Oh my goodness yes. Was helping a couple of scouts tie down a tarp in the dark and the kids headlamp was attracting everything! I eventually suggested she hand the lamp to the scout helping her so she wasn’t trying to tie knots while swatting bugs.
I’ve had to take the thing off my head and carry it in my hand so I wouldn’t be inhaling bugs.
No, it was pretty cold. There were other things on that trip – sea-kayaking up fjords, with trees weeping into the water and seals following us, an enormous beach covered with tens of thousands of birds … the three days in the tent was more one of those “oh my god do you remember when” stories you laugh about now. I don’t think I have ever been on a backpacking trip without at least one epiphany and at least one calamity, sometimes simultaneously.
Yep, and a flashlight and a mirror when even day hiking. Al;so something to make a fire, and a extra layer (okay that last is very light).
True, but some stuff like Picaridin works quite well. Skin so soft works poorly vs skeepters.
Seconding picaridin. I switched away from DEET as it seemed to melt rubber stuff like the nose pads on sunglasses. I did not want to erode the handles on my hiking poles. Picaridin works well at keeping bugs off - I have used it in the Peruvian Amazon and Alaska as well as my local Sierra, and no melting rubber.
Back when we were camping, the Coleman lanterns were brighter than any battery-powered lantern we could reasonably get - but those were pre-LED days.
I’m sure we could have gotten seriously bright lights, but nothing targeted at our use case (casual camping, no need for daylight-bright lights). The Coleman lantern was perfect for sitting at the picnic table at the campsite for a while in the evening.
The advice we were given at the time was they would last longer than a battery-powered light - and running out of battery power would have been a real issue. We too left that lantern outside the tent, and used a flashlight inside. These days, with improved battery technology, and LED lighting, I might not buy that Coleman again. But 40 years ago, it was indeed a good option.
Yup, exactly. Propane lanterns used to be a good choice, but now they’re obsolete. There are two factors, here: First, any energy source that uses atmospheric oxygen will pack in more energy per volume or mass than any source that doesn’t, and second, any light source based on incandescence will be very inefficient. It used to be that your options were burning gas to produce incandescent light, or using a battery to produce incandescent light, and gas is the clear winner there (aside from situations where the fire risk was too great). But now the choice is to burn gas to produce incandescent light, or to use a battery to power an LED, and LEDs are enough more efficient than incandescent lights to more than make up for the less energy-dense power source. You can get more light for less stuff schlepped in (and there’s always some limit to how much you can schlep in, even if you’re driving a pickup truck right up to the campsite).
In my experience, the best I can say is picaridin is better than nothing, but not even half as effective as DEET. Even reapplying it every hour or so, bites get through. But different strokes for different folks.
Supposedly, some people like calcium carbide lamps because they incidentally warm you up a little…
So do the Coleman lanterns.
Haven’t used one in a while. I love the hiss of them, and the ritual of pumping it up once in a while. And as a camp lantern, when everyone is ready to crawl into the tent, turn it off. Ya see it takes 30 seconds or so and provides enough light while you get to your tent.
Actually though, most light was always from the campfire.
I think one’s results would depend on one’s attractiveness to mosquitoes and one’s response to bites. I am uber-attractive to them and the whining and biting drive me to madness, while my husband gets few bites and they don’t bother him particularly. In general he has a considerably higher pain threshold and annoyance threshold than I do. Deet is essential to me, and he rarely even wears it even if being bitten.
As I understand it, DEET is a masking agent, not a repellent. Which means that, for it to be effective, you have to put it everywhere. By contrast, a repellant will work even if you only have it on a small part of your exposed area. So depending on how you use anti-mosquito products, either could be more effective.
And I never heard that Skin-so-Soft did anything at all about mosquitos. The recommendations I’ve seen for it have all been exclusively about ticks specifically.
When living in Louisiana, SSS was all we used for mosquitos, and it worked well. You smelled like a French cathouse, but it worked.
Depends on whether or not your definition of “obsolete” includes “some people still prefer them for aesthetic reasons.” Kind of like debates about whether (vinyl) LPs are obsolete.
Cite? That’s not my understanding. Products whose active ingredient is DEET market themselves as insect repellents." Wikipedia says
I don’t know of any mosquito product that is pure “repellent” where you can put it on one part of your body and expect to be mosquito-free, so it seems like a distinction without a real difference here.
I do know, or at least the literature says, that it interferes with their ability to smell humans, which reduces landings, and if they do land, they are repelled by the taste receptors in their legs, and there is no better product on the market for keeping you from getting mosquito-bit.
The SSS product is just mineral oil and perfume. These don’t repel any kind of insect, all the stuff about ticks and mosquitos is just Boy Scout urban legend.
That is how SkinSoSoft works. when it does- which is rarely.
Avon Bath Oil: Not a Good Insect-Repellent Choice
The Skin So Soft Original Bath Oil didn’t perform well as an insect repellent when we last tested it several years ago.
Well, it wasn’t just urban legend. Avon actively marketed it as a tick repellent, for a while.
Now, this is not good advice.
But this is how a number of my early teenage (and regrettably my late teenage) camping expeditions worked out:
Take a spoon.
That’s it. A spoon can function as a can opener, a flint to light fires, a means to eat, a way to dig, it is a multitool in itself. You can cut, mix, you can do anything with a spoon that you can do with any other tool.
Take a spoon.
Well, it’s hard to do a lot of ecological damage with that sort of armament, so there’s that.