Proper food storage against black bears on a LONG (e.g., 14 days) trip, partly in black bear country? (enough bear canisters not practical)

Question

This question is prompted by the replies to Questions about specifics of black bear encounter with mother and yearling cub. That question was about an encounter over 30 years ago, before the era of portable bear canisters, or at least before they were routinely used. And it was a 14 day trip, and there is no way we could have carried enough canisters for a 14 day trip. Maybe some of you supermen could have! So...the current question.

From my point of view, this question is theoretical, because we aren't going on any more 14 day backpacking trips without assistance from a packer. But I am curious.

How can food be properly stored against black bears on a long (say 14 day) backpacking trip at least partly in black bear country? Assume no campsites with established bear boxes beyond the first and last days. Assume no brown bears.

Can you really carry enough bear canisters? If so, tell me how! Do you rely on trees (bear-bagging)? Or what?

In the Sierra, with black bears, we have dug into snow banks to store food where there were no good bear-bagging trees available. This has never failed, and in several cases we know there were bears around (pawprints, neighboring campsite being ripped off, notorious bear traffic.)

Answer 1

An online poll showed that almost everyone on a backpacking trip eats about 15-20 kcal (63-84 kJ) per day per pound of body weight: http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=35516 . So let's take 17.5 cal/day/lb (161 kJ/kg) as a typical value. This is in line with my actual experience from trips where I made a spreadsheet of all my food.

Energy densities of foods vary a lot, but a pretty conservative figure is about 2.5 kcal (10.5 kJ) per milliliter. You can easily go higher than that. You can even get much higher than that, but only by depending heavily on fats, which isn't realistic. But let's use that figure as a conservative estimate.

My body weight is 140 lb (63½ kg). Crunching the numbers for a 14-day trip, I find that I would need 34,000 kcal (142 MJ), which would be 840 cubic inches (13.8 litre) of food. There are certainly bear canisters that big, e.g., the Bearikade Expedition, which is 900 in³ (14.7 litre).

As a practical matter, I would look for alternatives to shlepping that much food through the mountains. Maybe there is an opportunity to resupply, perhaps by making a side trip. Another possibility is to put some food in a hard-sided bear canister and some in something more lightweight, such as an Ursack.

In terms of weight, I usually eat 1.1-1.4 lb (0.5–0.6 kg) of food per day, and in an online discussion with a professional guide, he told me that a group of clients would almost always average exactly 1.4 lb (0.6 kg) per person per day. For a two-week trip, that comes out to about 20 lb (9 kg) of food, which is a lot, but not insane.

Most people vastly overestimate how much food they need to bring. Another common phenomenon is that people practice a heavyweight style of backpacking, which makes them reduce the number of miles they do per day. This makes their trip take a long time, causing them to carry more food. More food is more weight, which slows them down some more, etc. A different approach would be to reduce your base weight and plan on doing more miles per day. But this gets down to a matter of style and preference. Some people enjoy doing 20-22 miles/day (32–35 km), but others prefer to do other activities and not try to make so many miles. It's a question of what you're going to enjoy.

Answer 2

Realistically, if you can manage to carry the food, then you can manage the canisters also. They have been proven to decrease bear encounters and are actually now required in parts of Sierra National Forests, as well as in parts of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Inyo National Forests and in all of Yosemite National Park [see map]. This means you have to carry them whether or not you think they may be impractical.

The only other options are to hang a proper food cache or lock your food in a bear proof locker. Burying your food is not a recommended caching technique. I think you may have just gotten lucky with your previous experiences.

One thing you could try if there aren't any trees or bear poles around, is to hang your cache over a cliff or a tall rock. I've done this on several occasions while camping above the tree line.

Answer 3

In 2013 I did an long trip (12 days) in the Rockies (near Banff/Lake Louise National Parks). We were entirely back country, except for the very first camp site. In this area brown bears are the biggest worry, so we used a bear hang. Arguably this can also work against black bears (at least in areas where the buggers haven't become so clever that they figure out how to get to your bear hang).

On the amount/weight of food: I think Ben Cromwells answer is on the very light end of the spectrum. Unless you do absolutely professional (and expensive) food planning/preparation, and forgo some diversity/tastiness I'd rather calculate around 900g per person per day. The volume will also be a lot bigger than the theoretical values, I'd say 1-2 liters per person per day.

So for a 14 day trip (including reserves!) you'll end up with 16kg of food (+toiletries etc which you must also store bear-safe).

For our bear hang we used big roll-top dry bags normally used for water sports. We also used an improvised pulley system to get the bear hang (40ish kg for 3 people) 4-5m up into the air. Getting to that height means your suspending rope must be anchored some 7 meters above ground (to account for the length of the bag, elasticity of the rope, ...).

Yes, doing this every night is quite a task. Picking a decent camping spot and setting up the bear hang takes an hour at least.

On the other hand the rope/carabiner/dry bag equipment is not too heavy, and is easily stored in your backpacks.