Isle Royale Forums

Was on the Isle from 10 July - 14 July and thought I'd share my experiences with the weather and bugs.

The weather was very unpredictible. The day of our trip the weather reports online stated potential rain on a couple days, the captain on the ferry reported clear skies the next 5 days and the Rangers reported that anything could happen.

Needless to say, it was indeed unpredictible. It thundershowered on the 11th, and rained almost every night we were there. It would be sunny one moment and rainy the next. With the rain came very cold temps.

The bugs were non-existent in some spots and horrible in others. Anywhere near the shore where the wind was blowing, the bugs were at a minimum and mostly inland they were pretty thick. Obviously after it rained the bugs were out in full force, especially on the Land Cove trail near the bogs/planks. The bugs were also very thick on the Moskey Basin trail and pretty much everywhere in the Three Mile area.

We didn't encounter many flies which was nice, we seen a few ticks but not many. The biggest issue was as always, the mosquitoes.

I brought a bug net, a very very light athletic long sleeve and pants. I treated all my clothing with Permethrin and used 40% deet on any exposed skin. End result was no ticks, minimal irritation by the mosquitoes when netted up and only two mosquito bites during my entire 5 day trip... and one came on my feet while wearing sandals and the other on my hand... both areas weren't treated at the time.

From my conversations with the rangers/ researchers on the island. There are no ticks on the island other than moose ticks which apparently dont bite humans. I dont know why they dont but I thought that was great news! The researchers noted the lack of other ticks was probably because of a lack of deer on the island.

Aren't moose a type of deer?

I dunno, we did see a few ticks on my buddies socks which weren't treated, but I couldn't tell you what type of tick it was. If there truly are not ticks on the Isle, that would be awesome.

I dont know... I am not an entimologist... all I know is what they told us, and that was that the ticks there wont bite humans. Which to us sounded really cool!

Apparently the moose dont like it since they feed on them in the winter and come spring they use photographs to figure out how many ticks there were based on hair loss on the moose.