[pct-l] Tent as protection from wildlife

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good afternoon, Jeffrey,

I love your “mobile tent” story.  If it’s not true, it ought to be.  We hear
a lot about bravery in the wild, but the woman who told this story to her
hiker-friends had to be the bravest of all.  It conjures up all manner of
possibilities from UFO sightings to Bigfoot encounters.  Living in the
Pacific NW as I do, I think I would bend the story to involve Bigfoot.  After
all, no-one would believe the story with a cougar in the character list.



If were ever in her situation I believe I would abandon the tent.  My main
strategy when pursued by a cougar is to – perhaps inadvertently – coat the
trail with a layer of excrement as I departed, thereby discouraging pursuit.
It may catch me, but it’ll be slippin’ and slidin’.  Doing so while wearing
a tent would only slow me down.



Once as a lad while camping with friends in the Midwest I was out of my tent
at night on “business” when I stumbled across a rare patch of fungal
bioluminescence that we called “foxfire”.  Wanting to share this discovery
with my friends, I positioned two almond-shaped pieces of it in my hand
about 4-5 inches apart.  As I held my hand in front of the tent for them to
see I scratched on the tent canvas with my other hand to wake them up.  In
hindsight I may have also innocently coughed or cleared my throat in such a
way that it could have sounded to a sleepy camper like a growl.  The result
– in a word – was astounding.  They didn’t take the tent with them, which
was probably for the best, because it likely would have slowed them down to
well under Mach-1.



The subsequent after-action report by the participants was very colorful and
imaginative.  Liking their versions of the event much more than mine, I
believe I failed to my mention my rather mundane contribution to the
evening’s activity.  Besides, they were bigger than I was, and I wasn’t fond
of being thumped.



Steel-Eye

Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09


On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:51 AM, Jeffrey Olson <jolson at olc.edu> wrote:

> I picked up a book of short stories about cougar attacks at Timberline
> Lodge on a Section Hike in 2005.  One of the stories talked about a
> mother and three cubs that "stroked" the woman's nylon tent, but didn't
> cut it with their claws.  She cut a hole in the bottom of the tent and
> duck walked it a half mile to her convertible BMW.  She managed to get
> in the car unscathed and started to drive madly as one of the cubs
> jumped on the roof and began to claw at the convertible roof.  She juked
> and it fell off.
>
> Believe it if you will...
>
> Jeffrey Olson
>
>
> On 5/1/2010 11:30 AM, Eric Lee wrote:
> > It's funny what a psychological crutch a tent can be.  As Steel-Eye said,
> > it's dumb to think that those thin nylon walls afford any kind of real
> > protection at all but sometimes there's an unreasonable sense of anxiety
> > without them.
> >
>
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