First of all, the tales of huge swarms of mosquitoes carrying away young caribou are somewhat exaggerated. Sure we’ve got mosquitoes, lots of ‘em at times. They’re often at their most annoying in early summer around our area (early June). There are a lot around Denali Park in mid-Summer. Farther north in the Arctic they are legendary some times of year.
But we also have gnats, flies, blacksocks, whitesocks, no see-ums etc. etc. At any time of summer, any place in south central Alaska you could have all of the above or none at all. It depends on some mysterious combination of their hatch cycle, wind, temperature, humidity, day of the week, phase of the moon…who knows? And predicting it is about as accurate as predicting the weather. We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about either. We know a few tricks to help cope comfortably. It’s all part of the experience!
