What to do with pack at night?

'If Bear takes the pack….

Admittedly, the probability is low that this could happen, and I have never seen it happen but if it did, the bear would most likely shred the pack to get to the food.

I have seen bears go for my hung food. And I have had bears approach my camp while cooking dinner.

"How, exactly, is a bear going to escape with a pack that's hung from a tree well over its head?"

Black bears can climb trees. I admit that a mature black bear might be too fat to climb some trees, but that is why the mother bear sends her cubs up the tree. Cubs can climb pretty fast, and they are not always careful. The cub might get just one paw of claws on the pack as it falls, but that might be enough to destroy a pack.

We used to refer to bear cubs as Kamikaze Bears.

–B.G.–

"How, exactly, is a bear going to escape with a pack that's hung from a tree well over its head?"

Are you thinking that hanging food is 100% effective?

There is a reason the bear cannister exists and is required in many areas.

A determined bear, will eventually get food hung from a tree, given enough time.

They can gnaw the limb off, gnaw thru the cord, drop onto the bag and pop the cord or rip it open.

They are incredibly strong acrobatic climbers. Small bears live in trees, Ive watched them eating in the top of a tree 50' off the ground. They can climb and hold on for hours on a branch with legs and one paw, using the other paw and teeth to gnaw thru something.

I was backpacking in the Sierras with a couple of buddies in my younger years (~20 years ago) and had an encounter that taught me to NEVER underestimate bears.

We had dinner (fresh lake trout BTW), "cleared" our packs of smellables in a cannister and stashed the cannister several hundred feet from our site. As we began to fall asleep, a scraping sound woke us up only to realize that a bear had my pack in his mouth about 25 feet from us. We jumped up, roared and threw some rocks at him. He dropped the pack, took a long look at us and lumbered off.

Here are my biggest lessons… 1) Bears are silent and can seem to appear out of nowhere. To get to my pack (we were camped between some very large rocks) he had to step over one of us when we weren't fully off to dreamland. 2) Clear EVERYTHING that MIGHT smell and stash your pack away from where you're sleeping. After retrieving my pack, I found that I had inadvertently left an empty baggie in one of my side pockets that had previously carried some trail mix. We suspect he smelled our dinner, simply came into our camp and found what he could.

Whether you choose to hang your food or stash it in a cannister, make sure you get all smellables out of your pack. Unless I'm snow caving, my pack is always away from my sleep area. You can make your own risk/reward decision but I'll never test a bear. -DL

>"but I'll never test a bear."

Whereas I always challenge black bears. Grizzlies, OTOH, I don't confront nor run from. I move away slowly while they move away, eventually, quickly.

As a teenager backpacking in the Sierra, black bears would freak me out. I gave that up. It can BE my breakfast, but I won't let it EAT my breakfast.

heres what you need to know about black bears and hanging food:

I say we put David and his breakfast in a huge cage with a hungry black bear, and you know, see what happens, and how he does it. Kat Pee will film it, -B.G.- and the Idester will be the referees, and I'll sell tickets to pay the zoo for the cage rental and also our travel expenses to get to/from there. Animal Planet is sure to buy the rights to Kat's footage, and we'll all be well funded for our 2014 gear purchases!

Re: those pics of the black bear getting the food.

and he must be, an acrobat, to talk like this, and hang like that..