Adventures in Bear Bagging

With the aerial tramway shut down for annual maintenance, the weekend's planned summit trip to San Jacinto was a bust, so I was left looking for a plan B. Fortunately I had options, the most attractive of which was a return to the Secret Spot. My buddy Brian was game, and considering how much fun we had on our last camping trip, I knew the weekend would be sweet. Game on!

Gear loadout for the weekend

We arrived at camp Saturday morning, and commenced the process of rigging up a couple bear bags. After my bear encounter on the last trip, I'd done some research and had a foolproof strategy worked out. As it turned out, there were a few kinks...

All started out swimmingly as I sized up a perfect branch, about 25' up, sticking far out from the trunk, just big enough to hold the weight of my bag, but small enough to discourage even a hungry, courageous ursid balance-beam gymnast:

The chosen branch

After a few tries I managed to lob a rock over the branch, hook up a carabiner, and rig a PCT-method hang. My plan was to string up everything except the absolute essentials for sleeping, including food, backpack, gear, and extra clothing, thus keeping anything remotely smelly out of a bear's reach.

The rock toss

PCT-method carabiner passthrough

Unfortunately I soon learned that attempting to hoist a 30-40lb load with 3mm parachute cord over a tree branch is not as simple as it sounds. It turns out the friction between rope and branch is quite formidable, and no matter how hard I pulled the bag wasn't moving.

After pondering for a while, I decided to separate my gear into primary and secondary (a.k.a. second-hand) smellys. Primary included food, toiletries, and cookware. Secondary was anything that might come in contact with a primary, including clothing, backpack, and backpacking stove. I reasoned that the primaries must be hung, but perhaps secondaries would be safe if left in an open backpack somewhere other than near the food or tent (open so that a curious animal wouldn't chew through).

With considerable effort, I managed to hoist the primaries up into the tree, strapping my backpack with the secondaries to another nearby trunk:



I was reasonably happy with my work, but still somewhat concerned about the secondaries. I also found the PCT method's retrieval process pretty difficult. The stick used to arrest the cord in the carabiner was quite challenging to remove from the hitch knot when the line is under tension. Though I found my Leatherman useful in this task, handling the rope still left my hands a little worse for the wear:

Ouch

Nonetheless we set to work on a second hang for Brian's stuff. Lessons having been learned, this was sure to be quick and easy:

Brian sizes up the branch, rock in hand

Then the rope got tangled in the branch. In trying to untangle it, more rope got tangled in the branch. Then we yanked on it, and it got further tangled. It seemed every step we took to improve the situation worsened the situation. Then the rock got tangled in the branch. After an hour or so, the situation wasn't looking too promising:


At this point, I was hoping the bear might come by and offer some helpful suggestions. Instead we heaved giant rocks at the branch, granny style, hoping to somehow knock the whole mess loose. We took down a few minor branches, but in the end had to surrender and cut the cord. Brian decided this handy bear box was a fine place to stash his stuff instead:

Bear boxes: quite handy when available

After relaxing for a while at the awesome campsite...

Awesome campsite

...we took a short hike and watched this awesome sunset:

Awesome sunset

The next day we cruised up a nearby mountain, enjoying some awesome views:

Awesome view

It was awesome.

Not to be defeated, later in the day I set about revisiting the bear bag problem. I came up with a pulley system which was successful in improving the ease of lifting, but also required a higher branch (and more rope) to get the bag to adequate height. I also discovered that by attaching a large stick to the end of the rope, I could pull substantially harder and raise a heavy weight using the original system:

Leverage

This worked so well that I managed to pull my entire backpack about 25 feet in the air...where it subsequently became stuck:

Backpack stuck in 25' tree branch: not so awesome

After finessing things a little bit, I finally got the bag back down and achieved a successful hang, roughly 13' off the ground. It was my crowning achievement:

Full bag successfully hung

I was quite proud of myself, and spent the rest of the evening swapping stories with the local ranger. He's a cool dude. Good times. Then I went back (after dark) to retrieve my bag, which contained food for dinner. Retrieval did not prove so easy.

Apparently changes in temperature, humidity, or simply the fact that the bag had been hanging for a while somehow altered the dynamics of the whole rope sliding mechanism. I pulled (very hard), but the rope would not budge. More finessing, more patience, more pulling, and after a half hour or so I managed to get the small stick to head height, where I went to work with the Leatherman to get it loose. The knot was very tight (I would later find grooves in the stick where the rope had been). The rope became progressively more frayed as I pried on it with my pliars, and finally just as the stick was poised to escape the knot, the string broke, dropping my 30lb pack roughly 20' to the ground. Thump.

One 50' rope is now two 25' ropes

I ate dinner, put my primaries in the bear box, and hung my secondaries from a tree the old-fashioned (though vulnerable) way. Fortunately the rope had broken right in the middle, leaving just enough length.


I enjoyed a good night's sleep without any ursid visitors, leaving me well-rested and chipper in the morning to contemplate lessons learned in bear bagging:


Here's what I came up with:

• I need lower friction rope. Somehow this part of the equation has to be improved. Imagine if it were raining or cold. This weekend's challenges would be a joke.
• Though it would be ideal to hang both primaries and secondaries, there must be a contingency plan for hanging primaries only should this prove too difficult. Perhaps simply doing two hangs is the way to go?
• A small section of aluminum pipe would likely be an improvement over the small stick used in the PCT method. The knot should slide off much more easily.
• The pulley system has promise, but would require a branch of 40+' to get the bag to acceptable height (at least 10-12'). These are tough to find, especially without other branches in the way. They're also tough to get a string over. Not to mention needing 100+' of rope.

I'm open to suggestions. It's clear there is much to be learned.

Oh yeah..Aluminum tent stakes suck. Go steel, all the way.


Despite the challenges, this was still an awesome (and educational) weekend. Only two more weeks until I hit the Sierra!

Aloha.