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How to Bearproof Your Camp
The goal of bearproofing your camp is to minimize odors that might attract bears and to set up safe storage areas for food and garbage out of reach of bears and away from your sleeping area. The best way to do this is to start with a camp setup that facilitates these goals. In Safe Travel in Bear Country, Gary Brown describes a basic camp setup where the sleeping area is upwind of the kitchen and food areas, and all three are at least 300 feet (100 meters) apart.
Bear bagging is a general term used for hanging your food. There are lots of other animals (raccoons, opossums, coyotes, chipmunks, and skunks) that will go after human food. In some cases, you may be camped in locations where there are no bears, but still need to hang your food at night. Talk with local rangers about what the local critter population is and what precautions you will need to take. In areas with significant bear problems, there may be permanent food-hanging stands or containers provided by the park.
Hang up all food (except unopened canned food), pots, pans, cups, bowls, utensils, toothpaste, and garbage. In grizzly bear territory you should also hang up used tampons. On one backpacking trip in Shenandoah National Park, we diligently hung everything up. Around midnight a black bear came into camp and trotted off with someone’s pack—he had left a tube of toothpaste in one of the outer pockets. Be sure your camp is clean of food scraps that may attract a bear. Suspend food and garbage in duffel bags, stuff sacks, or sealed plastic bags at least feet (5 meters) above the ground and at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) from the tree trunk. The bags should hang from a point where the tree can still support them but bears and other critters will have difficulty reaching them. Make sure the bags cannot be reached from the ground, either.
Be creative and sensible with your techniques for hanging food. A 75-foot (23-meter) rope (at least 1¼ inch thick or 6 millimeters), two carabiners, and stuff sacks are helpful. When using stuff sacks, don’t hang the sack directly from the drawstring. Instead, wrap the string around the neck of the sack and tie it, leaving a loop through which to clip a carabiner, which alleviates the stress on the drawcord by distributing the weight to the entire sack. Thus, the stuff sack is less likely to rip and spill its contents onto the ground. Below are two useful methods of bear bagging.
Counterbalance Method
- Find a tree with a live branch. The branch should be at least 15 feet (5 meters) from the ground with no object below the branch that could support a bear’s weight. The point at which you will toss the rope over the branch should be at least 10 feet (3 meters) from the tree. The branch should be at least 4 inches in diameter (10 centimeters) at the tree and at least 1 inch in diameter (3 centimeters) at the rope point (see illustration). (Be aware that no system is fool proof—a small bear or other animal might still be able to climb out onto the branch and raid your food supply.)
- Separate your food and other items into two bags of roughly equal weight.
- Throw the rope over the branch. Attach one end of the rope to one of the bags.
- Raise the bag as high as you can up to the branch.
- Attach the other bag to the rope as high up on the rope as you can. Leave a loop of rope at the bag for retrieval.
- Push the second bag up to the level of the other bag with a long stick.
- To retrieve the bags, hook the loop of rope with the stick and pull it down. Remove the bag and then lower the first bag.
Marrison Haul System
The following simple but effective mechanical advantage hauling system was developed by Chris Marrison, one of Outdoor Action’s Trip Leaders. However, some bears are smart enough to know that by cutting the diagonal rope tied to the tree, they can bring down the food bag.
- Find a tree with a live branch. The branch should be at least 15 feet (5 meters) from the ground with no object below the branch that could support a bear’s weight. The point at which you will toss the rope over the branch should be at least 10 feet (3 meters) from the tree. The branch should be a least 4 inches in diameter (10 centimeters) at the tree and at least 1 inch in diameter (3 centimeters) at the rope point.
- Throw the rope over the branch. Make a trucker’s hitch (see page 163) about 6 feet (2 meters) from the ground and clip carabiner 1 into the bight of the trucker’s hitch.
- Feed the running end of rope end B through carabiner 2 and then through carabiner 1.
- Pull the end of the rope end A to move carabiner 1 as close to the tree branch as possible. Tie off Rope End A to the tree.
- Attach the food bag to carabiner 2 and haul the bag as high up as possible. Tie off rope end B.
- To retrieve the bag, untie rope end B and lower the bag to the ground.
To haul the bear bag up, use a sturdy tree as a block around which to pull the rope. Protect the bark from friction in the rope by using a stuff sack or piece of clothing. Or find a sturdy dead branch on the ground and tie the end of the rope to be pulled to this branch. The branch serves as a yoke and allows more than one person to efficiently pull on the rope at once.
If the Area Is Treeless
If you are going to be traveling in a treeless area where bears are present, you will need to take additional precautions. You may want to store your food in bearproof plastic containers on the ground, away from your sleeping and cooking areas. Bears may still be able to smell the food, but they cannot open the containers.
Tricks of the Trail
Pepper Spray There are a number of products on the market that spray a cayenne pepper derivative. Research indicates that such sprays are effective in deterring bears. In his book, Safe Travel in Bear Country, Gary Brown points out that such devices have limited range (15 to 24 feet/5 to 8 meters) and must be sprayed into the bear’s eyes. Therefore it can only be used as a last resort when a bear is almost on top of you. Your best defense is to avoid bear encounters entirely and carry pepper spray, in your hand or on your belt, to use only in the event of an actual attack. |
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发表于 2006-4-23 16:20:18
发表于 2006-7-14 12:58:44
发表于 2006-7-14 13:04:19
