[pct-l] Burying food

[Jereen Anderson]

From: MendoRider/Ed Anderson
To: Brad
Burying already sealed food (such as energy bars or Bear Naked Granola or noodle dinners) in odor-proof plastic bags such as OP-SAK would certainly work. On my PCT thru ride I buryed my food caches, including my horses extra food, well off the trail (usually about 150') at road crossings or trailheads. I'd like to point out that I was always very careful to camouflage the hole location after burying and also after recovering my caches; my criteria being that if someone were to walk by they they would'nt notice that there had been a hole there. I should mention that I also put a specific number of mothballs on top of the food bags prior to replacing the ground cover. I was careful to recover all of the mothballs, by count, for reuse in my "bear charms" (mothballs in cotton tobacco sacks) which I used in my camps to keep bears out. I brought 24 of these stored in an OPSAK. I never had bears either dig up my caches or come into my camps. They don't like the
 smell - it does not smell like something to eat. And, if there is lingering food smells from cooking they are masked by the mothball smell. Bears have incredible noses. In the open air I could not smell the mothballs but they obviously could. 
 
Another option for food stored near camp overnight, which I used a few times in the late 70's  (before I learned about the use of mothballs) was to put my food under 3' to 5' of water in water tight plastic bags. For this method I needed a lake or a still pool. This was easy because I was usually also fishing. For bag recovery I used a light nylon cord attached to the bag securely and tied on shore. 
 
I should mention that by the 70's bears were becoming a problem for backpackers in the Sierra - even at high elevations. Bears were not a problem in the 50's, and I don't recall having bear problems in the high country in the 60's either.