Skeeters

May 1, 2007

Of course there's an upside to California's paltry snowpack this year. A big upside.

With the snowpack at its most shallow depth since 1988, less than 40 percent of normal, that means the backpackers of the High Sierra can rejoice. The only things that hate a shallow snowpack more than hydrologists and farmers are ... mosquitoes.

The last two years have been hard on the skeeter-hating back country set.

We'd sit around camp at night, swatting and swearing and commenting, in our best Sierra Club way, how great it is to have all this moisture in the hills.

But no matter how far we'd get from the shoreline, there were bugs. Buggiest summers I can remember.

One couple huffed and puffed up the Waterwheel Falls trail in Yosemite, swearing it was the worse case they'd ever seen, and they were from Minnesota, where the mosquito is the state bird.

Their names were Ole and Lena. Hilarious people. They said they were from Bemidji and hated California because, besides the mosquitoes, people tip at 15 percent out here.

Lena asked Ole, "Do ya know da difference between a Norvegian and a canoe?" "No, I don't," said Ole. "A canoe will sometimes tip," explained Lena.

Lean said that Ole was so cheap that after his airplane landed safely in Reno, he grumbled: "Vell, dere gose five dollars down da drain for dat flight insurance!"

So, without Ole and Lena on the trails, and with the snowpack gone early, I'll be dusting off the gear along about mid-July.

Yeah!

E-mail this page to a friend.

Enter your e-mail address and your friend's e-mail address, then click "Send Link". Your friend will receive a link to this page. Your e-mail addresses will not be saved or shared.