Preventable Adirondack tragedies ....

JD1984wrote:

Little buggers love humidity it would seem….

The hotter and more humid the more active they become. This was the  word from a NOAA researcher doing tick count studies on Prudence Island Rhode Island a few years ago. 

beensandbaggedwrote:

The hotter and more humid the more active they become. This was the  word from a NOAA researcher doing tick count studies on Prudence Island Rhode Island a few years ago. 

Correct. This is a climate change issue, pressure needs to come on local lawmakers to reverse course.

Ian Dibbswrote:

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. 

Maybe, but I actually find less clothing works better for ticks also and I live in southern RI. I spend tons of time gardening and scything in shorts with bare feet and shwack all through our swampy woods and up in NH. For black flies, yeah cover up well, head net and all. One piece of "clothing" I find actually seems to really help with ticks is a pair of Wellington style rubber boots, though they aren't too practical if you have to hike a long way or it is hot. You can also blast them with 100% DEET and it is not on your skin. They are about $30 at Walmarts.(get some good supportive innersoles too) I used to find ticks imbedded on me all the time when I would try to deal with them with long pants and regular boots, hardly any even on me since. I finally had one on me this spring, but I was working kneeling in thick oak leaf mulch. I noticed it right away just starting to attach.

I would like to know how much actual experience these health experts have in the field and how much is just assumption. I think if you spend less time swathed in clothes that are always rubbing on you, you have greater sensitivity to when something is crawling on you.. I think advice frequently given to always wear long pants while shwacking is silly, though it may be more legitimate if you are out a long time and unable to wash well, so there is more chance of scratches getting infected.

M Spraguewrote:

Maybe, but I actually find less clothing works better for ticks also and I live in southern RI. I spend tons of time gardening and scything in shorts with bare feet and shwack all through our swampy woods and up in NH. For black flies, yeah cover up well, head net and all.

I am a little surprised that you ... and others, say that less clothing works better for you. I'm hairy and sweaty, maybe ticks and bugs like me more.

In the Adirondacks I've come across swarms of bugs regularly, I now completely cover all exposed skin and use a head net when hiking, and it works for me. I think it's probably a good idea for everybody, at least to try. If wearing "sun blocker" cloths, it means you don't need to apply sunblock either. Where I go in the northern ADK there are many other non-tick hungry insects looking for bare skin, so I like to stay covered. And ....  wearing long cloths means you don't have to rub chemicals (DEET) over your skin regularly, as well. 

As other posters have confirmed, getting Lyme can be a life ruining disease for some .... and it can be often be prevented. Shorts and t-shirts when hiking through deer country does not seem wise to me since Lyme has steadily moved north.

I absolutely agree with Mark that shorts are the way to go for tick prevention. unfortunately that does not work in black fly season.  I also think that the title of this thread is misleading. Nymph ticks are so small you can hardly see them and  as we get older  for many of us it gets almost impossible to do a decent tick check by yourself. No way in hell that I can reach a bunch of areas on my back with shoulder inuries and being almost 61. None of the folks that i know are being flippant about tick prevention and tick checks  but its really almost impossible to be active in the outdoors and not get ticks on you. and NO Deet does not work. I have been absolutely saturated with deet and still had 20 ticks on me at the end of a day at Holts. it gets even worse when you have pets bringing them in the house. so No I don't think at this point without an effective vaccine that Lyme really is preventable. I feel that even if you are diligent if you spend enough time in the danger zone that it boils down to luck. Some of us are lucky and some of us are not..  

Unfortunately, as you get older you get less volunteers offering to do "tick checks" too, lol. You are doomed like dragging behind the pack with the hyenas approaching

and our eyesight goes so that we cant even see the little fckers and have to rely more of feel... 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

I absolutely agree with Mark that shorts are the way to go for tick prevention. unfortunately that does not work in black fly season.  I also think that the title of this thread is misleading. Nymph ticks are so small you can hardly see them and  as we get older  for many of us it gets almost impossible to do a decent tick check by yourself. No way in hell that I can reach a bunch of areas on my back with shoulder inuries and being almost 61. None of the folks that i know are being flippant about tick prevention and tick checks  but its really almost impossible to be active in the outdoors and not get ticks on you. and NO Deet does not work. I have been absolutely saturated with deet and still had 20 ticks on me at the end of a day at Holts. it gets even worse when you have pets bringing them in the house. so No I don't think at this point without an effective vaccine that Lyme really is preventable. I feel that even if you are diligent if you spend enough time in the danger zone that it boils down to luck. Some of us are lucky and some of us are not..  

This simply isn't true. DEET is statistically and scientifically proven to reduce tick bites. A study re: DEET https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11929056/ Im not sure why you enjoy spreading misinformation. Also logically long pants and sleeves make sense for reducing bites.

not sure why you are calling me a liar. I absolutely have saturated my clothes with deep woods Off and other brands and still had ticks crawling all over me at the end of the day. .  Maybe it stops some ticks but is Shure as heck doesn't stop all of them, gaurenfckteed many of the folks who end up with Lyme disease were using Deet. To think that its as simple as putting on the deet and wearing long pants tucked into socks  and you wont get Lyme is absolutely naive.  My experience with long pants tucked into socks and sprayed with deet is that  1. I end up with more ticks on me than if I was just wearing shorts and 2. some of the ticks make it through all the layers and get imbedded.  3. If I just wear shorts and deet I have less ticks on me at the end of the day and the ones that do get on me I have a better chance of catching BEFORE they get imbedded.  BTW I am not the only person on here with this experience.   Notice that your study says deet reduces the number of tick bites. it does not eliminate tick bites. It only takes one that you don't notice  to give you long term lyme.  another thing I notice when in really bad tick territory with shorts  and boots with socks sprayed with deet is that if I do tick checks every 10 min the ticks are on my socks not on my legs. they love fabric and they really love those wool socks. 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

not sure why you are calling me a liar. 

I think you feel like you got called a liar because you made a definitely statement "NO deet does not work" based on your anecdote despite there being peer reviewed (many more than the one study linked above) studies showing that it is effective.  

Anecdotes are not science and don't prove facts.  Its responsible to use your experience (anecdotes) to guide your own choices, not to try and guide others' choices.  

That being said, I also prefer to rock bare legs in tick country... and had/have lyme as a teenager.  Never had a bullseye rash or found a deer tick imbedded. I ended up in the ER with a massively swollen knee and only found out though blood work.  I now have a long list of chronic health issues.  But since I'm one person and not a cohort, I will never know if my wonky liver, multiple neuromas, frequent soft tissue injuries, terrible seasonal allergies, etc are a result of having lyme as a teen.  And since I'm one person, not a cohort or medical profession, I'm not going to give advice on how to avoid stay healthy in the backcountry with regard to ticks.

Permethrin works really well in my opinion. Last summer I got 1 tick in 4 weeks in the Adirondacks. I did not see a huge difference between long pants and shorts, but having socks with the permethrin is probably the most important part, unless you are walking around in high grass. 

Cameron Cantelmowrote:

 Also logically long pants and sleeves make sense for reducing bites.

Eh...not so fast. You need accurate assumptions if your logic is going to help you there.

Interesting, I had the same knee issue when I got Lyme 20+ years ago. I though I might have damaged it doing hard drop knees while working a route at first.  Thankfully i didn't develop any chronic issues from it that I know of.

Cameron Cantelmowrote:

Also logically long pants and sleeves make sense for reducing bites.

While this makes intuitive sense, I am old enough to have come to terms with the idea that my intuition (and/or conventional wisdom or even scientific/medical consensus) isn't always correct and that I should keep an open mind.   Consider, for example, the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine:  https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/press-release/

Cameron Cantelmowrote:

This simply isn't true. DEET is statistically and scientifically proven to reduce tick bites. A study re: DEET https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11929056/ Im not sure why you enjoy spreading misinformation. Also logically long pants and sleeves make sense for reducing bites.

I read this study, and other "reputable"  studies on PubMed and in Cochrane Review, which show without a doubt that DEET makes a big/huge difference ... but does not prevent 100% of tick bites. Pfizer started an 18,000 person (Lyme disease) vaccine trial last year, which will run 3 years, no results expected until Dec 2025.

I'm a little puzzled at people who dress "head to toe" and still get ticks under their cloths, why and how, where to the ticks "get in"  ???

I dress in shell pants, long sleeves, often a shell jacket, gloves also a head mesh .... and have never gotten a single tick bite after 100's of Northern ADK backcountry hikes in the last 15 years. 

Tragedy in my dictionary includes, "Sad story, unhappy fate, sorrowful end".  As a previous poster shared, getting Lyme can ruin your life. Hopefully this posting will at least raise awareness of Lyme Disease .... even if people differ in their prevention strategies.

they are sneaky little buggers. 

I do a ton of climbing and route development in every part of the Adirondacks (and have for most of my life) and have yet to get a tick. Knock on wood maybe. I use deet only during black fly season for flying insects.

I have no idea why. I get them elsewhere (RRG, my home in CNY, Colorado).

I got ehrlichiosis from a tick once and was paralyzed for a spell. Nasty little buggers.

You guys are far enough north to possibly have a few more years of not terrible tick situation. try doing new routes in central nh and see how many of the little buggers you can collect... 

I just take doxycycline with my morning coffee; it's been fine and helps with the chlamydia.

Jim Lawyerwrote:

I do a ton of climbing and route development in every part of the Adirondacks (and have for most of my life) and have yet to get a tick. Knock on wood maybe. I use deet only during black fly season for flying insects.

I have no idea why. I get them elsewhere (RRG, my home in CNY, Colorado).

Same here, never one in the ADKs but yes in the RRG (so many...), CNY, VT, NH...