swmtnbackpacker
Trail Wise!
Back but probably posting soon under my real name ... Rico Sauve
Posts: 4,886
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Post by swmtnbackpacker on Dec 4, 2016 7:32:45 GMT -8
Interesting article. Funny that they didn't mention Killer Bees (Africanized honey bees). There must be a number of injuries or death due to bee attacks in the back country. Another article looking at the US as a whole, so when bees, wasps, etc... grouped together are the larger threat using CDC data (not just the parks) www.marketwatch.com/story/the-deadliest-animal-in-the-us-may-surprise-you-2016-06-16Cows even took out 20, ... deng... I'm staying in the parks and national forests.
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BigLoad
Trail Wise!
Pancakes!
Posts: 12,994
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Post by BigLoad on Dec 4, 2016 8:07:50 GMT -8
Cows even took out 20, ... deng... I'm staying in the parks and national forests. Unfortunately, there are plenty of cows in the in National Forests, even in some designated Wilderness. I've had my share of run-ins with angry bulls on the trail.
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Post by ecocentric on Dec 6, 2016 11:34:16 GMT -8
It is starting to look like the odds are good for me to reach my 62nd birthday, despite a long list of things that might have killed me had I "zigged instead of zagged." Maybe it was the crowd that I ran around with, some of which I've lost over the last 45 years. Car crashes were the number one killer, two of my skiing/climbing friends survived partial burial in separate avalanches, an acquaintance died in a fall hiking to an ice climb that we frequented, while wearing sneakers, with his ice tools strapped to his pack, while crossing a smear of ice on the trail at the top of the cliff. I watched a friend from the forum fall from the railing of a bridge while she was shooting photographs as part of her job as a photo-journalist. She barely survived. I never met ChuckD, but I miss his posts. I've crawled out of a collapsed tent with fallen trees all around after a horrendous thunderstorm, unscathed. Some of us are still around because someone in the party acted quickly and had some training in rescue and first aide.
Being mindful and cautious is my method these days, but there is a lot that you won't see in advance, contingencies that you could never anticipate. The one thing that probably floats to the top in my experience is, BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU ARE IN A HURRY! I've turned back when warranted, but being in a hurry is sure to lead to small mistakes, and in the wrong time and place, a small mistake can be pretty bad.
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Post by cweston on Dec 6, 2016 12:26:19 GMT -8
Cows even took out 20, ... deng... I'm staying in the parks and national forests. Unfortunately, there are plenty of cows in the in National Forests, even in some designated Wilderness. I've had my share of run-ins with angry bulls on the trail. I've never had any trouble with the animals themselves, but they will definitely stomp an area into a bewildering maze of cow trails making it impossible to find the actual trail, and God help you if you have to hike through a wet area frequented by cows--it will be muddy, shitty, and stinky, and good luck finding the actual trail.
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swiftdream
Trail Wise!
the Great Southwest Unbound
Posts: 569
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Post by swiftdream on Dec 7, 2016 12:56:45 GMT -8
Interesting article. Funny that they didn't mention Killer Bees (Africanized honey bees). There must be a number of injuries or death due to bee attacks in the back country... National park stats are used, so there may not be any in Saguaro's (or Big Bends?) boundaries. Don't know about Big Bend but there are a lot of bees throughout Saguaro Park. We have seen at least half a dozen swarms in the recent two or three years. It is quite un-nerving when several thousand buzzing bees are all around you but they are on the move and in general they are not aggressive when in that state, at least that is what we have found first hand. Supposedly they are only aggressive when in defense mode of a hive as opposed to migration. I have only come across one hive in a rock cleft complete with wax, hexogonal honeycomb in Saguaro West but that was decades ago before the Africanized bees had migrated this far north. Anyway they are in the Park for sure and once earlier this year girlfriend freaked out a little when my pot started to come to a boil. It sounds kind of like a far off swarm getting closer. We even had a swarm come in our yard this year and we live between Saguaro East and West. I had just wet down the roof to scrub it before putting a fresh coat of white elastimeric paint down. We were surrounded by thousands of bees almost instantaneously. They were all around us. We moved slowly off the roof, really freaked out. But we didn't get even one sting from them or any of the other swarms we have encountered in the Park. I even got brave and got a picture of the bee ball they made in our backyard where they rested for a few hours and then moved right on. Supposedly there are aprox 4000 bees in a normal swarm.
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