[at-l] Bear cables dont work!

[kahley@ptd.net (kahley)]

At 06:45 AM 4/25/02 -0400, Amy wrote:


>The Weathercarrot wrote:
>
>
>>The majority of the AT has minimal bear issues for hikers, and most 
>>people end up hanging their food in the shelters or sleep with food in 
>>their tents (whether people agree or disagree with those practices, 
>>that's what most long distance AT hikers are doing).
>
>
>
>Wow.  I had no idea.  Do most start out hanging food and get tired
>of it?


Ooops...wc just revealed the biggest example of
"don't do as I do...do as i say".  I have spent over a thousand
nights in the woods and have never hung my food. But...
1) half of those nights were spent in campsites that might
see 20 people in a year.
2)  three quarters of those nights were spent with at least
one dog who would wake me if a bear was near so i could
chase it off
3)  most of those nights were spent in states or countries
where bear are hunted and have a healthy respect for humans
4)  my attitude is that is_my_food and _my_ responsibility
to make sure the bear doesn't get ahold of it.  Hanging it
from a tree does not cut it.  Keeping it with me helps insure
my hike and the bear's future.

Bears who encounter these yummy smelling bags, hanging
from trees must think it's a new kind of fruit tree.  Hikers
huddle in their bags and let the bears have at them all night
long.  Obviously persistence has paid off.  Those bears are
already dead and it's the hiker's fault for not enforcing human
dominance in the situation.

Think of their behavior in a human sense.  Hiker sees a cooler
trailside.  Hiker approaches cooler.  There is no one anywhere
around!  He walks around, looking for people and when he sees
none, he opens the cooler and helps himself and is rewarded with
a cold one,    Hiker therefore repeats the approach, every time
he sees a cooler.  If the person who owned the cold ones had
not left them unattended....if they had, in fact, en masse, chased
the hiker away screaming at the top of their lungs, the hiker would
think twice about taking cold ones from coolers in the future.

The AT is a different case from the trails i usually hike.  It's filled
each year with people, many of whom have little backcountry or
even mifddlecountry experience. In some cases, they are restricted,
by regulations, to camp at specific places which are set up with
cooking shelves and picnic tables and access to water which encourage
people to eat there.  This spreads the smell of food around which is like
an engraved invitation to brother bruin.  And then they don't get outta their
bags and chase the bear away.  Recipe for a dead bear.

IMHO, official policy should be to NOT sleep where hundreds of people
have been cooking for decades.  And personally, I keep my food in
a big plastic jar which cuts down the inviting odor trail in the wind.

BTW....one of my hikers actually found a cooler trailside and helped
himself.  He had finished one and was contemplating another when the
people who had left it there, while they checked out a view, returned.....
a bit miffed that someone was sitting there drinking their stuff.  Fast
talking and an explanation of trail magic saved the day but the owners
were still not all that happy with their hiker encounter.