All food and trash. Empty boxes and empty ice chests need to be hidden, as the bears know those on sight to be "food containers." Anything that has a scent that might be interesting to curious bears as a possible food item - lotions, balms, lip stuff, hair stuff. Those dessicated French fries that linger under the seats. All needs to go in the trash or in one of the bearproof lockers around the parking lot.robow8 wrote:About that corollary; what exactly do you have to do to clean out a car?AlmostThere wrote:We've seen bears fairly consistently on the Alta trail, on the Mist Falls trail, and crossing the road.
In Yosemite, just hang around in the parking lots. We saw a few bears on the way to trailheads from parking lots - as they were walking toward the parking lots. As a corollary, don't forget to clean out your car.
There's a female bear that has a knack for trying door latches - she opens the door and climbs on in, trashes the interior of the vehicle, oozes back out the door, and her weight makes the car lean over then snap upright swinging the door shut. It looks like ninjas were there - no obvious entry but your upholstery and the contents of the car are a wreck. Clean cars and locked doors are needed. Most bears will just rip the door off or peel it down like a bandaid backing to get inside if they see something or smell something of interest.
To top it off - jerks tend to steal stuff out of the bear boxes. A friend lost his stainless steel coffee mug that way. It was replaced with a used starbucks cup.
Reportedly, incidents are way down compared to what they used to be. People are paying attention to the rules these days with a little more care.
I do sweep the dodge out once in awhile, but I do not eat in the truck. Heck, it has sticks in the bed still from the last old farts trip in 2012.