Bears and canisters

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AlmostThere
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by AlmostThere »

I don't think Ursack will show up on anyone's website. It's not on the Inyo NF website but I've heard people have asked when getting a permit and they were allowed there. Best to call and talk to someone about it.

Sorry, jthomas, I don't believe for a hot second you weren't deliberately being offensive. If you were really that worried about civil liberties you would be spending your energy elsewhere instead of trolling a backpacking forum.
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gdurkee
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by gdurkee »

Campers:

The Ursack is not approved for use as designed in either Yosemite or Sequoia Kings. You can use it as a sack to counter balance food (no different that a nylon sack, and where counter balancing is allowed) but you can't tie it to the base of a tree etc. as it recommends doing.

I can never remember where I tell my happy bear stories, so I might be repeating myself (oh, go ahead Uncle Grumpus, tell us another one!). The canisters have been tremendously effective over the last 15 years. In the Kearsarge area, for instance, foil & plastic in bear scat (this is your keen observer at work...) went from about > 40% of all scat in the mid-80s to less than 1% today. That's a combination of the boxes and canisters. There was a significant and measurable decrease in incidents with the introduction of each.

The last two years, there were only a few bear/food incidents in all of Bubbs/Kearsarge/Rae/Woods compared to probably 1/3 of all hikers losing some food in the mid-80s.

Which is all to say I"m a major fan of canisters. Where, statistically, a regulation can be shown to be effective, I'd say that's not an intrusion on liberties. Everyone here is right, it's to protect the bears and send them back to nuts and berries, which is what's happened as a direct result of the canisters.

I'd be interested to know where JT Carter was counter balancing and the number of times a bear attempted to get the hung food. The failure rate of hanging food where bears are conditioned to get it is huge -- probably around 80% no matter how well you hang it. They can shake the branch until one sack comes within reach; or break the branch; or even spend all night chewing through the branch. In areas where bears aren't on a learning curve (low density of bears), it'll work. But once they try to figure it out, they do.

Also, regarding your packs. If you leave them out, zippers & flaps open, you're almost always OK. Even if a bear takes it, they never go more than a couple of hundred feet with it to investigate (and maybe rip a pocket). Don't hang it (an invitation to take it) or sleep with it in a hammock (though a tent's probably OK, but not highly recommended).

g.
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AlmostThere
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Re: Bears and canisters

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I slept with my pack under my feet in my hammock along the JMT and would do so again - but my hammock is not an open top model, it's fully bugnetted and I pitch a tarp over it - essentially the same as a two wall tent. Many hammockers do the same as the pack provides insulation under the feet when using a short underquilt. Bears hit every night and focused solely on the canisters - they did nothing but walk through the shelters on the way to the canisters. And we got up and shooed them away each time.
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by snusmumriken »

George - Good to hear that the bear incidents are down so much.
On the internet boards I frequent I hear lots of grumbling about the bear cannister. But out at the trail heads I mostly see people dutifully loading the cansnister into their packs. And it seems to be working - I think that's great. Always appreciate your posts here BTW, very informative.
AlmostThere wrote:I Bears hit every night and focused solely on the canisters - they did nothing but walk through the shelters on the way to the canisters. And we got up and shooed them away each time.
Almost There - was this a JMT hike you did this year? Or was this some time in the past?
I hiked the JMT with two friends this year. We spent 21 days in July going north to south and I'm happy to report we did not see any bears or indeed hear of anybody else along the trail who had any bear encounters at all. We had bear cannisters of course, and its hard to know if bears came through our camp while we were sleeping, but we didn't see any. What a different experience you had!
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hikerduane
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by hikerduane »

Last July, the morning I was leaving the bpers cg at TM, someone was yelling at a bear, I never saw it as it was still dark while I ate breakfast. On my Rae Lakes Loop trip, the second day out a bear was said to be in the lower Paradise Valley cg in the middle of the day, never saw that one either.
Piece of cake.
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AlmostThere
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by AlmostThere »

snusmumriken wrote: Almost There - was this a JMT hike you did this year? Or was this some time in the past?
I hiked the JMT with two friends this year. We spent 21 days in July going north to south and I'm happy to report we did not see any bears or indeed hear of anybody else along the trail who had any bear encounters at all. We had bear cannisters of course, and its hard to know if bears came through our camp while we were sleeping, but we didn't see any. What a different experience you had!
Last August we did a section from Yosemite down and got off the trail when it started to snow... that was a wild ride! Rangers were chasing bears in TM campground all day, and when we got on the trail a huge bear showed up that night at the far end of Lyell - he crept through camp, I heard him nudge my pot off a rock but not him! and we caught him with a flashlight licking one of the bear vaults. Yelling got him to leave. The next two nights we camped sufficient distance from the trail and not at any of the really beaten down overused campsites, and then we camped in the Ediza/Shadow drainage and were hit twice. One of us was sitting by the fire and the bear popped up over the end of the granite bench we were on, ten feet from her! she yelled and he ran. He came back for the canisters later. We had buried them in 10-20 lb granite flakes so we were able to hear him and get up to chase him off.

Rangers were warning us that a horse had broken its leg near Thousand Island lake and was shot there - they said it was drawing in the bears pretty bad. We didn't camp there for that reason.
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by Wandering Daisy »

You have to think about food differently when using a bear cannister for long trips. Bulk is an issue. For example, if taking pasta, macaroni is bulky whereas spaghetti broken into 3 inch pieces can be packed fairly well. Cuscous is particulary low volume. The difference with 10 breakfasts of oatmeal versus 10 of Malt-o-Meal is a significant reduction in bulk. A bag of gorp packs with lower volume than trail bars (for the same calories). Almonds pack better than walnuts. Anything with corners do not pack well in a round container. So for every food type, there are many variations of bulk. I am able to get 9 days of food in my Bear-i-Kade weekender - and still have 2,600 calories per day. You also have to re-pack everything in plastic bags. I also use the Lipton "Sides" but take a pin and poke a hole to let air out and then squish them and put a piece of tape over the hole. Just about anything commercially packed with swell at altitude. When all does not fit in the pack, I take out the least necessary items (such as sport drinks) and hang in a tree. Another trick is to plan your hike so you can utilize the bear boxes for the first two nights. When I do this I can actually do a 12 day trip with my bear cannister. It took me a while to come around to accepting the bear cannister. Now if pack manufacturers would just design packs to better handle the cannisters! PS. My wonderful children gave me the Bear-i-Kade for Christmas. Let your family know you want one - put it on the list to Santa.
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by richlong8 »

I have used the Bear Vault the last few years, no incidents, and up to 12 days of food. I have found its neccessary to repack everything in ziplock bags, as others have noted, and get the excess air out of the bag, so it doesn't take up too much room in the canister. The other trick is once I have it packed, and it doesn't seem like there is enough room, I compress the contents by banging the bottom of the can on the ground, or living room carpet, before I leave, and this settles the contents down further, so I can fit everything in. I am no expert, but it works for me, the canister is very sturdy, and in not danger of breaking by banging it, and I have been fortunate to have no bear incidents. I do not miss suspending a bag from a tree, and the Bear Vault makes a decent camp seat. I just wish it was lighter, but its comparable, or lighter than the others as far as I can tell. I set it apart from my pack, and tent so any marmots will keep thier distance as well, hopefully. I hear more stories of hikers getting packs chewed by marmots than bear problems, if the hiker is at least a day out from the trailhead.
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maverick
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by maverick »

12 days of food in the Bear Vault!
You must have a slower metabolism because I eat like crazy especially once my
mountain hunger kicks in after 3-4 days.
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richlong8
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Re: Bears and canisters

Post by richlong8 »

12 days is really pushing it- that was my longest trip, and I remember coming down the last day with one quarter of a power bar, and a small, stale piece of jerkey! And admittingly, I was not eating the last couple of days the way I should have, trying to conserve food.
9-10 days is my normal long trip length, and the canister works good for that. On that 12 day trip, I was rudely surprised by fish being eliminated by the NPS in LeConte Canyon to save the frog, and I had no fish to eat in the evening. I was pretty hungry when I got to my car at South Lake, believe me!But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.....
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