Algonquin Adventures / Personal Care Items, Hang With Food?

**Posted by Ash** 7/19/2017 2:20 pm

Hi Folks!,

Curious, what do other people do with their scented personal care items at night? ie toothpaste, deodorant, etc? Do you hang with food? Leave in pack in tent? Other? Also, has anyone ever had any issues with animals going after these items if kept seperate from food?

**Posted by RobW** 7/19/2017 5:06 pm

If you are going to bother hanging stuff, then yes these items should be hung too - along with the clothes you were wearing while cooking and eating.

Personally I stopped hanging stuff a long time ago.

**Posted by Curemd** 7/19/2017 5:44 pm

I'm new to backcountry world but I was even considering hanging my cookware as well with my food and personal products. Didn't even think about my cooking clothes. Don't think I could sleep at night without hanging my stuff. Chipmunks mice and bears. Oh my.

**Posted by Jdbonney** 7/19/2017 5:53 pm

Rob, what do you do with your food now that you've stopped hanging it?

**Posted by Jdbonney** 7/19/2017 5:54 pm

Also, what made you stop hanging?

**Posted by trippythings** 7/19/2017 9:09 pm

RobW wrote:
...along with the clothes you were wearing while cooking and eating.

I thought I was the only one that did this! I know people hang their food, personal care items, cookware, etc. but haven't heard of many other people hanging their clothes as well.

**Posted by CanoeClaire** 7/20/2017 10:18 am

We always hang our food and personal items. I'll hang pots only if I haven't been able to/was too lazy to get them really clean (e.g. if I made chilli and the pot is still sort of greasy).

We hang the bear line before it gets dark and put a little light on it. That way it's easy to find in the dark after we've brushed our teeth!

I've never considered hanging clothes I've cooked in. We typically cook over the fire so I assume the smell of smoke outweighs the smell of food. Even if I was cooking over a stove, I assume the smell of me as a person would outweigh the smell of food.

**Posted by RobW** 7/20/2017 1:07 pm

Jdbonney wrote:
Rob, what do you do with your food now that you've stopped hanging it?

Food is in the barrel, camp is kept clean. barrel and other items are usually tucked under a tarp too. No the barrel isn't bear proof, but the bear will make enough noise that I'll be waking up.

It's a valid but recurring topic. Most Ontario Parks don't provide options for meaningfully storing food. Hanging just adds wear and tear on trees. National Parks out west provide bear cables strung between posts. Those work fairly well for grizzlies which don't generally climb. Lots of videos of black bears happily climbing and traversing ropes to get to hung bags so I doubt even a proper cable set up with have much value in Ontario with black bears. Even with the cables, to be effective you need to cook at least 100 yards from the tents and then hang at least another 100 yards from there.

Pukaskwa National Park and (I just heard) Frontenac Provincial Park provide food lockers. The ones in Pukaskwa are concrete with galvanized steel doors. Those are likely effective.

Then again, if you're eating chili (which is a standard meal on our trips), then your sleeping bag probably smells pretty good by morning anyway.

**Posted by RobW** 7/20/2017 1:13 pm

Jdbonney wrote:
Also, what made you stop hanging?

Biggest motivator was considering the wear and tear on tree branches - which went along with realizing that there weren't a lot of good branches around to start with - which took me back to figuring out why good branches to hang from were in short supply - probably because they had been killed off by rope damage.

I also saw both enough videos of bears easily reaching food sources that were hung in a variety of ways and a lot of discussions about best practices. While hanging food gets a lot of attention, it isn't practical in many places including Ontario. Once you get up into the boreal you aren't going to find a big enough tree to hang your food from.

**Posted by RobW** 7/20/2017 1:24 pm

trippythings wrote:
RobW wrote:
...along with the clothes you were wearing while cooking and eating.
I thought I was the only one that did this! I know people hang their food, personal care items, cookware, etc. but haven't heard of many other people hanging their clothes as well.

Nope, you don't hear of it, which comes back to the difference between hanging food because you think you should versus taking all the steps to make it a worthwhile exercise. If you are going to hang stuff, then in order to be effective you do indeed need to hang that shirt you were wearing when you cooked the bacon along with the pants you spilled the spaghetti sauce on.

This video sums up my experience with meeting bears in the back country:

Bears can become a problem and bad camping practices like those reported in the garbage thread are serious contributors. Bears can also become predatory, but those extremely rare bears aren't going to care if your food is hung or not. Most bears are going to leave you alone and take off if *you* get too close. I had a closer encounter on one of the last portages of the trip that video is from where I came around a corner and a bear was about 30' from me in the middle of the portage trail. I said "hi" and the bear swore at me and took off into the bush the way he was already headed. Sadly the cameras were still with the packs back at the other end of the portage.

**Posted by EddyTurn** 7/20/2017 1:28 pm

Whatever you do, keep the site and food packs as odor-free as humanly possible. The point is not to attract animals. If they are attracted it's very difficult to get rid of them. I haven't yet seen a rope that a common squirrel and her uncle won't be able to climb.

**Posted by petey** 7/21/2017 7:07 am

We have had good luck putting all the food in a canoe and putting it out from shore about 100 feet...so far

**Posted by nvm** 7/21/2017 7:27 am

How do you stop the boat from floating back to shore? And how do you stop any even mildly interested bear from swimming out and grabbing what it wants? That wouldn't slow them down for even a second.

Keeping your food in a barrel at your site is safer, so long as you're willing to get up and defend it if required. At least that way the bear doesn't get a reward. If it's all happening 100ft from shore you very well might not scare the bear away, or even hear it, until it's already been rewarded.

Personally I have no interest in defending my food from a 300lb bear in the middle of the night, so I hang it (and toothpaste, etc) from a cross rope. It takes, typically, 20-30 minutes to set a bear hang that gets the food 12 feet high and at least 6 feet from any tree or significant branch.

**Posted by spicol** 7/21/2017 8:08 am

RobW wrote:
Food is in the barrel, camp is kept clean. barrel and other items are usually tucked under a tarp too. No the barrel isn't bear proof, but the bear will make enough noise that I'll be waking up.

It's not about being given the opportunity to defend your food though, it's about not giving that bear the easiest of accesses in the first place and avoiding situations where you might surprise a bear and get an unwelcome reaction.

Most people have not experienced bear issues because of probability not because the shortcut things they are doing regarding food storage are working.

I don't think it's a good idea for veteran backcountry campers to simplify arguments like this down to "it doesn't matter if you hang your food" because there's a lot of context and a comfort level with wildlife here that beginners might not understand without experience. Yes, you know what a clean camp means. You know how to defend yourself again a black bear visit if necessary. You make your food slightly harder to access to give yourself some time to get up and react. I'd hate for a newb to read this and say "hey, the moderator of the forum I read doesn't even hang food, I don't need to either" out of laziness and then get a visit into their Coleman cooler at 2am with no idea what to do next, kids screaming.

I hope people who choose not to hang will at least use ursacks or other proven bear-proof containers, not blue canoe barrels. It's not just about the risk to you. It's about the risk to everyone and the bears themselves.

**Posted by spicol** 7/21/2017 8:13 am

RobW wrote:
Most bears are going to leave you alone and take off if *you* get too close. I had a closer encounter on one of the last portages of the trip that video is from where I came around a corner and a bear was about 30' from me in the middle of the portage trail. I said "hi" and the bear swore at me and took off into the bush the way he was already headed.

That's 99% of encounters, yeah, but the big difference between this encounter and one in camp at 2am with an easy to get to blue barrel is that if a hungry bear has smelled the food, has decided it's going to get to it and wasn't immediately scared off by something 6ft tall on approach, it's not going to be so simple.

**Posted by petey** 7/21/2017 8:58 am

nvm wrote:
How do you stop the boat from floating back to shore? And how do you stop any even mildly interested bear from swimming out and grabbing what it wants? That wouldn't slow them down for even a second.

Rope and a rock. You missed the 'so far' part.

The last time we did this a momma and a few cubs came through our site and found a bag of peanuts we missed when gathering all the food together. What a racket! And they naturally start going through everything else after finding peanuts tucked away in a pot box. Luckily I had moved my tent away from the main area and had a good sleep.

**Posted by BarryB** 7/21/2017 9:28 am

Here's the "AlgonquinAdventures.com" recommended food-hanging technique. It requires the pre-assembly of an integrated set of ropes. I keep each end of the "tree-rope" rolled individually and wrapped by a large elastic-band. Likewise, the hoisting rope is rolled and wrapped individually. This allows for an orderly laying out and "throwing" of the two "tree-rope" ends. Otherwise, it could be a "tangled-chaos".

This illustration&text is taken directly from the Backcountry of Algonquin Park Leave No Trace Booklet available at .. http://www.algonquinadventures.com/BackcountryOfAlgonquinParkLNT.pdf