East Fork Foss - Necklace Valley — Saturday, Jul. 31, 2021

We trekked out on Friday morning planning for a multi-night adventure. The 90° heat combined with the absurd amount of mosquitos and biting flies resulted in an abbreviation of plans. I'm grateful to backpack with humans who aren't too stubborn to exit a trip when it's not fun anymore.

Like a previous report mentioned, most of us also drank near 5 liters of water while ascending, and there are many pumpable areas along the way. Once you're into the steeper ascent, there's ~20 very sappy trees down across the trail to get up/over/around, and several ground wasp nests on trail-- one is labeled. Two party members got stung and they had to run with their heavy packs to escape the swarm. You also might consider the size of your dog before signing them up for ambling over fallen vegetation. Can you comfortably and repeatedly lift them up 3' or can they easily jump that height on their own? Our ascent took 8 hours and the descent took 5.

We spent the night at Emerald Lake and made a day trip out to Ilswoot. Ilswoot had few bugs in comparison to Emerald, but we only saw one viable, but large-sized camp spot.

Bug hacks: 1) We opted to wear both rain pants and rain jackets, in addition to thick socks and our face nets while out of the tent, even though it was 90. They can't bite through. Sweating through all clothing > a sure, itchy death by mosquitos. 2) Swimming is the only reprieve. They didn't seem to swarm as badly while out in the water. I swam in a cap and face net the second day and it was the most at ease I had felt the entire trip.

That all said, my right upper arm alone has 13 bug bites. I'm not going to count the rest. Consider saving this trip for early September.