[pct-l] bear bag for sale?/Try an OPSAK

[Edward Anderson]

Hi Shepherd, 
The Ursack,(including the "hybred") is not odor-proof. Bears can smell the food inside - just as they can smell food inside the bear cannisters. While it's nice that they will have a very hard time getting into either of them, they will try. The OPSAK is completely odor-proof - no smells can escape from inside the bags. (Look this up on the web). I used them, along with my bear charms (mothballs), on my PCT ride. I'd like to point out that there will still be lingering food smells in your camp that might attract bears, That's why I still use bear charms to make my camps smell bad to a bear.

  I learned a couple of things by the time I reached Beldon Town: I had been storing MY food in OPSAKS and Primo's processed horse food in heat-sealed Food-Saver bags. I had driven ahead and cached my resupplies at three locations between Sierra City and Old Station. At Beldon, when I rode in, about 10 days later to pick up our food (which I had buried under several inches of leaves near the RR tracks) I was shocked to see that ALL of the horse food was gone - BUT my food, in the OPSAK, was untouched, along with 2 large cans of V8 juice and a fuel cannister. All 30 pounds of horse food was gone, the Food-Saver bags shreaded. All food had been buried together and in contact. This, even though I had also used my bear charms. I did clean up the mess! A ranger who was there at Beldon told me that this was the work of RODENTS. This was the second time that I learned that rodents are not repelled by moth ball smell. 

After that I stored all food, in caches and in camp, Primo's and mine, in OPSAKS and continued using the bear charms to repel bears. This approach worked for me all the way to Canada.
MendoRider


--- On Wed, 4/21/10, Amanda L Silvestri <aslive at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Amanda L Silvestri <aslive at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: [pct-l] bear bag for sale?
> To: Pct-l at backcountry.net
> Date: Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 4:03 PM
> Anyone out there have a Ursack or
> Outsack they want to sell?
> 
> Shepherd
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