[pct-l] Sleeping with food

[Kristin Hamann]

One of my friends had problems with a skunk that unzipped a their tent in
Guadalupe National Park.  They had a difficult dilemma in trying to
encourage the skunk to leave without getting "skunked."

I have been personally awakened twice to a bear sniffing loudly just
outside my tenting.  An experience I will never forget.  Once had a bear
wake me up trying to climb a tree to get to my bear hang (was
unsuccessful).

All parties survived, no one was skunked, but my friend did have to give up
a slice of bread to get the skunk to leave.

I personally do not keep food in my tent and either hang it, use bear
lockers where available (will use the required bear canister on the PCT),
and in the desert have stuck it in a patch of prickly pear cactus.  The
bear canister is definitively not odor-proof, as my evil cat diligently
tried to get into it.  But it is definitely cat-proof (and she is very
tenacious), and borderline Kristin-proof.

Cheers!
k


On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 12:12 AM, Jeffrey Olson <jolson at olc.edu> wrote:

> A regular contributor to the listserv said, "I would never consider
> sleeping with my food in bear country. I'm not a gambler. Not all bears
> are the same. If a bold and hungry bear that has become habituated to
> humans and their food happens to wander up from a vehicle accessible
> campground near your camp and smells your food, he might just go for it.
> People have been maimed and killed in those circumstances. Why take a
> chance?"
> ______________________________________________________
>
> Keep this perspective in mind.  You have to make a choice about sleeping
> with your food.  As I said earlier today, most people just sleep with it
> and don't worry about bears.  Let me share a story.
>
> I was camped near Deception Pass in Washington and it was a very quiet
> night - no wind at all.  I always sleep with my food unless I'm with a
> friend who's more fear based than I.  We  have a couple ounces of
> bourbon and throw the rope tied to a rock over a tree limb and laugh.
> Part of the camping ritual.
>
> I'm lying in my tent, right in the space between sleeping and being
> awake, when I hear some noises.  I'm immediately awake - my awareness
> straining to make out where the noise is coming from and what's making
> it.  My heart is pounding with adrenaline.  The hillside is fairly
> steep, and I can imagine a bear out there, slowly making his way towards
> my tent.
>
> I listen so intensely I find myself floating out of the tent up the hill
> to a point 100' or so above me.  I have a vantage point, a perspective,
> that looks through the trees down on me in my tent and a bear grubbing
> 75' or so up the trail from the tent.  He's just clawing a log, grunting
> and ripping it, and eating stuff out of it.
>
> He glances at my tent every once in a while and returns to his feeding.
> This goes on for a minute or so - I'm guessing because I feel "out of
> time" - before I relax and my vantage point dissipates and I'm back in
> my tent.
>
> I can still hear the bear - but he's moving away now - up the trail.  I
> lie there and a sense of peace envelopes me.  I'd been hiking for 35
> years then, and had always had a minor "FEAR" of bears.  It wasn't
> strong and it didn't determine how I acted. Nonetheless, they were
> always the "other" and hence I need to watch out for them - they were a
> threat of a kind.
>
> What I realized and felt for the first time in my life was part of the
> larger wilderness reality.  The bear had no interest in me and my pillow
> of food.  I was part of his world and he monitored me - bear noses are
> incredibly acute.  I fit into the forest in a way I'd not before.  I had
> "place" in the wilderness.
>
> I respect the power of bears, especially if I'm between a Mom and her
> cub.  However, I'm part of their world, and I don't fear them. I don't
> fear coyotes or wolves or mountain lions either.  We share the
> wilderness - and each has a place within it.
>
> It's mice skittering across my face in the middle of the night when I'm
> cowboy camping that gets me.  But I realize I've put down my ground
> cloth in one of their "runs" or paths.
>
> What's funny, is most night noises end up being deer or bighorn sheep
> licking up my urine...
>
> Jeffrey Olson
> Rapid City, SD
>
>
>
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