How not to bag a bear - protecting food from bears

Sierra, July-August, 1992 by Cindy Ross

When I was a young hiker on the Appalachian Trail, I once allowed a black bear to get to my food, which I'd hung from what seemed to be an unreachable branch. There I lay, shivering in my sleeping bag under a tarp, while the bruin clawed its way up the tree and snagged my supplies. Then it crawled under the tarp with me and began sifting through my pots and pans. Other than cry, I did nothing. When I reported the incident to rangers the next morning, I found out that I may have laid the groundwork for the bear's extermination.

Black bears will eat almost anything, but once they develop a taste for Tang and trail mix, they may alter their wild behavior forever and begin to beg, break into vehicles, or bluff a charge in order to get at human food. Yet they never lose their ability to wound. Park rangers "remove" a human-habituated bear to a remote area. If it returns, it's usually put to death.

Public-lands agencies across the country have equipped many campgrounds (and some popular backcountry sites) with food lockers. But if you're really out in the wild, you need to know how to hang your rations. (What follows doesn't apply to grizzlies, which are far more dangerous animals.)

Prevailing wisdom once held that you could hoist your food from a high branch and tie off the rope's loose end on a tree trunk. Savvy bears soon realized that the rope was a direct line to dinner. Counterbalancing, the only effective method, does away with that weak link, but it takes practice and patience.

Many lands agencies publish step-by-step step illustrated instructions, but here's the process in a nutshell: Pack up everything that has an odor - food, shampoo, soap, insect repellent, sunscreen, pot scrubbers, wooden utensils, and water bottles that have contained drink mixes. The find a tree with an unobstructed branch at least ten feet long that hangs at least 20 feet above the ground. The branch can't be so sturdy that it might support a bear cub, nor so flimsy that it droops to the ground when loaded with food bags.

Throw a rope over your chosen branch, then tie off and raise one sack up to it. Next, tie the other sack high up the rope's loose end. Finally, toss up the second sack, hoping that the two come to rest even with each other at least 12 feet above the ground.

At this point, you're supposed to push the bags into position with a long stick, which you'll also use later to hook and retrieve the suspended bags. But that stick may not exist if you're at timberline or in an area denuded of downed wood. If that's the case, tie a loop next to the first bag before you hoist it, and run a long length of rope through that. Once you've raised the second bag, gently pull on the two ends of the loose rope to even up the sacks, then pull the loose rope all the way out.

Without that all-important stick, retrieving your gear calls for a clever but unsanctioned technique: Before tossing sack number 2, tie a length of sturdy fishing line to it, letting the line hang loose. The theory is that you can reel in your gear in the morning, but a bear won't be able to latch its claws onto thin, unanchored monofilament.

Even with these gymnastics, counterbalancing merely buys time. Rangers advise campers to bang cook gear, blow whistles, and yell should a bear arrive. Yosemite's bears are perhaps the most tenacious: Officials there advise you to use "mild aggression" - lob some good-size rocks at an inquisitive bear's backside. (Don't aim at its face, or you may provoke a charge.) Don't advance on a bear that appears threatened or cornered, and never try to retrieve food until the animal has long abandoned it.

If you camp where there are no trees, hang your food bags over a rock face by jamming their cordlocks into a crack, or pile boulders and then pots and pans on top of the bags. If you're in black-bear country with no way to protect your food, it's your responsibility to provide a 24-hour watch. In any case, it's your job to clean up any bear damage. For the animals' sake more than for yours, it's essential to protect your food from bears, and bears from your food.

Cindy Ross is the author of Hiking, published by Fodor's Sports.