i went hiking about 2 weeks ago with my older sister, her fiance, and his brother. it was a nice 8 mile loop that we have done many times before. the largest problem i've ever encountered on that trail was when there was an over population of moths. i swear there was at least one moth per cubic foot that day flying around into our faces. so anyway, we took this hike and about 2 miles into it i found a tick on my socks...then another one...then another, etc. i had like 10 ticks. i told the others and they had the same problem. we ended up stopping every 30 minutes or so to take the ticks off eachother's clothes...it was annoying as fuck. basically ruined the whole hike. they were dog ticks though, so they're not known to carry lime desease. in america you need to worry about the deer ticks, but they're the size of a period on a piece of paper, so you can't really deffend yourself. the dog ticks on the other hand were huge.