Mosquitos Delight! a.k.a. Upper Winter Creek trail to Mt. Wilson

I think we were a little traumatized, lol.. it took almost a month to revisit the memory and post it. We started early on a Monday morning about 6:15a. We chose to take the upper winter creek trail, thinking it would be a good way to avoid mosquitos, being away from the creek. Boy were we wrong! Hiking up, we were being eaten alive by mosquitos and horse flies! They seemed completely unfazed by our bug spray, which we brought along, and added doses repeatedly while hiking. Fleeing from biting bugs was a good motivator to trudge on up, albeit not a pleasant one. To add to it, this trail had the most abundant growth of poison oak I’ve ever seen. It was coming from both sides of the trail, including above our heads and down low and VERY social- it was reaching out to high five every part of our body (face, arms, legs, ankles)! My son and I were tagged a few times by it, but we planned to wash off those areas at the restroom up at the top. Once we hit the Mt. Wilson toll road it was a relief from the bugs and poison oak. We stopped for a moment in the shade by a rock slide that only appeared to block the toll road. Another mile or so further we reached the top which was a huge relief. We rested and refueled in the shade of the Cosmic Cafe. After about an hour of recovery and reluctant feelings to face the trail down, we refilled our bottles and decided to head out. In preparation for facing the realm of mosquitos delight we rearranged layers to cover up more skin to guard against bites. On the way down we hiked a little swifter which seemed to help keep the bugs at bay. However, any time we stopped, we’d have multiple mosquitos perched on us within seconds. The last couple of miles of the trail seemed to drag on and the air was heating up from the midday sun. When we finally reached the parking lot we were totally drained yet smiling with relief. The next day I counted 11 new bug bites, half of which were bites through running tights. Yikes! It wasn’t all torture though, the views were lovely, including the wildflowers.