Bear Hang using a 3:1 pulley system

[PaddlingPitt]

When Kathleen and I were on the Snowdrift River, east of Great Slave Lake, in 2001, we came across a camp of a young family from Florida. The previous night a bear had made off with one of their packs. Not a food pack, though. Worse. The pack had all of their toilet paper. They searched for several hours before they found the pack and retrieved their toilet paper. Relief all the way around.

 

[yellowcanoe]

When Kathleen and I were on the Snowdrift River, east of Great Slave Lake, in 2001, we came across a camp of a young family from Florida. The previous night a bear had made off with one of their packs. Not a food pack, though. Worse. The pack had all of their toilet paper. They searched for several hours before they found the pack and retrieved their toilet paper. Relief all the way around.

I have not canoed there so when I ask if there is sphagnum moss in the area don't laugh! I did find that caribou moss when moistened is very nice.

 

[Guest]

mice, squirrels, and raccoons are by far the biggest threat to your food and gear. On Saranac lake last spring i watched a squirrel attempt to unzip my soft side cooler. he grabbed the zipper and swung his body back and forth with me only feet away...was very funny.

I agree that small rodentia is the biggest threat, and the times past when we had critter issues with food it was always mice, squirrels, raccoons and chipmunks.

We have not hung food in years, but use a variety of hard sided watertight (and so hopefully odor-proof) containers. Even some of those had issues; some screw-top gasket sealed buckets and pails proved, when leak tested, not to be waterproof. Nor odor-proof; we had squirrels gnaw away at the raised lip on a couple different screw-top pails, down into the gasket underneath, leaving a field of plastic shards below the bucket (and a no longer even close to watertight container).

So far we have had not attempts to chew the lids of blue barrels or Cur-tech wide neck drums. Those are completely watertight, and so probably more odor-proof.

I don’t go to great lengths to triangulate tent/cooking area/food. Cooking is usually somewhere convenient to the fire pit, where there are likely residual food odors from previous campers, or under the tarp if raining, so. . . . food odors on the tarp? Food and stove get sealed up in a barrel and placed some distance from camp, distance depending on the threat level and how hard it is to bushwhack away from camp.

On long trips, where everything doesn’t fit in the barrel, we sometimes start off with a stuff sack containing commercially sealed freeze dried meals. That stuff bag is the only food that ever goes in the tent (vestibule), until there is room in the barrel.

A lot of our tripping involves designated or frequently used sites, and it is easy to tell when the rodent population has become habituated to people food, investigating any pack or barrel or scampering around the fire pit looking for scraps even before we have cooked anything.

A bigger issue is what to do with any garbage from packaging. We rinse out freeze dried meal packs, but melted Snicker’s bar wrappers, empty drink mix packets and other foil or plastic waste is a different story. I don’t burn plastic or foil, so that stuff gets bagged, usually double bagged (a used zip-lock baggie that once held cheese or salami, inside a garbage bag) and that garbage bag goes into a small hard side container, garbage pail placed away from camp and away the food barrel, so maybe I do triangulate.

We do sometimes still hang the lightweight trash container if there is an easy appropriate limb.

I have posted these photos before, but they are a good cautionary squirrel tale.

Going after a pressure cooker in a dry bag

http://photobucket.com/gallery/user...RyaXAvUDQyNDE5MDJfenBzMDk5ZGNjZjEuanBn/?ref=1

Lunch briefly left in an unattended day pack in camp

http://photobucket.com/gallery/user...RyaXAvUDQyNTE5MTRfenBzNWJmMmNjZTkuanBn/?ref=1

None of that soft sided destruction took the habituated little b*st*rds very long.

This as well proved a bad idea.

http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/CooperMcCrea/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxNDE2NTE2MjM=/?ref=1

Left hanging there overnight a couple of those dry bags that had, or had had, food inside were hole chewed wet bags come morning.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

The country along the Snowdrift. No sphagnum moss. Lots of lichen. Would not be so pleasant.

 

[Guest]

A favorite Squirrel memory, Squirrel-A-Vision 2000


(NOTICE - No squirrels were harmed during the performance of Squirrel-A-Vision 2000)

During a long, kid-intensive (one 8 year old, one 7 year old, two 6 year olds) Adirondack canoe camping trip, one of the sites where we set up camp had suffered a microburst wind shear some years before. The upside of this was that there was plenty of dead and downed wood for fires.

The downside was that this quantity of downed wood made great habitat for rodent type critters; we were overrun with squirrels, chipmunks and weird hopping mice (I had never seen jumping mice on the east coast before). Seriously habituated squirrels, and we didn’t help break that cycle.

Instead we ended up using the local squirrel population for entertainment - twice a day, during breakfast and dinner, we would all gather 'round to tune into what the kids eventually referred to as "Squirrel-A-Vision 2000" or "The All Squirrel Channel".

"Squirrel-A-Vision 2000" transpired like this. First we hung a stick, baited with a dab of peanut butter at each end and balanced horizontally at its mid-point, from an overhanging branch. The stick was hung with a length of 20 lb mono-filament line and 3 rubber bands strung together. The squirrels would leap out from the nearest branches and bounce around swinging wildly on the stick, eating peanut butter and attempting to master the trick of working their way from one end of the stick to the other while they wobbled and swayed through the air.

It was really interesting to watch the learning curve as the squirrels tested all of the possible leaping routes to reach the stick. All of the possible leaping routes; squirrels are apparently not content with discovering a few easy, convenient routes, they feel compelled to continue to try more difficult, if not impossible, routes. (Leaping from a branch 15 feet away, we could just imagine the squirrels thinking, seconds after launching into space: "Oh hell, this isn't going to wooooork. . . thud”

After the squirrels had mastered stage 1, we trimmed back the nearby branches so the leap was more difficult/daring. Another learning curve. One squirrel, nicknamed "Big and Brutal" by the kids was the fastest learner. He would also beat up "Little and Cute" and "Small and Stupid" if they tried to attain the peanut butter stick while he was around.

Once stage 2 was mastered we increased the difficulty level by suspending the balanced stick/rubber band contraption from a traverse rope between 2 tall trees, so that it was hanging a long way out in mid-air. It took a true leap of faith to go for the peanut butter at this point, having to time the leap just right as the stick slowly twisted in the breeze but, after a few complete misses, "Big and Brutal" got his timing down and mastered this new routine in short order.

The final stage of the squirrel baffle found us attaching some 6lb test from a rod and reel to the baited, leap-of-faith stick. One of the kids would sit waiting for Big and Brutal to make his leap and, while B&B was soaring through the air enroute to the promised land of peanut butter noshes...yank the stick out of his reach! I've never seen quite that expression on a rodent's face before (not to anthropomorphize things, but he was surely thinking "What the F#$%!).

To truly appreciate "Squirrel-A-Vision 2000" you would have to observe 4 adults and 4 kids, gathered in a semi-circle at mealtimes, sitting around a peanut butter baited stick in the woods, laughing maniacally.

One final "Squirrel-A-Vision 2000" note: The over-inflated party balloons (yes, we had balloons; I was treated to a wonderful backcountry birthday party) we attached to trees with a dab of peanut butter smeared on them didn't have the anticipated effect - I was figuring on a squirrely freakout, a rodent coronary. In fact, the squirrels would bite the balloon, the balloon would explode in the squirrel's face, and the squirrel would kind of shrug, look around to see where the peanut butter had impacted, and nonchalantly wander off to eat it.

 

[Guest]

a rat trap works great for chipmunk and red squirrel control at popular campsites and leantoos-which are the worst. warning--Squirrels are harmed in this activity.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

Kathleen and I began tripping in 1990. For most of that time we used three large Duluth-style canvass packs. Each pack had a waterproof liner. Our suppers were all dehydrated, each placed in a separate baggy. Groups of baggies were then contained in double garbage bags before placing them in the liner of the cavass pack. Food to be eaten soon was stored in a waterproof, hard-sided white bucket. At camp we hauled the canoe onto the beach, turned it on its side, and stored all the packs and gear under the canoe. We pitched our tent close enough to the canoe that I could hear any disturbances such as maurading bears. I was prepared to defend my gear and food if need be. We never took food into the tent, not even the vestibule.

In all those years and trips since, we have never experienced any damaged packs or stolen food, from any creatures, great or small.

As others have said or implied, we have never considered hanging food. I believe it is unnecessary, and in most places we have camped, not even possible. I might also add, that it is pretty much impossible to hang food high enough to protect it from squirrels. When we were still hanging food as backpackers in the '70s, I never once was able to out wit a squirrel, no matter how clever was my hanging design.

 

[sweeper]

When I was hiking and sleeping in shelters I hung my food from the vermin on the front support beam. I had a 12" heat reflector base for my MSR that I drilled a 1/2" in the center, cut a radius so I could form a cone and drilled two holes on the outer circumference to put a stick in to keep it cone shaped. The hanging bag string ran thru the center hole and was supported at the desired height by another stick under the cone wrapped around the hanging sting. Never had a problem after that.

 

[Alan Gage]

One time I went east and wound up doing some over nighters in the Adirondacks. I stayed in those little lean-to shelters. Never before or since have I experienced such persistent mice, squirrels, and chipmunks. The chipmunks during the day were kind of cute at first but that wore off in a hurry. The scurrying mice at night were no fun right from the get-go. Yet another good reason to stay west of the Mississippi.

I mentioned earlier that I keep my food inside my tent but if I wasn't traveling with Sadie I don't think I'd do that. She hates bears and I'm confident that if one came into camp she'd raise the alarm before it had a chance to try and enter the tent. Without an early warning system I'd be more inclined to strap it to a tree at the edge of camp with something attached as a noise maker to wake me up.

I also don't know that I'd be quite brave enough to keep food in my tent in grizzly country.

Alan

 

[Canotrouge]

One time I went east and wound up doing some over nighters in the Adirondacks. I stayed in those little lean-to shelters. Never before or since have I experienced such persistent mice, squirrels, and chipmunks. The chipmunks during the day were kind of cute at first but that wore off in a hurry. The scurrying mice at night were no fun right from the get-go. Yet another good reason to stay west of the Mississippi.

I mentioned earlier that I keep my food inside my tent but if I wasn't traveling with Sadie I don't think I'd do that. She hates bears and I'm confident that if one came into camp she'd raise the alarm before it had a chance to try and enter the tent. Without an early warning system I'd be more inclined to strap it to a tree at the edge of camp with something attached as a noise maker to wake me up.

I also don't know that I'd be quite brave enough to keep food in my tent in grizzly country.

Alan

You are a smart man Alan, grizzlies don't really care about a barking dog that much.... And things happen way faster than people can imagine.... Life can be taken in a heart beat, just happened a week ago to my god friend and her 10 months daughter..... Way faster than people think!!

 

[Holmes375]

You are a smart man Alan, grizzlies don't really care about a barking dog that much.... And things happen way faster than people can imagine.... Life can be taken in a heart beat, just happened a week ago to my god friend and her 10 months daughter..... Way faster than people think!!

That was a terrible thing. My condolences to you and the husband & father of the ladies lost.

 

[Black_Fly]

I don't hang anymore. One look at the trees (or lack therein) around campsites in BWCA shows what hanging can do. Maybe in little visited backcountry, but in an overpopulated, over-commercialized world, every campsite with a tree should be protected.

I guess I'll disagree with the usefulness of dogs as a first line of grizzly defense. Seen 'em bust arse away from smart herd dogs on several occasions. Of course, there's always other conditions to consider, including the nature of the beast and his proximity to food.

 

[Guest]

I don't hang anymore. One look at the trees (or lack therein) around campsites in BWCA shows what hanging can do. Maybe in little visited backcountry, but in an overpopulated, over-commercialized world, every campsite with a tree should be protected.

We don’t hang food anymore, but I had not considered the damage to limbs when grinding a rope across pulling up a heavy food pack, particularly the perfect limb in a heavily used site. In that situation using a traverse line between trees would help prevent some damage.

An increasing number of State Parks permit nothing to be tied to trees; no clothes lines, no tarp lines, not even hammocks with tree hugger straps. I still use trees for tarp ridgelines where not prohibited, and still hang a “clothes” line, even if only used to air out a sleeping bag or wet ground cloth when packing up. Hopefully those uses are less damaging than sawing 30 feet of rope into the bark hauling up a 50 lb food pack.

We were admittedly not always so tree friendly in our practices. Worst but most memorable example; when the boys were little we brought line to throw over horizontal limbs to make swings (loop of line tossed twice over a limb with a roughhewn log seat, or a hammock suspended U shape from the rope ends, sometimes swinging out over the water. Easy to take down, just detach the seat or hammock and throw the rope back over.

Word of warning: If you use a hammock do not place a child across the hammock face down and stretched out in Superman pose, and absolutely do not allow his brother and friends to spin him around until the rope is twisted tight, and then un-twirl him, smacking his feet as he spins around faster and faster on the way down.

Said speedy twirling child will retract his feet. This will reduce said child’s rotational inertia, and the increasing angular momentum will cause said child to spin even faster, like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQLtcEAG9v0

Until said child projectile vomits in a spinning circle that covers half the campsite. We didn’t do that anymore.

 

[yknpdlr]

Other than making it relatively easy to haul a heavy weight up, the other benefit of a pulley system (or Marrison haul technique with carabiners) is there is no friction placed on the tree limb, other than the weight of dragging a single carabiner and of the unloaded rope itself. There is only static pressure, no friction on the limb caused by the lifting the weight of food.

 

[Eric Billard]

You are a smart man Alan, grizzlies don't really care about a barking dog that much.... And things happen way faster than people can imagine.... Life can be taken in a heart beat, just happened a week ago to my god friend and her 10 months daughter..... Way faster than people think!!

That's truly awful, my heart goes out to all affected by this.

 

[Bothwell Voyageur]

So just realised, the Marrison hand is not a 3:1 it is only a 2: 1 with a direction change. Eric's hang is a 3: 1 but it sure ain't the best way to rig for a 3:1 z drag in boat rescue. The third pulley is there for a direction change and unfortunately it also multiplies the load on the branch (this only applies when pulling not a static load) increasing the odds of the branch breaking a landing on your head. From my math the stress on the branch is 133% of the load applied to the food pack e.g. if you were lifting a 45lb food pack you would be putting 60lb of load on to the branch. I think!

Actually the Marrison system is even worse. A 2:1 with a direction change puts 150% of the load on to the anchor.

For those of you putting a rope between trees it's also worth considering the load multiplier effect of a tight line upon the ends of that line. Just like all good hammock campers know, it's best to leave a nice curve in your cross line or you could be doubling (or more) the force on either end of the line.

Just thought I would throw those out there.