Bear Cannisters

imported
#21

What is up brother!!! e me at aswah2003@hotmail.com

Peace

Aswah

#22

That was a cool site Ard,thanks for the info

Newb

#23

i’m a bit late to this, but i do a lot of Sierra Nevada hiking so here’s my 2 cents. if you are headed through the Sierra in early season, the bears are still hanging out at lower elevations. the advice to skip established campsites is good, but not a guarantee. at higher elevations you are less likely to see bears, especially in early season. once again, this is NOT a guarantee. i was told by a SEKI ranger that the only serious bear/hiker encounters almost always result from hikers sleeping with their food. so far, PCT hikers seem to be doing OK, but that’s probably a combination of early season and stealth camping.

there are several bear boxes along the PCT. here’s a link to a site that features a clickable map of all bear boxes: http://www.climber.org/data/BearBoxes.html the PCT guidebook from Wilderness Press is pretty good about noting box locations, but boxes do occasionally get moved, so the climber site is probably more up to date.

if a bear gets your food, DON’T fight him for it. let him/her have it. if you still have your food, throw rocks at that bear! it works, i’ve done it more than once.

yes, Yosemite bears are appalling. be very, very careful passing through. we had a hellish night near Sunrise Creek on the JMT, and our food was in a canister!

yes, you can be fined and escorted out if you are caught canisterless by a hard@ss ranger in a canister-requiring zone. however, i have heard from more than one source that rangers go easier on PCT through-hikers, once again especially in early season. JMT hikers are cut no slack.

if i ever thru the PCT, i may very well carry a canister, just for my own peace of mind. but then i live in CA, so it would be very easy for me to temporarily switch to a sturdier pack so as to accomodate the extra weight (although i don’t do frameless anyway).

and the mountain biker who was eaten by a cougar? 10 miles from my house, on a trail i’ve walked several times. a little bit unnerving, that!

tarbubble

#24

Hey,

This last summer I worked at Devils postpile nat monument, and we required all hikers to carry bear cans. Most of the PCT thru-hikers I met and chatted with did not have cans and did not have any problems. But, when most of these guys came thru it was in june. We did not see any bears this year till about the 2nd week in july. Then they went nuts. Every trip I took last summer I took a can. More than once did it save my ass. I also met lot’s of people who tryed to hang there food and got it snagged by bears including a forest service trail crew.

toastyjosh