LizTheHappyHiker wrote:But.....the thought of night leeches (particularly big ones) isn't getting me excited. Maybe I should wait until the next drought before I go....
Will definitely be wearing gaiters - for the mud, the sand, the leeches and the snakes.
The gaiters are of limited help for the leeches (they just go underneath), but I'd definitely wear gaiters for those other reasons. I guess if you wear shorts, gaiters are better than nothing.
The thing that has helped me the most against leeches has been tucking the bottom of my pants into my socks. There's only one pair of my socks that doesn't work with, but they have a particularly loose weave. Once I spied a couple making their way through those socks, I stopped wearing them on most walks.
I became allergic to some species of leeches years ago, so it was important for me to find the best ways to avoid bites. I always wear long pants anyway, because I don't want to lather myself in nasty chemicals, and I like to keep spiky scrub and mozzies as well as leeches at bay. We have a LOT of leeches in Tassie, but I think I've only had one leech bite in the last few hundred walks. That was on my belly. Must have got it from crawling under something on the rainforest floor.
I've had the odd campsite where there were so many leeches (literally hundreds) that we had to do 'the leech pick' every time we entered the tent. I was rather fastidious with that. So even then, I wasn't bitten. It's interesting to watch them climb up the outside of the inner. Not sure I could get into bivvying...