Bear Canisters

[eisely]

One of the new products on the market in recent years for camping in bear country is a plastic bear canister. Use of this system for securing food is highly recommended for LNT camping since trees are not damaged by bear bags. The bears in some parts of the Sierras have figured out bear bags and bear bags can no longer be considered safe. The canisters seem to be effective, but some backpackers object to the extra weight. Anybody have any experience with these things with real bears?

[Mike Long]

Most of my Bear country camping has been in the Smokies. There they have a cable suspension system to hang your food bags AND packs. We had one boy not hang his pack and a Black bear decided to use it as a saltlick. Took us three hours to find what was left of his pack. By the way, his food was in the pack too and was untouched. The bear just wanted salt.

 

I do however know of a friend who had a Bear-Bear canister close encounter and his canister won the match with only minor scuffing and scrapes. In some areas I hear that your group must prove that you have the canisters in order to get a permit to camp.

[johnsned]

In many parks in California, bear canisters are a requirement to obtain a camping permit. Yosemite and the John Muir Wilderness area are the most strict.

 

True they are a pain in the neck, add extra wieght don't hold much etc... But I haven't heard of one losing to a bear, maybe losing your food is more of a pain.

[WA_Scoutmaster]

BPC's are great, but be careful not to use them as a solution to all of your storage needs. There's an article in today's (June 14, 2001) Tacoma News Tribune about BPCs that describes how a bear tore into one. The best solution is to follow standard camping practices, even if you use a BPC - string it up on a bear wire. When we camp in bear country, everything goes up on a wire/rope. An added inconvenience, but one we must put up with to protect nature and ourselves. A fed bear is definitely a dead bear.

[eisely]

Thanks for the tip on the news story. I am definitely going to look it up. Maybe your bears are just smarter and stronger. Or perhaps they are evolving opposing thumbs and an ability to use tools.

[WA_Scoutmaster]

Nope, guess he was just very hungry. Here's a quote from the article:

 

The 900-pound male grizzly went straight for the bear-resistant canister placed in his Northwest Trek enclosure.

 

The foo-long plastic cylinder resisted as best it could. But after about 10 minutes, the curious griz had popped open the canister's screw-on top and chewed through its polymer construction to get at the salmon inside.

 

End quote.

[WA_Scoutmaster]

For anyone interested in the article, go to :

 

http://www.tribnet.com/cgi-bin/makeframes.plx?http://search.tribnet.com/

 

Search for Norwest Trek, and it should take you to it. Believe they keep articles posted for 30 days.

[eisely]

In July a group from our troop backpacked in Yosemite (I did not participate) and used bear canisters for their primary storage. They also strung up a bear bag at their first camp site and lost everything in the bag. No cables were available for this. The bear canisters were not even touched. It appears that bears in Yosemite now recognize bear canisters as unbreakable, even though food odors were present. I for one believe that the bears in Yosemite are unusually smart when it comes to human food. An interesting field test of this equipment. The canisters can also be used as short camp stools.