[pct-l] Titanium Bear Canister

[DAVCATDAV at aol.com (DAVCATDAV@xxxxxxx)]

Does anyone know who fabricates titanium bear canisters? A friend of mine 
borrowed one from a friend and the thing weighed about a pound. If anyone else 
has seen one please tell where and any clues as to where they are made or sold. 
If anyone knows of a shop that will make custom titanium products we'd 
probably all like to know where and how much they'll charge for making basically a 
large titanium can with three screws that seal the top down.

>>>>>

Has anyone replied to this yet?  I'm siting here checking my old e-mails and 
I didn't notice any,  Perhaps someone has already given you better information 
than I'll be capable of but, if not...well...I'm just going to add the 
mystery...for you see...I have actually held in my own hands the ultimate expression 
of the bear canister maker's art; I have, for ever so brief a moment, held a 
canister made of the same material as the F-18 Tomcat and the Mig-28.  It 
wasn't silver, it wasn't gold, it wasn't platinum.It was titanium (even though it 
was priced like it was made of the others.)  And I have no idea where you can 
get one.

Three years ago I was car camping with friends in the Olympic National Forest 
and up to that point I'd never actually seen a bear cannister of any type 
before.   At the ranger station in the Hoh River Valley they were renting them 
out.  Now I'll have to admit I have never seen a bear but that it was a full 
rump view, said bear running from me in a panic, like I'm Davey Crocket come to 
gun him down, so my first reaction was what do I do with this, hang the bear 
bag and use the cannister to beat said bears about the head and neak?  But then 
Ms. Ranger told me about the problems that folks were having with the beasts 
in the Sierras and the Appalachans. I might say that I have seen otherwise 
decent people turn in to great ugly flaming trolls on this very subject in this 
very chatroom, but I'll just say in passing that what she said seemed to make a 
lot of sense to me.  Now if that makes be "icky" in your book so be it, I'll 
just have to add it to the other terrible troubles I have to shoulder on my way 
to death and oblivion.

At any rate, a few days later we stopped at some other camp.  For the life of 
me I can't remember which one it was.  I do remember that it was popular, it 
was by a river (that certainly narrows things down in a rain forest) and it 
was at one of those camps that have those toll booth things (those of you 
familiar with the park will know what I mean) where you give the ranger a few bucks 
for entry.  This place had a very nice ranger cabin, one of those stone and 
plank things the CCC put up in various places in the Pacific Northwest.  The 
cabin was inhabited by a volunteer couple who sold postcards, firewood, 
and...rented bear canisters.  We talked a bit about campers, bears, bear canisters, he 
got mad at her, they argued a bit, we talked about bears some more, and bear 
canisters, and, then he turned to me and said, "let me show you something kinda 
interesting.

It had that dull metallic sheen of titanium.  It wasn't the same shape as the 
Garcia canister, from the top it was an oval and it retained the same shape 
from top to bottom, not flared in the middle like the Garcia. I recall it had 
some sort of reinforcing frame on the outside and at the top it had three 
locking devices, same number as the Garcia but...you opened it differently, the 
locks were not the same as the Garcia, but I can't recall how you released them.

"Wow," I said, "this is really impressive, I bet you get a lot of those 
hiking folks that just stand here slack jawed; this can't weigh more than a pound."

"Yup, " he said, "with a canister like this you'd be the envy of every male 
hiker and the dream of every female one."

Having had problems of this kind before, at that point I just walked out.

What I recall is that they were manufactured by two Boeing engineers who were 
distributing them to various spots in the park.  They were badly underfunded 
and had no other plans at the time to distribute them because they couldn't 
afford to. It seems that they were hoping that enough hikers would be so 
enamoured with how light they were that they'd sell enough to kick start the company. 
 And they were $250 each.

Hope that helps...