[pct-l] bear avoidance (kind of long)

[bluebrain at bluebrain.ca]

> Anyhow, his technique for bears was to carry a Ziploc bag
> of mothballs, and open it every night and place it at the top of his food
> bag. He did hang his food 20% of the time.

I heard about the mothballs at some point, and we placed them around our
packs through the sierras.  The theory is that the gasses released by the
balls (naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene) mask the smell of food.

I also heard peeing around your tent as a way of "marking your territory"
can be a deterrent.  It's a great excuse to not walk far for that 2:00 AM
tinkle.

I also heard that bears will go to great lengths to get food that is hung
or left outside, but will typically not challenge for food that is clearly
in one's possession (i.e. in your tent with you snoring away)

... then I actually got to talk to an "expert."  ;-)

Spent a night on Muir pass with a wilderness guide who's been in the
sierras every summer for more than 20 years.  Great guy, and his stories
were mostly from first hand experience.  Here's what he had to say:

"All the things that people say about avoiding bears is crap!"

Ok, more constructively, here's what he had to say:

A) Bears can be EXTREMELY quiet.  You might have no idea they're in your
camp until you smell/feel/hear them breathing at one end of your tent or
hear your hung food bag hit the ground.

B) bears can move VERY fast.

C) They stink.  You'll smell them approach your tent before you hear them.

D) The mothball thing is an old wife’s tail

E) Bears don't really care where you pee

F) Multiple bears will cooperate to get food out of a tree.  The only time
hanging is effective is when it's done perfectly, on just the right sized
branch at sufficient height and distance from the tree, which he said he's
never seen somebody achieve.  He said he's seen four bears work together
to get food bags.

G) He's woken up when his head hit the ground after a bear swiped the
food-bag “pillow” from under his head

H) A friend of his had two bears approach him while he was making dinner
(I forget the name of the lakes, but this was at the camp with a bear box
by a pair of lakes right after one of the passes.  There’s a ranger
station shortly after, and I guess it must’ve been the pass right before
Muir)  Anyway, these bears walked up, grabbed his pack full of food and
wandered off.  He threw sticks, shouted, etc.  Shortly after, they
returned and mauled him over a bit.  He was a doctor, stitched himself up
and went to the ranger station to report the incident (and perhaps beg
some food) where he was ticketed for not having a bear canister.  I didn’t
much like that story 
 it sounded like they were pissed about the quality
of his food or something.  Who heard of vindictive bears?

I) bears recognize things by sight as well as smell.  They’ve seen a bear
go into a car for a tube of tennis balls which looked like a Pringles
container.  He’s also seen bears walk by a camp, look at bear canisters in
front of tents and move on, as though it already knew it couldn’t get into
them.

J) he’s seen them jump up and down on the tops of cars to pop the doors
open (this was at Whitney Portal)

K) there was a bear in Yosemite who would sneak up behind people and would
rip off their packs.  That one was, of course, killed

L) there was another bear in Yosemite that would wait until someone would
open the bear box.  He’d then charge, making a lot of noise.  Frightened
human would run off, leaving the unlocked bear box and the entire
campground’s food open for bear.

M) which reminds me, he also said the first time a bear charges, it’s
almost always a fake charge to see what you’ll do.  The second charge is
more likely to be real.

N) bears are more aggressive later in the season (in fall) and more
reclusive early in the year.

O) this may be common knowledge, but often it’s scented toiletries (i.e.
toothpaste) that they’re attracted to, not necessarily the food you’d
expect.

P) on the topic of deterrents in general (mothballs, pee, hanging food,
keeping food in your tent, etc) his perspective was that people believe
they work because they’ve used them for however long and never had an
encounter, but most people never have encounters regardless of what they
do with their food, so it wasn’t the mothballs or the pee that did the
trick, it was the absence of a bear.

Q) he had another story about someone getting pulled from their tent in
their sleeping bag

I heard two first hand stories from other PCT hikers the year I was on the
trail.  The first was at Muir Ranch, where four of them were cowboy camped
and woke to find a bear digging into one of their packs.  They eventually
threw sticks, the bear carried the pack a little farther away and finished
his meal.  Apparently the bag was covered in bear saliva after and smelled
of berries.

Second story was at Little Jimmy camp ground, where one of our hiking
buddies was having breakfast when a bear wandered in and started sniffing
around right on the other side of the picnic table.  That bear was killed
later that summer, I believe.


So, what’s the moral of the story?  I really don’t know!  Some of it is
kind of scary 
 particularly the aggressive bear stories, but I don’t
think it should be cause for increased alarm.  One way to look at it is
that this guy had spent a LOT of time in bear country for two decades, and
only had a few encounter stories involving himself or others.

Personally, the message I got is that every now and then there’s a bear
that’s gotten a taste for human food, and in the unlikely event that you
encounter one, your food is in jeopardy almost regardless of what you do
with it (short of canisters), but this is a rare enough event that one
shouldn’t loose sleep worrying about it.  On the flip side, there’s also
no sure-fire way to know that things like mothballs, pee, keeping your bag
in your tent, etc didn’t actually make a difference some night when a bear
was in the area.  Most of the time, of course, when bears aren't used to
people, they're easily frightened off, thankfully!

Anyway, he was the one and only guy we talked to that I felt had a
significant scope of experienced & I just thought I’d pass on his stories
and perspective, for whatever they’re worth.  Incidentally, he hangs his
food but said he sometimes spends hours looking for the right branch.

I don’t think I’ll change my approach next year.  I’ll use bear boxes
where they exist, keep it in my tent in places that seem less likely to
have bear traffic, will avoid camping near day-use picnic sites, and will
hang as best as I can when in spots that seem more likely to have bear
traffic.  I’m way more afraid of my flat feet spoiling my hike than bears
anyway!

- Paul