Recently Jules and I traveled to the far reaches of King Range to go on another backpacking trip. This one was planned by a friend. The route followed roughly 21 miles over three days. The Buck Creek Trail is supposedly “infamous as having one of the steepest grades of any Northern California trail” with a 3,300 ft elevation change over 4 miles. We hiked up it and out on the last day. But what I really wanted to talk about are ticks!
Bloooooooood.....
Look at that guy, doesn’t he give you the willies? I’ve gotten a few ticks on me from time to time. I catch them them on my clothing and flick them off and that’s that. On this trip, however, the buggers finally got me.
Day two of the trip. We make our first creek crossing. I get to the far side, and take off my socks to ring the water out of them. First tick caught crawling on my arm! Flicked… done.
Day three. We’re climbing up the infamous trail and beating back the encroaching foliage. I find another tick on my arm. Flicked again!
Day three… still. We’re out of the woods and heading to a small pizza joint. My hip chafes a little. I think it might be from the hip belt and rub it. There’s something there! It’s a tick! Arrrrrrrgh!
Where's its head? It's inside!
One of the other guys we went with brought a tick key which we put to good use to pull him out. Minimal damage. Tick survived intact. Jules put him in a bag. Continued to pizza which was bad, but that’s another story.
Day three… again! We get home and prepare for a relaxing shower. What’s that under the band of my boxers? Another one?!? Blargh! This one I carefully pull out with tweezers. He didn’t survive but all of his body parts were there. We put him in a bag too.
We did some reading online and Jules called one of the nurses at the health center. Less than 1% chance of getting lyme disease but we’re on the lookout for the early warning signs. Constant vigilance!
PS. Neither of those pictures are of the actual tick that got me, they’re just borrowed for effect. But here’s a video I took of another guy in our party pulling out a tick.
