Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Proper Food Storage definition

Yes.

George, one thing that I've been somewhat surprised by: failures of various bear protection measures have resulted in banning, if it goes beyond the very limited instances, such has happened with Bear Vaults and even Garcias.

However, hanging has been demonstrated to fail, over and over, in all juristictions, over a wide time frame. virtually all user error (but not all), but a huge record of failure. And yet, it continues to be allowed. I don't understand.

One very interesting point made by Tori in her presentation, was that the bear population in Yos has doubled in the last decade. There has been a similar growth explosion throughout Ca. She describes it as due to the poor way that we protect our garbage, creating another food source for the bears. Thus, she sees bears in places they never were before, including alpine areas.

Ken, this probably has been discussed before but - what is the highest (alpine zone) altitude at which one can feel secure from bear visits? If one were hiking the JMT or other route and always camped high enough, then they would not need a bearcan.

I'll start with my answer - bear visit/nose in tent at 10,500. He never bothered with the BearVaults.

Surely there have been visits even above 10,500. Anyone?
Harvey

Ken et al:

Yes, counter balancing can no longer be depended on to work. With experienced bears, it just no longer works however well you hang it. I've seen bears chew through the branch, spending all night at it. At best, it just slows them down. In areas where bears aren't common, I'm still slightly in favor of allowing hanging over always requiring canisters.

Canister failures are maybe a dozen over 10+ years (?? -- total guess). I don't always keep up, but the only times there's been a restriction on one model was for the Kearsarge area and an older version of the Bear Vault. A single bear was able to somehow pop the top until they came up with a new type.

So it's not really inconsistent when compared to banning canisters or the ursack. Where there's lots of bears and they know how to get food that's hung, you can't hang the food. Where a single model of canister failed, it was restricted in that area. The Ursack failed in several places throughout the Sierra, so it's not allowed.

And, this just in. The Sequoia wildlife guy just wrote and says that, at the moment, the Ursack is banned throughout the Sequoia Kings. He did, though, say that may change this spring.

Interesting note on bear population. I'd want to look more closely at that. It's hard to believe that the huge amounts of backpacker food they got throughout the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s is only now affecting their population. There were certainly bears at alpine elevations in the 70s in both Yosemite and Sequoia Kings -- and a fair number of them. In Little Yosemite Valley all through the 70s, we had a permanent population of about 5 bears in just a few square miles. Way above natural numbers.

I did, though, just see a note from Dave Graeber (research scientist at Sequoia Kings) that bears are slowly expanding down the coast range. I guess all I'm saying here is I'd want to look at climate as a contributing factor as well (shorter winters -- longer time to eat; perhaps lower denning mortality for both cubs and adults).

Bears at altitude: Bears regularly go over passes with trails (12,000). I've commonly seen bear sign on cross country passes and basins between 11,000 and 12,000 feet. There's an incredibly isolated basin I know with frog ponds where bears go to hunt frogs -- about 11,000 feet. Which is just to say there's nowhere you can camp that a bear can't get to, though the odds go down of running into one (and, Harvey, please tell me the food canisters weren't IN your tent....).

g.

hahahaha
George, they were not in the tent. My wording did lend itself to that interpretation, sorry. I am sure others have made that error, but not me!

Not only leaving bearcans in the tent is a non-no, but we might add another potential "user error". If one leaves his pack (or car) and goes off on a dayhike/summit shot etc, then take the bearcan out of the pack (or car) and store it elsewhere.

Thanks. Harvey.

just from experience in the 80s and 90s, when bear canisters were uneard of, I never saw a bear above the treeline and never got a visit from even a marmot at night. Back then we kept our food in nylon bags and left them outside the tent at altitude. It wasn't easy sleeping, because anything that sounded like a critter got me to unzip the tent and check, but we never even had anything chew on the bags.

Well, I'm going with canisters, no matter what that Ursack decision is going to be. Seems like too much of a hassle (and risk of getting fined) to even consider not bringing approved canisters anywhere in the Sierras.

just saw this over at the Ursack site



ordered two Bearikades yesterday so they get here in time for me to mail them to Muir Trail Ranch before our trip...

20 days....

The bearikade is a nice can, can't beat larger but lighter then any others.

Does the JMT Ranch take canisters for resupply? I thought they only took buckets...

put the canister into the bucket.

we don't need the two little Bearikades until we get to the ranch (I have the large Expedition), but after the Ranch to the Portal, we'll need the extra storage space. I'll just put the stuff into the buckets, prepacked, fill the space around them with the food that goes into my can. Two buckets for southbound, one for north... gotta go bucket shopping at Home Depot I guess.

I wonder if I can mail the small Bearikades home from the Ranch. I know you can pay them to ship extra gear, but it seems they only want to use standard Priority mail packaging, and the cans won't fit any of those. Sure would hate to carry them to Yosemite after we don't need them any longer.

I don't either, when I resupply at Whitney Portal it's going to be 17 days before I reach the Muir Trail Ranch due to the planned climb of 5 peaks and 2 lay over days so how could I get that kind of food into a canister?

To offset some weight on the climb back up Whitney and over Forester Pass I am going to hike a bear vault into the wild over Kearsarge Pass and hide it though when I reach it I don't plan to take it with me, I will empty it and hide it again for when I can come back for it.

Even with this plan I wont be able to get 12 days worth of food in my Bearikade so I will just have to say oh well and keep the food in my pack and feed off it till my pack is empty.

I doubt I will have a problem with bears but I wont exactly be following regulations depending on the area unless I have a bear box handy.

oh man, that is so illegal

As far as I know, it's ok to abandon anything in the wilderness for no more than 24 hours.

Now, some people leave bear canisters in the wild and pick them up - I've seen 6 nice Bearvaults at Taboose Pass last summer, not very hard to find if you climb up the rock ledge just northwest of the pass, but I bet most of them take the canister and hike it out. Going BACK to retrieve an empty canister - boy, I believe I when I see it.

I'm pretty sure if you hike up to Taboose Pass this summer, you may find enough food to stuff your canister left over from those people who hiked their stuff up there last summer and never made it there to retrieve the canisters. There were cardboard box remnants below the canisters also left there, years earlier. I didn't dig in there to find out if the food was still there. Was too much crap to carry out.

Bottom line - find a better way to get your food up there, without chancing to leave a pile of plastic and garbage up there in case your plans change for some reason.

We are a team of three, with one Bearikade Expedition and two Bearikade Weekenders, stuffing food for 8 days into those three canisters. All will be repackaged into bulk zip locks, so that there's hardly any air. Works fine and I se no problem to fit the food into the cans. Probably can slip an extra treat in there.

17 days, though, that's too much for any canister.

My original resupply plan was to have Bob Ennis shuttle up food to Onion Valley road end after a phone call from me on Kearsarge Pass, but I gave up on the sat phone ($$$$) and decided to just carry the damn food and be done with it. In your case, though - the hike out over Kearsarge is not really a big deal and if you can get a cell signal you could coordinate a food drop with your arrival. Clean, get rid of your garbage, etc.

Then go to Taboose and plunder the illegal caches

yeah, I saw that. guess that is like shipping back the bucket if you never make it to the pickup. Great - all the video tape and canisters, precious rocks the kids found and whatever else is not essential is going to be shipped back on our return hike north.

Found cheaper buckets at Walmart's paint department. I don't know where else to get them. No connections to any food establishment and I don't really have time to go looking.

Bummer about the Ursack, but at least we now won't have to fight over the "chair" at the campfire any longer.

I'll post the details on our web site soon (still need to decide some flavors)

Typical day:

breakfast: instant hot oatmeal, Starbucks instant coffee, Nido milk into that

second breakfast - 1/2 cup home mixed cereal (oats, dry fruits, almond slivers, brown sugar, granola) with some Nido milk powder

lunch: crisp bread slices with Nutella, or tuna pouch, or Chorizo saussage, peanut butter

supper: either something like mountain house chili mac (I buy that stuff in the #10 cans, measure into zip locks), or home mixed stuff like a pack of fancy Ramen noodles with flat noodles instead of the curly mess, extra veggies and some freeze dried chicken in it. also like the hummus mix from the organic food isle, plus some pita chips and maybe saussage - saves cooking. Taco mix (also dry, organic food isle in supermarket), kicked up with vegetable taco flavored protein (buy in bulk at beprepared.com), tortillas. Tortillas pack real well, and last quite a long time. Pita chips are too bulky and I may just eat the hummus on tortillas.

drinks: Gatorade - about 1 quart per person per day. Kids have hot chocolate in the morning, we also have a few packs of "Crystal Light" with us to flavor water when it gets boring. I'm also bringing this year for the first time a protein drink for the evening (recovery drink) - buying 5 pounds of "All the Whey" Protein Isolate to spread out over the trip, 25 grams protein in each ounce of chocolae shake mix.

snacks: per day one or two of these;
Clif bar, Luna bar, Haribo gummi bears, Nutella (just eat it out of the jar), Almonds (love the flavored stuff, especially the chili flavor), peanuts, Sharkies.

I get about 2500 calories a day max - rest is used up of "stored reserves" - I probably will lose 20 pounds on this hike and that's part of the plan.

We stuff ourselvs wherever there is a food pickup (i.e. extra stuff in the cache), or where you can buy real food along the trail.

you hear all these stories about bears ripping a car open to get to a strawberry chap stick in the glove box, so I guess you do have to be extra careful to make sure there's no interesting smells in the car. I keep telling my kids not to eat in the car so there's no spills - but who knows, they may leave a strip of chewing gum somewhere under the seat...

so the question is - can you mess with their sense of smell? I read here on this board or another last year that if you spray pinesol cleaner around your car, it will mask anything the bears may smell in it. Any truth to that? The stuff sure smells wicked strong. What about a bowl of pinesol/water mix inside the car - that should be pretty effective if it's a black vehicle like mine... provided bears really don't like Pinesol!

I know it is but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything, my plan was to hide it some where that no one would come across it unless by some miracle, preferably on some sort of rocky slope in case a bear starts playing with it the thing wont roll far and cover it with some rocks.

I don't have a cell phone so that's not an option.

So many things to think about



Gives me a reason to go back into the wild after my trip

I don't know if it worked against the bears... or just helped give me a false sense of security... but we used pinesol soaked rags in the wheelwells when we parked at the portal last summer... not a scratch on the car when we got back!! And the car smelled pine clean for DAYS!!!

Seems to me you would save total hiking distance if you just hid it somewhere near the Onion Valley trailhead. It wouldn't be difficult to hike over the pass while you were out, and it would only be one trip instead of two.

well, over the years, I've parked up there probably 7 times for more than 2 weeks and never had a scratch on the vehicle, no Pinesol. I guess I will just clean it real good. Thing is, Yosemite Valley probably has a lot more bears, so I was going to up the ante with some pinesol.

At least it doesn't attract them

well, then you should move faster and cover more distance with less food. Works both ways.