Bear canister, now what?

[hal]

I backpacked in the Sierras for about 15 years, years before bear canisters existed. After getting nailed a couple of times with hanging food in trees, I discovered that if I hung my food about 6-10 feet down from the top of a rock "cliff," I never lost anymore food. Also, I discovered that putting my food bag on top of a rather large boulder that took some rock climbing skills to get to the top of, say 8-10 feet tall, also worked.

So I always packed a 10 foot length of small diameter rock climbing rope that I could either tie to a bush on the edge of a cliff, or tie to a small rock climbing chock that I also packed, embedded in a crack close to the edge of the "cliff."

This technique implies that you must find a camp site with the appropriate rock formations, but I generally didn't find that much of a problem.