Bug net legs for convertible pants/shorts

[Craig B]

As wildfire season here in CA is starting earlier every year, I’ve been scheduling my yearly backpacking trip earlier in the summer.  Historically, I’ve preferred later in the summer because of generally fewer people out, and fewer mosquitoes.  However, after having to bail early from a trip in early Sept because of a wildfire a couple of years ago, I decided that was it for the late season trips.

To me, mosquitoes are one of those things that can quickly make a trip miserable.  I really don’t like to use chemical repellents, and they can be ineffective sometimes anyway.  I got a head bug net a few years ago, and really like it while hanging out in camp.  I’ve also worn it a couple times while hiking for those occasional areas that are swarming with mosquitoes as you pass through.  However, I like to hike in shorts (Columbia Silver Ridge Convertible Pants in shorts config), and hiking through those areas with mosquito swarms often gets me most of the bites on my lower legs that I will get on the trip.  So I thought I’d make some bug-net legs to go with my Silver Ridge pants, and see how my legs fare this year.

The Silver Ridge pants use #3 separating coil zippers for the removable legs.  However, the zippers are mirrored so you need both a left and right version (or like men’s and women’s style in jackets).  I could not find an online retailer that sold both versions of this type of zipper, so I ended up buying a pair of used silver ridge pants on ebay for $20 to scavenge the zippers.  I know, this is terribly wasteful to destroy a perfectly good pair of pants just for the zippers, but it was the only way I could do this project :-(  The pants that were available at the time were a couple sizes bigger than mine, so I ended up shortening the zippers by a little bit.

For the mesh, I wanted it in white and the lightest weight available (0.5 Oz/sq yrd), but I could only find white in 0.9 Oz.  These are going to be shorts for hot weather, so I want to avoid dark colors.  I got some 0.5 Oz mesh in a darker color to try out alongside the heavier white to see if I could tell a difference in cooling efficiency.  While I couldn’t tell much difference between the white and dark olive mesh in terms of heat from sun exposure, the 0.5 Oz mesh was softer and draped more.  This made it feel a little warmer, like I was wearing pants, and it also would not be good to have it sitting directly on the skin, because mosquitoes could just bite right through it.  So I ended up going with the white mesh that ‘tented’ a little better away from the skin.

Construction was very simple:  I just cut rectangles for the legs that matched the circumference of the zippers, rather than have them taper towards the ankles.  I thought it would be nice to be able to put them on while hiking without taking my shoes off, so I wanted strait cylinders rather than tapering cones to accommodate big shoes going through them.  I made a little channel in the cuff for some light elastic cord, and reinforced the cord exit with a piece of nylon webbing with a hole melted in the middle of it.  Unfortunately, this feature would be better with a grommet (which I don’t have at the moment) because the melted edge is kind of grabby on the elastic string.  It still works though.

Overall weight is not too bad.  I’m sure some readers would just prefer to take chemical bug repellent instead of a couple ounces of netting, as that’s probably the absolute lightest way to go.  But here’s my solution I’m going to try out.

[Sam Farrington]

Skeeters had a habit of biting around openings between the back and the pack.  And when switched to suspended mesh backbands. they could get in there and bite right through the mesh, where they could not even be swatted; so had to redesign to make sure there was no access to the area behind the backband, except around the bottom of the backband, where for some reason, they did not enter and fly up into the airspace and bite though the mesh.  Not sure why this worked, but glad that it did, because the opening at the bottom provided an area where the backband could be laced to just the right tightness.

So think you have a great idea, especially when they get to swarming and the weather heats up.  You might be able to get away with a little less slack on the net, so long as when they perch on the net, their needles are not long enough to slip through and bite.  The shifting movement of the net also deters them.  So long as this is about skeeters, and not noseeums, you also might be able to use a bit thicker netting with less ‘tenting’.  That won’t stop them – they often bit me through solid polo shirts – but the net might be more durable when walking through brush and the like.  Thanks for your excellent idea.

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