I can't believe it had been almost 3 years since Arturo and I went hiking in 2017, but it had been.
Here are the garmin connect pages:
Here are the stats:
Move Ovrl Max Avg
Dist Time Move Avg Avg Cal HR HR Climb Desc
Day1 11.49 6h22 5h12 2.2 1.8 1848 157 114 2747 1120
Day2 19.95 11h50 8h05 2.4 1.6 3161 147 115 2351 3983
Tot 31.44 17h11 13h16 2.3 1.7 5009 5098 5103
I tried to be lighter this time, this is what I had:
3kg Fanny pack
16kg backpack including 2kg water and 1.5kg ursac food
19kg total or 42lbs
Day 1: Drive from the Bay, Quick Stop by Dodge Ridge, and 11.5 miles to Mosquito Heaven Toejam Lake
close to our destination, you could already ride horses
i01*|Dodge Ridge, I went twice with Jennifer, but Arturo hasn't yet
We were at the trailhead ready to go by 11:00, no mosquitoes, everything was fine :)
smiling and happy, not knowing th hell we were going to walk into :)
nearby thunderstorm that we avoided
Eventually we got to Toejam Lake, which looked nice, except for the tens of thousands of mosquitoes that spent the entire time trying to suck all the blood we were carrying:
Arturo said the smoke the fire should have scared them, sadly it made no difference
I got the tent up as quickly as possible, and went to hide in it, the blood thirsty mosquitoes that had apparently just been born, were biting through layers of clothing
Got the tent up as quickly as possible, and went to hide in it
Was that about 50 mosquitoes trying to get through my 2 layers of clothes and get in the tent with me?
they also did their best to try and get inside the tent
and they also tried to eat my pack
Arturo stayed outside, good for him :)
Day 2: 12H / 20 Mile Escape
Honestly, I have no idea how Arturo dealt with the swarms of mosquitoes (and it was really swarms). Once I was outside the tent the next morning, I packed and left as soon as possible as the mosquitoes were just biting through my clothes as soon as I stopped moving:
the river crossings were easy enough, only one was a bit tricky
interesting to see bacteria make oil
nice balancing
We took a few quick breaks in places were the mosquitoes were not as bad:
my new vivoactive 4 has a body battery feature, which seems to say I was running low :)
locust sex
this was likely the only place without mosquitoes, so we took a break
We had a few lower elevation camps where we considered staying, but by the time we got there, they all had mosquitoes, so we kept going:
Arturo found this nice snake
We eventually got to camp lake, and it, too, had too many mosquitoes, so we pushed on back to the car, almost 12H and 20 miles:
the mosquito net was definitely helpful
Eventually we got back to the trailhead, and by then, a mere 36H later, it was also overrun by mosquitoes. This proved that they literally were hatching as we arrived, bummer:
just shy of 20 miles.
I guess it was a long day :)
the vivoactive 4 did great, despite 12H of GPS tracking, it had 20% battery left
Thanks to Arturo for the trip planning and ride.
