Up here in Montana we don't have much for trees except conifers. I'm hoping some of you will have some good ideas on how to hang food bags so that the critters can't get to them. Lodgepole pines seem especially bad for hanging stuff. Any body with some helpful ideas? I don't want to attract bears especially to my camp. I always keep the bags at least 100 feet downwind of my camp BTW. Too bad we don't have some big old yellow birches in Montana!

It's especially hard to hoist bags when you're out solo. Any ideas on how you do this would be helpful too.



Thanks

I've seen a purpose built two rope system with a pulley that make hanging the food bags a little easier. On the Yukon we put the food bags under the canoes on the other side of the gravel bar and hoped for the best. In the BWCA we use a sturdy plastic bear barrel equipped with backpack straps for portaging but they'd be way too heavy for backpacking. In one Yellowstone backcountry site we hung our bag over a cliff. We do our level best to run a clean camp and to keep all food-like odors out of our tents. Were I backpacking in treeless bear country I might have everyone in the party carry their own chow in the smaller lexan bear safes, leave the food with the kitchen at the fire, set the tents elsewhere, and call it a night.

If you can find two trees with a bit of a "gulch" or small ravine between them then run a rope between them. Then use another rope over the first to hoise your food bag up. The ravine helps keep the bag a little higher off the ground. I always run my hoisting rope through a carabiner to help reduce the friction. A pulley would work better but the carabiner has more uses to me in other ways. Some people use double ropes in case the bear chews through one of them. I don't know how that works..I've never had problems. I'm pretty anal about keeping food scents out of camp as much as possible. I absolutely don't allow food in my tent ever and like you if I cook it's a ways away.

Not to hijack the thread but it's kind of related. I used to put my boots under the fly outside of the tent. One trip though an animal, a fox I think stole one of my boots during the night. All I found were the laces a few yards away. I don't usually carry extra shoes. I don't know why I had them on that trip, but my runndes sure came in useful. Moral of the story- I put my boots inside now.

the chef

chef,

I think your method will work best with conifers(especially small ones). The problem with conifers being how short the branches get, the futher up you go up the trunk. To get your bear bag far enough off the ground using a traditional method your food bag is hanging way too close to the trunk of the tree and within easy reach of the bear.

Thanks to everyone who posted replys!

You can do the same thing with, say poplar or big cottonwoods. As long as you have any branch or large bump to stop the horizontal rope from sliding down the trunks it will work.

I've also tied a rope in the middle of a stout stick and chucked it over a high crotch in a tree--it turns sideways and you can use it as an anchor for one end of the horizontal rope. The other end can be thrown over another branch on the opposing tree and then tied down along the trunk.

Bear bags are poor insurance, but better than nothing. I do use them especially if I'm hiking unarmed which is what most of my hiking experience has been. A bear can easily chew through your ropes and I've seen pictures of them hanging off clothes lines...so the small ones can shinny along a rope. You do the best with what you've got to work with including trees and equipment.

I remember hiking in Prince Albert National park in Northern Sask. We had a bear in camp and he looked around the camp and didn't find any scraps. Then he looked directly at our bear bag, he knew exactly where the food was. We scared him off-an easy thing to do, but I wonder what he would have done to the bag otherwise.

Bears in camp are a pretty common thing, and we probably don't see half of the ones that wander through.

the chef

Another thing is the horizontal rope really sags with weight on it so you have to get it really high up. Thats where a ravine helps so much...unfortunately they're not always there. The closer together the trees are the less the rope will sag. I foget now I think they say a bag has to be 15 feet or more off the ground. Your rope will easily sag 10 feet so you're talking at least 25 feet up or more for the horizontal rope especially if it's a long one. I suppose the higher quality rope won't sag as much but I've always just used polypropelene.

hope it helps

All the above.

Hanging a bag that can weigh 50 lbs or so can be a real chore. finding a good bear tree is a joy one with a limb that sticks streight out at about 15 feet high is great. Far and few.

Another item that is a great help is a small nylon bag to hold stones use it as a throw bag to get the rope high enough.

In some of the parks out east people have been going to camo rope because the bears found the light colored struff and chewed through it.

Good points p-dog. One thing you can do to help raise the bag is get someone to push on the bottom with a long pole while a partner pulls on the rope. I've done this by myself on occasion and it still works.

Hello;
A friend of ours regugarly cooks for an outfitter. She was alone in camp, in her tent one night, when she saw a nose sticking under the side wall. Thinking it was the camp dog, she swatted it with a piece of firewood, before she remembered the dog had left with the rest of the party.
Grizz

The conifer part is the hard part because of the smaller branches. But what we do is first throw a stone tied to a light line over a branch, use the light line to pull up a heavy one that is tied to the pack we are trying to protect. We pull the pack up about halfway between the ground and the branch we are over. This gets the pack up in the tree, tie the heavy line to the tree. Next we have another line tied to the pack; we use that line to pull the pack away from the tree trunk. Next problem is to find some place to tie this second line, hopefully there is another tree available. So far we have never lost a pack - on the times we have done it on spruce or pine I was nervous, but the branches are pretty flexible and I suppose it is not all that easy for a bear to get support to reach out and grab. Have not had the problem of bear chewing through either line yet either, but we do use the heaviest line we are willing to carry (old climbers). Not that much of a burden if most of your travel is in a canoe.