Читать книгу Afoot & Afield: Orange County. A Comprehensive Hiking Guide онлайн

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Here are a few more safety tips: Regard most free-flowing water as unsafe for drinking without purification, excluding, of course, developed water sources within campgrounds and picnic areas. Chemical (iodine or chlorine) treatment, filtering, and ultraviolet light are the most convenient purification methods, but secondary in effectiveness to boiling. A bigger problem, of course, in this part of the world is the availability of the water itself. Many springs and watercourses in the Santa Anas are intermittent, flowing only after winter rains. Your best bet is to carry all the water you’ll need on the trail.

Deer-hunting season in Cleveland National Forest occurs during mid-autumn. Although conflicts between hunters and hikers are uncommon, you may want to confine your explorations at that time of year to state and county parks, where hunting is prohibited.

Mountain lions do frequent the wilder corners of Orange County and have even been spotted on the edge of suburban neighborhoods. While recent news stories have trumpeted every instance of encounters with mountain lions, attacks on hikers or mountain bikers remain statistically rare, with one fatal attack in 2004 on a solo mountain biker at Whiting Ranch and two nonfatal attacks on children in Caspers Wilderness Park in 1986. All persons entering mountain lion country are urged to take the following precautions: