Here we go. Mid-June, and you’re camped on a site in the Knife/SAK area of the BWCA and you are the official group leader. You have six people (five adults and one kid) using two canoes (3 seaters). Everything is set up, you’ve buttoned up camp and are excited for some day tripping to other nearby lakes tomorrow.

You wake to a glorious morning. Everyone gets fed and the group decides to split up for the day. Your group is doing a longer day trip to Kek, Sema, Spoon, Pickle and some other lakes. The other group decides to check out Eddy Falls, fish and explore.

You take off with your group after buttoning up camp. When you return it is around 6 pm. The other half of the group has been back for quite a few hours and greets you at the shoreline with concerned faces. They inform you that a bear has come into camp twice while you’ve been gone. The bear never got any food, but did grab the blue barrel momentarily before getting scared off. Everyone is looking at you, it’s 6:30 pm, busy area...what do you do?

Tony

Hang your food in a tree so no animals can get it. No big deal after that. You just catch fish to feed the group to finish the trip.

Take a vote leave or stay?
Send the two strongest paddlers out to see if there is any available sites close but not close.
Hang food, clean Camp good,move in the morning
Sounds like a making of a long night either way.

colddriver: "Take a vote leave or stay?
Send the two strongest paddlers out to see if there is any available sites close but not close.
Hang food, clean Camp good,move in the morning
Sounds like a making of a long night either way.
"

I agree. IF the group votes to stay here is what I would do.

Sounds like the bear has the characteristics of knowing what it is doing. If it actually grabbed the food barrel. I am going to assume it has done this before. I normally hang my food. But I may improvise here and walk WAY away from camp and off the beaten path and stash in the woods.

I am not going to sleep well tonight, so gather a good supply of fire wood and enjoy well into the night.

The downside is, my supply of rum will not last the duration of the trip...

JW

Tough call. Given mid-June, you 've got a 3-4 hours before dark, so I'd be thinking of moving. If you're not sure where to go, I would think you'd find a site on Amoeber, Topaz, or Cherry in mid-June....maybe even somewhere else on SAK.

The other option is what SV posted....hang tight....and maybe rotate guard duty to "scare" any bruin away....then move in the morning after little sleep....

I only hang my food, but don't those blue barrels float? Couldn't you theoretically float the blue barrel out away from camp in the lake and just anchor it down? Honestly after a couple years of hiking in the mountains with grizzly bears, black bears don't really bother me. If I had the food secure I would not move. I would just make sure to have the bear mace out.

Canoearoo: "I only hang my food, but don't those blue barrels float? Couldn't you theoretically float the blue barrel out away from camp in the lake and just anchor it down? Honestly after a couple years of hiking in the mountains with grizzly bears, black bears don't really bother me. If I had the food secure I would not move. I would just make sure to have the bear mace out."

Oh this is clever. Use that basketball net you brought or a day pack with a rock as an anchor and let the barrel bob around like a buoy in 10 feet of water. No leverage to crush it and no traction to pull it away. It’s like an inverted, aquatic PCT method.

If that can’t be done, then I like the idea of hanging it like a regular bear bag but well away from camp. If possible hang it out over a cliff so there’s no ground underneath for the bear to reach up from.

Stay in camp with a fire burning. Use the 3 plus hours to go and get extra firewood so to keep it going all night. Rotate a guard and the five adults will each lose only 2 hours of sleep even with overlapping shifts. Keep your whistle handy to scare the bear and waken the others if needed. Move in the morning.

I so often read here about making camp and doing day trips. In fifty plus years and hundreds of trips I have never done this. If I were to the food is coming with. Unless I left a dog behind to guard camp this just sounds way to risky.

I'd go and paddle AF(ar)AP. You won't sleep well if you stay and you'd risk loss of gear, injury, and even death.

We had a situation on Quadga years back, where we paddled in, one site was open, it was the nicest site and we check it out and there's a fair amount of bear sign. The obvious bear hanging tree has alot sign of bears climbing it. Brief disucussion amoungst the 4 of us and we decide to stay. We ensure we keep a clean camp and the food is hung in a different tree off in the woods. I'm comfortable that its secure. First night - maybe 15 minutes before first light, I awake to hear something...I can't remember exactly what it was that I heard, only that it wasn't a sound I was expecting hear. I rollover and listen intently, only to hear the occupants of the other tent. "Hey, you awake?" "You hear that?" Me - "I don't know - what was it?" Them - "Somethings in camp". All right I'm getting up. As I start to rustle around to get out of bed. I hear the large thumps of something big running away.

This happened again on the second morning, but not the third. Our food bag was found safe each morning and we hung it whenever we weren't in camp or actively using it.

I'd discuss it with the group. Taking into account the level of fear that some of the participants may or may not be displaying. If you've got a couple that are terrified...I'd probably move so they too can have a better chance of enjoying the trip. You've got a 3-4 hours of light, so you could pack up and cover some distance for sure. North Arm Knife is great and often overlooked for the South. Also doesn't have near the same level of bear issues.

Great suggestions everyone. This happened to our group a few years back. The “long” day trippers were me and my son (8) and my cousin. The ones back at camp were my uncle, my dad and a friend of theirs. The “short” day trippers got back around lunch and dug the food pack out of the woods. I stopped hanging years ago and have never had an issue stashing the barrel back in the woods. However, the bear came into camp shortly after lunch and the food barrel was closed and latched, but out in the middle of the kitchen area. It was alarming to me that this bear had no problem marching into camp when 3 adults were around. I’m not a person who takes black bears all that seriously, they want your food, not you and I liken them to giant raccoons. This bear seemed to be demonstrating habituated bear behavior. I could tell from the looks I was getting that nobody wanted to have a night watch situation, so I immediately made the call to move. We packed up super fast and left SAK and found a site down on the western end of Knife, about a mile from Thunder Point, just as the sun was falling below the tree line. I think we got kind of lucky as we paddled past nothing but occupied sites on the way. I want to be clear about how clean of a camp I try to keep...I don’t fool around. No spills, no wrappers, no food in the fire, no food in tents. The food barrel contains two or three opsack bags and each meal is wrapped in it’s own ziploc bag, then tucked into the opsack bags, so everything is double sealed. I hide the food pack so deep in the woods and in such heavy brush that I’ve had a hard time finding it on occasion.
I really appreciate all of the comments and it was enlightening to read some ideas that never even crossed my mind. It’s a good learning experience to re-live these instances so that we can be more prepared in the future.

Tony

Too late to move.

I would have sprayed the bear.

If he/she became to aggressive He/she would have deal with something more potent.

Yeah, I never move because of a bear. I always dreamed of having a bear mess with my vaults. Wouldn’t have a blue barrel unless I had a way to hang well. Awful lot of people in camp to be the least bit worried about a bear. And dealt with them in that area before... it’s always fun to hear the neighbors banging their pots to confirm you scared it off. Haha!

We had a similar experience when I was on my second BWCA trip in 1985. I was on a 3 week trip with Outward Bound. We were at the end of week 2. I can't for the life of me remember what lake we were on but I think it was Kek or somewhere near there. We had left our camp for the day to paddle 2 lakes away to do some rock climbing and repelling on a very high cliff. We had hung our 1 remaining food pack well before leaving for the day.

When we returned to camp around supper time the food pack was still hanging where we had left it but was ripped wide open and the contents of said pack were strewn all over the place and back into the woods. Now tripping food has changed a whole lot since then, we had pasta, dried beans, trail mix, butter, pan cake batter, cheese, pita bread, dehydrate meat and spices to try and make it palatable. Well even the bear didn't like a lot of it. She got the cooking oil, butter, cheese, and another thing or 2 but surprisingly she spared us and left quite a bit of the dried food for the amount of time she had to go through it.

So we made supper, cleaned up, and sewed the pack. About every hour or so she would come back into camp looking for seconds. Now bears may be scary to some but the bear was met by eight 17 year old male humans that were dead set on not loosing another ounce of food. This bear not liking her reception would turn tail and disappear into the woods only to try sneaking back in later from another direction. That night we hung pots and pans from our rehung food pack and were woke a few times by the clatter and had all run out of our tents and scared her away. She would climb up the tree, shimmy out on the branch and trigger our alarm before she could swing down on the pack and rip it open.

To my memory we never discussed packing up and moving. I don't remember our 1 female counselor being overly concerned once were figured that with rationing we had enough food to make it the last week of the trip. And I really didn't think that a female black bear(summer time) was all that scary really and I did get quite close to her a few times. Of course we humans had numbers and I knew I could out run at least 2 or 3 of those human.

Man, looking back..the whole thing was freaking awesome and a good learning experience. I think us young men were pretty sloppy with our food and we learned a valuable lesson. I sure did. I keep a very clean camp, especially with my food, try to avoid dropping crumbs and clean up even the smallest spills. I will also pass on from a camp site that was not kept clean of food by the previous people. I haven't seen a bear inside the BWCA since that night and I don't think it's a coincidence.

That's a good story, Mike. Thanks for telling it.