"Nearness to nature . . . keeps the spirit sensitive to impressions not commonly felt, and in touch with the unseen powers."
Ohiyesa, The Soul of the Indian, 1911.

My friend Steve Glenn and I were experienced rock-climbers but novice backpackers when we ventured unwittingly into one of the most notoriously bear-infested backcountry regions in the nation: Little Yosemite Valley. We did know, however – because the rangers had told us – that we were supposed to hang our food from a tree to keep the bears from getting it. So when we arrived in camp, we picked the nearest tree, tossed a flimsy bit of twine over a spindly branch about eight feet off the ground, tied our food bag to the end of the twine and hauled it up as far as it could go.

It was almost dark when we glimpsed a large, furry and very intimidating shape moving toward us through the trees, followed by two smaller shapes. A mother black bear and her two cubs were starting their nightly rounds. Soon the entire family was prowling the outskirts of our camp. We realized immediately that we'd hung our precious provisions at precisely the right height for a bear punching bag. I began having nightmares of ascending Half Dome the next day as my empty stomach and calorie-starved muscles traded insults. In a last, desperate attempt to save our food, we mobilized our only weapon – our vocal cords – punctuating our shouts with the cacophony of pots and pans smashed together. The bears yawned. They'd heard all this before. Sure of their ultimate victory, they retreated briefly, and we seized the opportunity to grab our food and hustle over to the "bear-proof" food-hanging cable the rangers had installed. One end of the cable was anchored to a tree about 20 feet off the ground. The cable then ran horizontally to a pulley at the same height on an adjacent tree, then down through the pulley to a stout, spring-loaded clip attached to an eyebolt firmly embedded in the tree's base. The cable continued below the eyebolt, providing the slack necessary to lower the cable and attach the food. We unhooked the clip, lowered the cable, tied our food to the middle of the cable between the two trees and hoisted it back up, leaving the food twenty feet off the ground exactly in the middle between the two trees. With the bears advancing upon us once more, we retreated, smugly satisfied that we would indeed have something edible to fuel our climb the next day.

The mother bear, who had watched all this commotion from a slight distance, now strolled up and deftly climbed the tree supporting the pulley end of the cable. The food bag was hanging at least 10 feet out from the tree trunk, far beyond her reach as she clung to the tree, and we were certain she wouldn't even come close to stealing our food. We soon learned that we had underestimated her intelligence. Once at the height of the cable, she reached out and gave the cable a mighty downward jerk, setting our food bag to swinging toward her like a pendulum. As the bag neared the apex of its arc, the bear took a swing at it with a massive paw. Even a glancing contact would have shredded the bag and dropped its contents to the hungry cubs waiting below, but she missed by inches. By sheer luck we had tied the bag to the cable with a short enough string to keep the bag from swinging within the bear's reach.

When her repeated jerk-and-slash technique proved futile, she descended the tree, grabbed the free end of the cable in her teeth and began yanking, evidently hoping to break the eyebolt or the clip anchoring the lower end of the cable. Still she was defeated, and our hopes rose that she would soon abandon her efforts. Then she turned her attention to the clip itself. Less than a minute later, she found a way to unlatch it, and our food plummeted to the ground. The cubs pounced on the defenseless bag, and all our hopes of breakfast vanished into their hungry gullets. Steve and I climbed Half Dome the next day with the hypoglycemic blues, then ran back down to the floor of Yosemite Valley where I came as close as I've ever come to literally eating myself sick.

Next Page: Protecting Your Food

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