[pct-l] to sleep with or not to sleep with...

[reynolds@xxxxxxxx (Reynolds, WT)]

Joanne-

As I have stated repeatedly. The reason you don't sleep with your food is to
protect me and my four year old son.

If a bear gets the nerve to crash a tent and GETS food from the experience,
that bear will repeatedly crash tents until it is destroyed.

You keep your food from bears to protect the bears. You don't sleep with
your food because you don't want to be responsible for the child you maime
by creating a tent crashing bear.

All this, "I have never had a bear problem" is just BS. In over 300 nights
in the Sierra a bear has shown up maybe 10 times and those ten times are in
the predictible locations. In general, most nights a bear never visits your
campground. Stealth camping is the art of hiding from a bear. Aside from the
fact that it is illegial and subject to a big fine, stealth camping will
work very well for thruhikers passing through the sierra in the early season
[before July 1]. During that timeframe a stealth camper is very unlikely to
have a bear visit.

Sleeping with your food says something like. "If a bear shows up [unlikely]
I would rather risk maiming a child than losing my food"

If the thruhiking community can't take responsibility for not sleeping with
their food, I fear that I must throw the effort I previously put into
ADZPCTKO into ending thruhiking thru Inyo without a canister.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: JoAnn M Michael [mailto:jomike@snowcrest.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 9:35 AM
To: pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net
Subject: [pct-l] to sleep with or not to sleep with...


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Considering I have a more than faint shade of yellow down a certain portion
of my body, in country such as the Sierra I would cooperate with all
required food/bears precautions, BUT, I do have a question for you more
experienced people.

I have slept with my food.  Some of my reasoning is that between food prep,
eating, clean-up, wiping your hands on your pants, etc. there is no way I
and/or my clothes do NOT smell like food. Sure, I'd wash and clean-up but I
doubt under out-door conditions that we get "real" clean. Plus, as we know,
there are some health aids (tooth paste) that attract critters like bears.
Possibly even the smell of food is in our hair.  What I'm getting at is it
might be impossible to put in a can or hang everything that has food odors.
Consequently, what's the harm of actually having your food in your pack
(other than being illegal in certain places) with you in your tent since you
already smell of food? Please, don't brush me off...a serious question.

JoAnn
--

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