[pct-l] Sleeping with your food

[Jereen Anderson]

As stated, I never sleep with my food. Years ago I used to hang it high in trees. This did not always work. Clever bears still sometimes managed to get it. Besides, in the high country of the Sierra the trees simply were not tall enough. Sometime in the seventies the bears would start coming up to the higher elevations - because they knew that we backpackers had food. I had some success puting it in waterproof bags, weighing it down with rocks, and, using a light rope, tossing it into a lake under a few feet of water.
Then, about 20 years ago, I discovered "bear charms" - cotton tobacco sacks with 2 or 3 mothballs in each. On my PCT thru-ride I carried about 20 of these in an OPSAK. In the evening I surrounded my saddle and pack bags with them and also my tent. I stored my food in a large OPSAK and put it next to the saddle bags. I would like to point out that the OPSAK is 100% odor proof and that the URSACK is not. Bears and rodents cannot smell your food if it is stored in an OPSAK !  The mothballs function as an effective bear repellant - they really dislike the smell. If there are any lingering food smells around your canp - or on you - the mothballs are a second line of defence. I also want to point out that, while I have found that bears dislike the mothball smell, rodents are not discouraged by it.