Friday, April 11, 2014

Grisdale Hill Crawling with Ticks YUCK

Why does this gate say private property when it's on forest service land?
Green Diamond land actually starts 1/4 of a mile behind the gate.

 I went up Grisdale Hill with my daughter, for probably the last time today.  The once lovely view is now gone due to the trees growing on the east flank of the viewpoint. 

It's an Okay workout and it's close to home and the view was once very,  nice.  Now it's just a work out close to home with no view and the place is infested with ticks in the spring.

When I reached the summit I was afraid to sit because it looked like it could be a tick area.   Then I found a tick on my leg.  Then I looked at Patches and found she was crawling with ticks! 

With the summit infested with ticks and no view, we opted to skip tea and head right back down to the car.

 Patches has been treated with flea and tick shampoo and has been exiled to the back yard until I can get her groomed.  The shampoo bottle said it takes 1-2 days to kill the ticks and we can't risk my spouse being bit and getting a tick born disease.




The minute we got home my daughter and I went straight to the laundry room and put all our clothes in the washing machine, then we went into the bathroom and took a shower together and checked each other for ticks.  We were tick free.
We had thought about drinking here
before Patches did this!
After our shower we found three ticks crawling on the laundry room floor!  They must have come in on our clothes.

My daughter lagged behind me all the way up but she stayed right with me all the way down.

4 miles round trip with 1,000 feet elevation gain


1 comment:

Salal said...

I did this hike probably about a week before you did, and found ticks then too. Ticks like the reprod but they should be gone by summer. There's Lyme disease in the North Olympic ticks, don't know about here. Once on the dog they won't leave the dog for a human, they prefer dogs to us. A good reason to take a dog with you!

I like to leave my clothes in a heap after being in tick areas and let them sit a couple hours so the ticks climb to the top of the heap where I can pick them off.