There were black bears in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the 1950's when I backpacked as a boy. Back then I never saw a bear and never worried about bears getting my food. Today it is a different story. Tales of bears breaking into backpackers’ food bags night and day abound. National Park and Forest rangers no longer relocate chronic miss-behaving bears. Unfortunately, now they just shoot them! The problem is not the bears, but rather it is the people who do not properly protect their food. The bears learn bad behavior in their successes at stealing food, pass it onto their cubs and the cycle repeats.

In August 1982 my first encounter with a bear occurred when I took my then fourteen-year-old son, Jason, on his first backpacking trip out of Twin Lakes, CA into the Hoover Wilderness area on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Toward the end of the hike we dropped into Malby Lake which is at about the 9800-foot elevation. There was lots of snow around, and we saw numerous footprints made by a bear along the north ridge as we approached the lake. It was late afternoon when we arrived, and we were very tired and hungry. We quickly cooked dinner and hastily hung our food bags in the first tree we found about 200 feet from our camp. I threw a rope over a small branch, attached the bags, and tied the other end to the base of a second tree. The wind howled all night long, and we heard strange noises as the trees thrashed about. The next morning we found the disaster. The food bags were ripped to shreds, and the dehydrated food packages were opened and strewn all over the ground. The black bear left only one package of dried string beans, plus a pile of bear scat as testimony to our stupidity. We never even saw the bear. I quickly caught four brook trout that we ate with the remaining green beans. We paddled our gear and selves in several trips to the end of Malby Lake that has steep cliffs on both sides (we had packed a small portable boat). Then we cross-country hiked down Little Slide Canyon through steep snow and over dangerous ice bridges to the trailhead at Twin Lakes. It was not a pleasant end to the trip that should have lasted longer.

That experience began my quest for methods to protect our food from bears. I tried various schemes and improved them though the years. The following is what I have learned and developed. To date we have been visited only once again by a bear (three times in one day though!), and have never lost any more food.

If you pack all your food in bear canisters, or if you can counter balance your food bags according to the National Park Service cartoon in less than 10 minutes then you probably know what to do. This article is for those who would want to protect their food from black bears more efficiently (i.e., time to protect and weight) with reasonable assurance that your food will survive an unexpected bear visit. This article is not intended for protecting your food from grizzly bears, which do not live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains anymore.

If I could carry enough canisters to hold all my food and fragrant accessories I would do just that. But this is not a practical solution for a ten day backpacking trip into the Sierras. First of all each food canister weighs about 3 pounds. Next, the packages of dehydrated food today are bulky; plus they swell up like balloons at high elevation. This makes it hard to efficiently store all your food for a long trip into a reasonable number of food canisters. The solution is to carry enough food canisters to hold a two days supply of food. This should be enough food to get you out of the mountains in a pinch if a bear succeeds in getting the rest of your supplies that are placed in specially constructed food bags. Hopefully this will not happen if you follow the suggestions below.

Food bags can be counter balanced off limbs when suitable trees are available, or place in rock-covered pits when camping above the tree line. The most important thing to remember is counter balancing food bags in trees or placing them in a rock pit only buys you time. Given enough time a hungry black bear will succeed in getting your food. The game is to provide sufficient time to discover that there is a bear in your camp, or close by, and then scare it away. Sometimes you may have to do this several times in one day or night since the same bear may keep coming back. Black bears can be very persistent!

The better job you do in properly securing your food, the more time you will have to scare any hungry bear(s) away. You should counter balance your food as soon as you reach camp. Many people hit camp, drop their bags and go down to the lake to fish or swim. Since bears will come any time of day or night, you should never leave your food for a minute unless you have it secured. Find a tree with a four-inch (or larger) diameter limb where it meets the tree. Then counter balance your food bags 10 feet or more from the trunk, with the bags hanging at least 12 feet above the ground.

When choosing a limb I try to select a tree that is right in middle of the camping area. I like to have my bags hung less than 20 feet away from where I am going to sleep. I often sleep under the stars when it is not raining with a pile of rocks near my head. Also, I often place pots and pans precariously around the base of the tree that holds my food so I will hear a bear starting to climb up the tree. This worked a couple of years ago in the Sequoia National Park at the largest of the Big Five Lakes where a bear came to our camp three times. The last time was about 11:00 p.m. when we awoke as it knocked over some pans we had placed on top of our food canister. My son hit the bear with a rock, and it did not come back.

Counter balancing your food will buy you a few hours if a bear enters your camp. A bear can chew through a four-inch branch causing it to drop to the ground along with your food bags. But this takes time, on the order of several hours. On the other hand a sow with a cub could drastically reduce this time. Female bears have been known to send their cubs out on a limb and down the rope to the food bags. This could mean you might only have 10 or 15 minutes before the bears have your food. On the other hand, I would guess that throwing a rope over a limb, hanging your food on one end of the rope and tying the other end to a stump (the wrong thing to do!) will give you about 10 seconds. If you are asleep you do not have a chance. Remember, once a bear has your food in its possession it belongs to the bear. You are not going to get much of it back, and don't try it - you may get hurt!

The bottom line is time. When you hike down the trail with your food in your pack you own it. When you take off your pack, even for a drink of water, ownership may start to change. You do not want to leave your pack on the ground unattended. When your food is properly stored in a tree you have time, but not absolute protection. Black bears are cunning sneaky creatures. That is why I often carry a two days supply of food in one or more food canisters as a safety precaution.

Over the years I have developed the gear to efficiently counter balance food from tree limbs. Here efficiency is measured in terms of hanging time and gear weight. I wish someone would manufacture these items in a kit and sell it. I have tried to give my ideas away to manufacturers like R.E.I., but without any success. So you are going to have to assemble the various items yourself. Shown in the photo on the next page are the following items that you will need:

Lets talk about each of these items in detail.

The 50-foot 1/4-inch diameter nylon rope (1) is the main rope for hanging the food bags. I have seen many examples of 1/8-inch rope that people have tried to use. You see remnants of rope this size hanging in trees where it has snagged a limb and been broken off by backpackers retrieving their stuck food. This size rope is too light and will eventually snag up and be broken. A good place to get 1/4-inch nylon rope is at a marine supply store. Finish the ends of the rope by carefully lighting a match and singeing the two ends (do not let any of the burning nylon material fall on your skin - it really hurts!)

Have you ever tried to throw a 1/4-inch rope secured with a rock over a branch that is 20 plus feet above the ground? Pretty darn hard to do it! This is one reason why backpackers use 1/8-inch rope - it is a lot easier to throw over a limb. The solution for being able to use a larger rope is simple. Use the 25 feet of 1/8-inch nylon rope (2) to lead the main rope over a branch that is high above the ground. You simply tie one end of the 1/8-inch lead rope to a small rock and the other end to the main rope. The rock and smaller rope can then be thrown over the limb with the rock usually hanging down the far side of the target limb by a couple of feet. Then by jostling the rope, the rock will drop incrementally with each jostle, pulling the main rope over the branch and down to a level where you can grab it.

Tying the main rope to the first food bag is easy, but attaching the second bag can be a time consuming job. Some people will pull the first bag up to the limb then, on tiptoes, try to loop the rope around the second bag with some kind of crazy knot. Often this fails, with the second food bag slipping out and falling to the ground with the first bag following immediately after. This is where the Lightweight 4-inch carabiner (3) comes in handy. It is used to securely attach the second bag to the counter balancing rope system as discussed below.

Once the second bag is attached to the main rope and the excess rope is coiled, some people will throw the second food bag high in the air hoping the first bag will fall to the same elevation as the second bag. When the bags fail to line up side by side, a stick is then used to push the lower bag up even with the other bag. This will work, but again it often takes unnecessary extra time to get it right. A simple lightweight solution is to have 12 feet of 1/4-inch nylon rope with a bungy-cord hook attached to one end (4). This rope can be used to move the two bags to the same elevation when counter balancing the food bags, and then to retrieve the bags when you need your food. Take a 1/4-inch bungy-cord, cut it and remove the hook. Then pass the end of the 1/4-inch nylon rope through the coiled end of the hook, tie an overhand knot, singe the end and wedge the knot into the hook coil. How to use the rope and hook when hanging your food bags is discussed below.

You will need at least Two food bags with specially adapted straps and D rings (5). The straps are sewed to standard 8-inch diameter by 20-inch long stuff bags that you can buy at an outdoors store like R.E.I. You need the straps so that you are always pulling on something strong and not directly on the bags or closure string. When you have 20 pounds of food on each side of the counter balancing system, it often takes a lot of force to pull the rope down to retrieve your bags. The rope sometimes digs into a sappy limb, and the friction forces can get quite large.

The figure shows how the straps should be sewn to the bag. Note that there are two 1-inch wide straps (A, B) attached to each bag. One long single strap (A) with one-inch size D-rings at each end wraps completely around the bag with a 3-inch wide loop (C) hanging below the bag at the bottom. A shorter strap (B) hugs the bottom of the bag and overlaps the longer strap (A) about 2 to 3 inches on the two sides of the bag near the bottom. The straps (A, B) are sewn to the sides of the bag (about 14 inches of sewing on each side). The shorter strap (B) is also sewn to the bottom of the bag to keep it in place. When you hook the bottom loop of the bag (C) with the bungy-cord hook and pull down on the bag to move it, all the tension force is in the rope and strap (A) - not in the bag. I also sewed a small 1/2-inch Velcro strip (D) onto the side of each bag. I use this to hold the coiled excess rope that you have after the second bag is attached to the main rope. This is "gilding the lily" a bit, but makes it easy to quickly secure the excess rope.

A good place to have the straps and Velcro strips sewed to your bags is at a cobbler shop. Buy the bags, straps, Velcro strips and D-rings and take them to a shoe store with clear instructions on what you want done. Be sure the cobbler provides a 3-inch loop at the bottom of each bag. This will make it easier to slip the bungy-chord hook and rope over the strap at the bottom of the bag each time you retrieve your food. Several years ago it cost me about $25 per bag to have the bags and straps assembled by a cobbler.

I confess that I have four bags (two on each side of the counter balancing system). The four bags plus two food canisters holds food for three hungry people on a ten-day trip. However, this luxury is not necessary. Once you have two specially-constructed bags you can always hang more regular bags to each side of the counter balancing system by using the string ties of the extra bags tied to the bags with the strapping (just secure the extra bags to the D-rings). These extra bags just go along for the ride. Do not pull on the extra bags to raise or lower your food as the string ties may break. In the discussion below I refer to only two bags, but remember that you can have more than two (as shown in the accompanying photographs). Note that the total weight of four bags, ropes and carabiner is about 2-1/2 pounds.

The following four steps are required to properly hang and retrieve your food:

Finding the "best" branch to hang your rope and food bags will require some practice and compromise. First lets list the attributes of the ideal situation:

I love Ponderosa pine trees with high branches that taper to 1-inch in diameter about 25 feet from the tree trunk. However, I usually get a tree that is significantly less desirable than the attributes listed above, and I am forced to compromise. The issue is how much time will it take a single bear (or a sow bear with one or more cubs) to get your food. As you relax the above desirable attributes in a real situation, visualize how your several hours of lead-time are being eroded. This will mean that attention to your stored food may have to be modified. If your situation is much less than perfect, you should always have someone in or near camp during the day and sleep a little lighter at night.

Once you have found that "perfect" branch, now you have to get the main rope over the limb and down to the ground. Find an oblong rock about the size of your fist. Attach it to the end of the 1/8-inch lead rope. I make a clove hitch that I form from two loops that are crossed. Then place the clove hitch over the rock and spread the loops to cradle the rock securely. I usually add two half hitches to keep the knot from loosening when the rock is thrown. Tie the other end of the 1/8-inch lead rope to the main rope (I use a bowline knot). Lay the ropes out on the ground in large s-shape loops so they will not tangle when the rock is thrown.

Stand back from the limb and throw the rock with rope attached. If you are lucky (which happens once in a while) you will throw the rock and lead rope over the limb on the first try. The rock and rope usually will hang down a few feet below the limb. Jostle the rope by throwing wave-like loops and the rock will move downward in increments until you can finally reach it and pull the main rope over the branch and down to the ground.

More likely than not you will miss the limb, or throw the rock over the wrong limb. In the latter case when retrieving the rock and lead rope be careful not to snag the rock on the limb and end up breaking the 1/8-inch rope. Sometimes it is better to follow the instructions given above for lowering the rock and rope to the ground, then untie the rope from the rock, retrieve the rope and start over.

After several tries, and with some patience, you will succeed in placing the main rope over the limb and have the two ends of this rope in your hands. Pull on the two ends simultaneously with sufficient force to test the limb. In some cases you will be too far out on the limb and it will bend down causing the rope to slip off the end of the branch. It is better to find out early if a problem exists, rather than finding out as you are raising your food bags. Throw the rock over the limb a little closer to the trunk, or possibly consider finding a new limb if the current one is too flexible.

Once you have placed the main rope over the limb and feel comfortable that it will hold the food bags, you are now ready to counter balance the food bags. The weight of the two food bags should be roughly the same. This does not have to be precise because the friction force of the rope on the limb will prevent a slight weight difference from unbalancing the hung bags. Just grab the bags in your two hands and judge if they weigh about the same. Adjust the weight if necessary, but note that this does not have to be rocket science. Toward the end of the trip, when the bags start to get light, you can add a few rocks to the two sides to provide enough weight to insure that the rope will pull smoothly over the limb. Just remember to remove the rocks when you break camp and pack up - ugh!

Tie the ends of the main rope to the two D-rings of one bag (two half-hitch knots will work). Then start pulling down on the other end of the rope until the bag is off the ground. At this time attach the bungy-cord hook and its rope to the strap at the bottom of the bag. Pull the bag all the way up until either the bag touches the limb or the end of the bungy-cord hook rope is just at the top of your reach. If the latter case occurs, you did a great job of finding a limb that is high enough and placing the rope over it.

Now comes the job of attaching the second bag to the main line. At this point I have placed the carabiner in my shirt pocket so I can get to it easily (or put it gently between my teeth if I do not

have a pocket). I reach up and with both hands tie the "all fools" knot that my grandfather taught me as a boy. The sequence of photographs below shows you how to tie this knot (If you can tie another knot that will not slip then use it).

Overlap the two loops of the "all fools" knot and hold it with one hand while you grab the carabiner with the other hand and open the movable arm and slip the carabiner through the knot. Pull the rope tight and the carabiner is now in place. Standing on the end of the rope so it does not slip, pick up the second bag and place the D-rings onto the carabiner and let go. The bags will now stay balanced in place. Coil the excess rope, tie it off securely and attach it with the Velcro strip to the side of the second bag. It is important that this rope is very secure, because if a bear gets up in the tree and shakes the limb, you do not want the rope to uncoil and fall to the ground. The bear will go down to the ground and pull the rope, bags and limb down to it, breaking the limb, rope or both.

PICTURE 1                    PICTURE 2                    PICTURE 3

To level the two bags just pull on the rope attached to the first bag by the bungy-cord hook until the bags are at the same elevation. With a flick of the wrist on the rope the bungy-cord hook will come off the strap and your bags are now secure.

PICTURE 1                PICTURE 2              PICTURE 3

You retrieve your food bags just in reverse to hanging them. With a long stick or a fishing rod (use the lower section so you do not break the tip of the rod) lash the bungy-cord hook to the stick or rod using a short 6-inch length of 1/8-inch nylon rope. Then reach up and attach the hook to the strap that is hanging down from the bag that you put up last - the one with the coiled rope attached. This is important! If you attach the hook to the other bag you will retrieve your bags, but your main rope will come off the limb in the process

PICTURE 1                PICTURE 2              PICTURE 3

By pulling down on the rope attached to the bungy-cord hook, the second bag will come to your reach. Untangle the coiled rope and spread it out on the ground. Unhook the bag from the D-ring, and then remove the carabiner from the rope (the knot will then come apart). I do not recommend leaving the carabiner on the main rope as it could become tangled in the limb when you lower the second bag to the ground.

PICTURE 1                                  PICTURE 2

Finally, lower the other bag to the ground and remove the rope from the D-rings.

You now have your food bags, and the main rope is back to the position it was when you started.

If you follow these instructions, with practice, you should be able to counter balance your food bags in about 10 minutes. Retrieving or re-hanging your food should not take more than about 5 minutes each. My hope is that backpackers will use this system to easily protect their food. Bears will then no longer steal people food and will search for their nourishment elsewhere as they have been doing for eons. This will be good for the bears and backpackers too!

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