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Food Storage for 8 Days: Bear Bag vs. Bear Canister
Stats
Three hikers
Eight Days on the Trail
One Resupply Halfway Point
One food storage method has to work for two of these hikers, one of them a hungry young dude who is still growing. He eats. A lot.
Food Storage and Bears
Food storage is as important for hikers as it is for the bears. A habituated bear may wander through campsites at night; get too close to tents, shelters, and hikers; steal your food when you still have two days until resupply; and frighten people. A habituated bear will approach a higher quantity of hikers more often, be reported to park authorities, be relocated, or eventually, be euthanized. A habituated bear becomes a dead bear.
Beyond the bears, there are mice near the shelters along the A.T. because they have learned they can expect to find food there. They haven’t been nearly as present or troublesome as I prepared for them to be. Nothing chewed, nothing taken, no mice have climbed over my face while sleeping, nor scurried into my pack.
My sister saw a mouse racing back and forth over the top of our tent one night, and that has been our only mouse sighting over 76.4 miles of the trail. But still, we don’t want them in our food.
Container: Bear Canister vs. Bear Bag
Y’all, I really wanted an Ursack bear sack over a bear canister, and until the very last moment, I thought that was the way I’d go. I still think I’ll purchase one someday and try it out, but reasons.
Critter Proof
Firstly, you don’t have to hang an Ursack bear sack when you wander into camp for the night. With the addition of a smell-proof liner, it is safe to simply anchor it by tying it around the base of a tree trunk. Supposedly, bears can’t open them if closed properly, but they can still chomp and stomp on them, effectively destroying or at least, crushing the food inside.
Then again, stories abound of mice chewing their way into Ursacks even though they are “rodent-proof.” And if a mouse can chew into your food bag, then, maybe just maybe, a bear could, too.
“Rodent-proof,” like “waterproof,” is really a spectrum, not a box. Something can be pretty-darned-waterproofed or it can be breathable, but one of these qualities usually affects the other. And water doesn’t have teeth. Nothing is completely rodent-proof or waterproof. Thems the breaks.
With a bear canister, nighttime chores are reduced as well. Just close it up and tuck it into a place away from your tent; between two tree trunks, in some bushes, or behind a fallen log. Bears can’t open them; mice can’t get into them.
But many a hiker has searched in vain for their bear canister upon waking and found them gone. If a bear discovers your canister, he may try and try and try to open it and failing that, roll it down a hill where you will never find it.
Weight
Secondly, bear sacks are lighter by pounds not ounces. While a heavy-duty bear bag might weigh half a pound, maybe slightly more; bear canisters with no food in them, start at about two pounds and only get heavier depending on what size canister you get (which depends on how many people you are packing for and how many days you will be on trail between resupply opportunities).
Ug, I have been the bear canister carrier on trail with my sister. It balances out, mostly, since she carries the tent. Except in one way–I am always the last one ready to leave camp. I can’t close the bear canister until everyone has their items inside it, and I can’t put my clothes into my backpack until the bear cannister is inside already, and I can’t cinch up my backpack until that all happens and so on.
Canisters are heavy and bulky.
Expense
A heavy duty bear bag is nearly twice as costly as a bear canister. And both cost a lot.
Requirements
Bear canisters are required along many sections of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail, and probably every other long-distance trail out there is moving this way. You can hike through, but not camp in these sections if you are using other types of food storage (ie, bear bags).
That doesn’t make a bear bag impossible at all. But carrying one may require more planning and also, might cause you the minor inconvenience of having to keep hiking onwards even after locating a gorgeous spot for camping.
Also, if you’re investing in just one type of food storage, the one that is required in increasingly more areas of the trail into the future, might be the one worth paying for.
In short, for now, I am going with a Bear Vault 475, and I already love it nerdily like I love all my gear. Looking forward to using it in less than a week!
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Comments 8
Bearikade bear cans. Extremely light extremely durable and kind of cool looking. Drawback: super expensive. I couldn’t backpack without them. Easily worth the slight weight penalty to me for the convenience. I justify the expensive part by shrugging and reminding myself what good gear costs and the adventure it enables. I’m a sore mess at the end of every day, don’t want to fumble with finding and proper utilization of branches.
These sound amazing! I am definitely checking these out
Went with the same Bear Vault you did for my weekend trips in the Sierra after my first backpacking trip where there were no trees anywhere to be found for a bear hang. The very under-rated advantage of the cannister is that it makes for a very nice stool to sit on!
Good point, it does serve as a nice stool 😀
A bear found my beer cooler while I was building my home in Montana and left bite marks for proof. The bruin drank two six packs by biting the cans and sucking out the beer. The was 24 years ago. I still use the cooler. 😀
Nice! 😀
It’s important to distinguish the different products available from Ursack for anyone planning to go that route. The Ursack Major series is bear resistant, but not critter resistant. The Ursack AllMitey series is resistant to bears and critters.
I suspect that many backpackers purchase a Major and expect protection from rodents, but they are not designed or intended for that.
Absolutely, you are so right. I should have added the caveat that since I’ve not used an Ursack bag myself YET, my knowledge of them is limited, and definitely not nearly thorough enough to offer a proper or reliable review. Readers of this blog should try out the gear they want to and do what works best for them. And I do see an Ursack in my future, because I love exploring my options.