Hiking

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Originally Posted by Crankin

That sounds lovely, Catrin. As with Emily, I think my hiking is over until the fall, unless we are on vacation. Too many tics and too many people i know with re-occuring Lyme Disease.
I am sure I will miss being in the woods before fall, though, and just spray myself with Deet and hike at least once!

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I don't really have any other options outside of kettlebells, and I prefer woods to pavement when I can do it. I do try to get in a couple longer walks during the week by parking roughly a mile and a half from work and walking both ways but I don't much like the hot pavement/sun combination. So I have a large can of DEET bug spray and shower as soon as I can afterwards - hate to use it but I would hate Lyme worse I suspect. Hopefully I can try out a free TaiChi class soon - I've hopes it will work for me since it's all standing, unlike yoga.

No repercussions from yesterday's hike at all, so I will likely do some kind of metabolic workout with kettlebells tonight. Tomorrow will be too hot to walk the long way from work back to my car (mid-high 90's). I will do that in the woods, perhaps, but not in downtown Indy where there is no shade. To me, especially in the VERY large state park we hiked yesterday, it's always cooler deep in the woods and there is always a slight breeze, regardless. I also seem to tolerate the heat better than some might, which is a blessing.

Yes, it sucks to be walking or running on pavement, with no shade, when it's hot. Some hotter weather is approaching here, as well as humidity, so I even alter my riding to either early AM or very shady routes, which thankfully, are not hard to find here. I am just thankful that here in New England those hot, humid days usually come in short spurts of 2-4 days and are not for 2 months. You are right, it is always cooler in the woods!

It's not only ticks, though, for me. On the last couple of hikes we've done, the spiderwebs have started to be much more noticeable than in the spring. If you are the first hikers on a particular trail for that day, you can get a faceful of spiderwebs. I just really hate that sensation. And flies. Lots of flies following and plaguing us relentlessly (deer flies, house flies, etc). We've used DEET, and some trails/forests have been worse than others for insects, but coupled with heat, it's just not that pleasant to hike unless you get lucky with the early morning temps and can get out at a decent time. I do agree that the woods are cooler, and I love them, but....

I'm hoping we still get to some places we can hike this summer without some of these issues. The farther west we get, the more likelihood of that there is, I suspect.

Interesting Emily! I've never seen spiderwebs crossing the path or flies on trails in Indiana and I've been to a lot of them. Ticks, gnats, and a few other flying insects when close to water. I DO try to not think about rattlesnakes, but that's avoidable and while I know they are around, I've yet to actually SEE, or hear, one. What state are you currently in? I'm just curious. Hopefully Shelob isn't lurking back in your woods... ;)

We are in Missouri at present, but we dealt with spiderwebs on hiking trails in NC all the time. It's mostly a hot summer phenomenon. If you are on trails that get a lot of use, it's much less common since the first hikers of the day will clear them all out just by walking through them. We encountered them on a hike we did in Hot Springs, Arkansas recently, but only on the first few miles, where we were on a trail early in the morning, and no one else had hiked it that day, obviously. It was pretty overgrown and full of webs. Whoever is in front bears the brunt of those. We had flies mostly on southern hikes, even back in the spring. Alabama was particularly bad for flies, as I recall, and we've had some deer flies and house flies here in MO. Could be that the further north you get, the less these problems occur, or maybe it's a matter of how urban you are. We have been in some very rural areas, lots of farms around, etc.

Rattle snakes I never worry about except out west, as that is the only place I've ever heard or seen one. But there are copperheads in the south, and water snakes as well, if hiking near a river. I always watch where I step! I've seen a couple of black snakes on the trail this spring, but they get moving pretty fast if they sense you approaching!

Very interesting. Where I prefer to hike is inside a very large, remote state park in southern Indiana with at least 50 miles of trails (both hiking & mtb) that are physically connected with external (mtb) trail systems in surrounding national forests. There are also horse trails but they are separate systems.

There is a lot of old growth forest, and while there is undergrowth of course, it isn't very tall - which I think differs from down south which may explain the lack of flies and webbing. I've heard terrible stories about black flies in Michigan during certain months so they must favor certain conditions that we don't have. Some trails are heavily used by hikers and mountain bikers, some may only see a couple a day or less - especially the double black diamond trail - I used to be crazy enough to hike that one solo :eek: There is a part of THAT trail that is actually more dangerous to walk than to ride and it's dangerous to ride. Beautiful trail though, but I can no longer risk it.

Rattlesnakes are protected in this state park and campers are warned about them when they check in. Park staff will remove them from a campsite when reported but the rattler is released back to the same location when the camper checks out. As much as I've been there I've yet to see any snake outside of periodic rescued snakes in the nature center - usually a rattler or two. I make a lot of noise if I leave the trail for any reason, just in case. Someone lost a pet in the campground a couple years ago because they decided the rules didn't apply to them and didn't leash their little dog. They tried to sue but couldn't get it off the ground as the rules are quite clear - and everyone is told why.

Yikes, Catrin, did not know there were rattlesnakes in Indiana! :eek:

I think you're probably right about the height and density of vegetation having something to do with the spiderwebs. Also, the width of a trail plays into it. The wider the trail, the fewer spiders can spin a web across it!

I just published a blog post about our last, longest hike in Hot Springs NP if you are interested. This is the one where we ran into a lot of spider webs in the first few miles, which were a part of the trail that gets little use and had definitely not been used that day. Once we passed Jack's Pond, we got to more well-used and wider parts of the trail and didn't have any more issues with webs. No flies that day either. This hike was on June 5, and it was quite hot, but a beautiful hike.

http://travelingtwosome.weebly.com/t...-national-park

I don't think we've hiked since then, actually, though we've done plenty of walking. :)

Interesting link, thanks! I do suspect that walking trails may sometimes be more narrow than mountain bike trails - and that's what I usually hike. Around here, even in my favorite park, it tends to be the opposite - hiking trails are quite often wider and rarely more narrow but I'm sure that isn't a general rule everywhere.

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Originally Posted by Catrin

As much as I've been there I've yet to see any snake outside of periodic rescued snakes in the nature center - usually a rattler or two. I make a lot of noise if I leave the trail for any reason, just in case.

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That's exactly what I do -- I make lots of noise and trust that they don't want to see me anymore than I want to see them :-) I've yet to see a rattlesnake in Brown County State Park. My husband, however, came very close to a rattlesnake on the Nebo Ridge Trail in the Hoosier National Forest while geocaching two years ago, and I've had friends see them in Morgan-Monroe State Forest for about the past six or seven years. Although endangered, the Timber Rattlesnake population has certainly grown a lot in the past few years in Indiana and I'm hearing about more and more sightings (although my herpetologist friend who desperately wants to see one in Indiana has failed to find one yet although he's been actively looking!)

I've not yet been to the Nebo Ridge trail. Is it too isolated for solo hiking? While some of the trails in BCSP aren't that heavily traveled during the week, there is at least some chance someone will come along if something should happen.

Hope your friend finally sees one .

Whooohooo - 6 mile trail hike today and it feels like I could have gone further with no issues. One of my hiking friends has invited me to hike a certain 10 mile trail this fall in southern Indiana (it's in a national forest) and I don't think it's an unreasonable goal. If I can hike 6 miles on trails in 1:58 without even trying I think that 10 miles on a hillier trail in 4 months will be fine.

You can definitely do that, Catrin! We went from nothing but flat "hiking" in Mexico and Florida to that crazy 15-mile hilly hike in Hot Springs in just a matter of a couple of months (with several moderate-length hilly hikes before that, of course). Ten miles is very doable, especially if you take your time and go at your own comfortable pace!

I know it's not real hiking but gotta chime in... I walked miles today at the ALA convention and while my new knee swelled a little, it still worked and I did great. Yay me! :D

Pax - that sounds like hiking to me! I don't know about you, but MY knee is far more cranky on pavement so I think you did great.

I think my recent vacation really helped in that I was so active that my knee/leg HAD to strengthen. Perhaps due to my age it took far longer to regain my strength no matter what I did. Is it perfect? Far from it, but it's improved and I know my current limitations. There was a little pain today on the medial side - but I expect SOMETHING, I know when to stop. It's always swollen, but it's been like that for a very long time, even before the injury last year. I'm unsure with all of my cartilage loss (unrelated to the injury/surgery) that even a replacement would fix things. DOES knee replacement address missing cartilage? I've not been able to find definitive information on that - not that I am anywhere close to considering a replacement.

I will need to do some research to make certain that trail my hiking partner has in mind isn't the kind I need to avoid (vertical step-downs), but it sounds more like mountain bike trails which I can do!

My legs are tired from three days of walking, but they definitely feel stronger.

Knee replacement surgery definitely addresses cartilage loss because they actually remove the bone heads where your cartilage used to be. You end up with the metal inserts in place of where your cartilage used to wrap over the top of your bones, they also insert a plastic spacer that takes the place of your meniscus so it's all replaced in there, everything is new except your muscles, ligaments and tendons.