[pct-l] Pct-L Digest, Vol 35, Issue 63

[greg mushial]

> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:19:25 -0700
> From: Kevin Cook <hikelite at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [pct-l] bug question
> To: Austin Williams <austinwilliams123 at gmail.com>
> Cc: pct-l at backcountry.net
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTi=rW2Gz7ibCHQKXUoyfFpwUCmYrMZrQ3Aqi9Cvs at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I'm trying to get an idea of where thru hikers hit a lot of mosquitoes.
> Describing what you did to deal with them could also be helpful, but 
> mostly
> I'm trying to determine where I'll want a refuge.
>
> Thanks :)
>

In the mosquito replies, the one thing I don't see mentioned is: the use of 
thiamine as a repellent. For the summer of '74 a friend and myself  rode a 
bicycles from vancouver to stjohns nfl (actually he stopped in montreal with 
knee problems) - 5600 miles over 14 weeks. At the beginning we were being 
eat'n alive by the mosquitos (the canadian national airforce??). But when we 
got to Kamaloops (about mile 400) we ran into an old logger that told us 
about using thiamine (mononitrate, and not hcl). Thiamine is water soluable, 
so when you overdose, ie, have more in your body than it needs, you pee it 
out, and most importantly, sweat it out. I don't remember the exact doseage 
were ended up taking (though something like 10x the RDA) - I know chris and 
myself were taking different amounts to achieve this effect...  but it 
worked. All the way through the canadian rockies and especially in the east 
(ontario and the maritines), the mosquitoes would buzz you, would fly about 
2-3" above one's skin, but wouldn't land. Like all good conditioned 
animales, when one heard the buzzing, one would slap... but over time, one 
just got used to the buzzing and tried to ignore it, finally coming to 
understand there was no relationship btwn it and actually being bit. I know 
that others around us were using OFF, deet100% etc and were kind of doing as 
well as us, but were always asking if the mosquitoes weren't bothering us. 
We'd try to explain, but it seemed that no-one would believe us that all we 
were doing was taking our thiamine in the morning. Other's wondered if it 
was the only getting a bath/shower once a week that was doing it; others 
were asking about if we were eating garlic. But we kept telling them that 
all we were doing was B1. Anyway: completed the trip, with zero mosquito 
problems (bites). Around here (redding) we don't have enough mosquitoes to 
experiment with B1 again...  but I was wondering if anyone else was doing 
such, or had experimented with such. I'm pretty sure for my thru I'll be 
going back to the B1 route, rather than using the heavy chemicals. YMMV 
HYOH
TheDuck