants… there is an oil based bug repellant that they make up in Maine that works really well for ticks… when combined with shorts I have never had a major problem. When new routing one day in MA my partner had over 40 ticks on him…. I had one. 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

Actually you end up with more ticks and they are harder to find where you do the long pants tucked into socks routine. Shorts and sandals you pick up way fewer ticks and when you do pick up a tick it's easier to see.  Naturally you can't roll that way in black fly season. 

As a health professional ...such advice seems "poor"  and "dangerous"  ....check with your local health expert ... there is extremely high likelihood  they will suggest covering exposed skin when hiking through tick infected areas.

Ever since I started "doing" 100% clothing coverage,(and head mesh) .... the quality of my ADK trips has gone way up. Some of the back country crags have crazy swarms of hungry insects, that clothing protects better than DEEP... and you don't need to keep applying it. Now that ticks have moved north into the ADK ... long pants and long shirts for everybody all the time makes sense to me. 

Love the title!! Stay away. The Adirondacks can destroy your life. 

I first got Lyme in 2014 and have had four reinfections/flair ups since. I’ve come to terms that getting ticks on me is inevitable, regardless of deet and permethrin treatments. The game changer has been shaving my legs throughout the summer. Half the battle is just being able to see the little fuckers, and this has made tick checks so much easier. 

If I shaved my legs and wore shorts to climb, there would be an exodus of people fleeing from the crags like you couldn’t possibly imagine 

Doug Swrote:

My wife informs me that she saw an add for clinical trials of Lyme disease vaccine. I’m pretty sure they already have them for dogs and horses?

Lymerix was developed in 1998; poor sales, discontinued. 

Ever-returning spring, Lyme disease sure to me you bring.

WF WF51wrote:

Lymerix was developed in 1998; poor sales, discontinued. 

The poor sales were due to people developing autoimmune problems from the vaccine, but they won’t tell you that.  I work in the woods and am a prime candidate for the vax but skipped on it because it was new, and  I was waiting to let others test it for me. I won’t rush out to get the new one either.

Not medical advice, but I take a dose of doxycycline immediately upon finding an imbedded deer tick, and another 12 hours later.  There are small studies showing this is 90% effective. It happens to me a couple of times a year and I’ve never had Lyme. 

Tradibanwrote:

Don’t forget to check underneath your nuts!

As for my and my friends experience this location together with armpits are their favorites.

Theoretical concerns were raised that the OspA antigen might increase the risk of autoimmune Lyme arthritis. However, there was no increase in the frequency of arthritis among individuals who received the OspA vaccine in clinical trials, and postmarketing surveillance indicated that the vaccine had a favorable safety profile. The manufacturer discontinued production of the vaccine due to poor sales and it is no longer available. 

Authors

Rebecca Eisen, PhD, Research Biologist. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Paul Mead, MD, MPH, Chief, Bacterial Diseases Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 Allen C Steere, MD Section Editor — Lyme Disease Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School

Keri K Hall, MD, MS, Deputy Editor — Infectious Diseases

Also:

Poland, G.A. (2011). Vaccines against Lyme disease: What happened and what can we learn. Clinical Infectious Diseases, Feb 52; Suppl 3:2253-258. doi:10.1093/cid/ci1116

The article by Poland is open-access. 

Yurywrote:

As for my and my friends experience this location together with armpits are their favorites.

Little buggers love humidity it would seem….

i'm in ct, ground zero for lyme disease. i know a bunch of people who've suffered significantly from its often permanent damage

bug spray is the best preventative measure. i try to never walk into the woods without having put bug spray on, especially on my ankles, legs if wearing shorts, and below the bottom of my shirt. except in winter