Date:         Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:58:15 -0800
Reply-To:     mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Subject:      Re: camping amidst bears, safety question
In-Reply-To:  <311883.44706.qm@web83601.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
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My wife and I stayed at that BC campground in about that same time
frame. It was a little disturbing on our walks, as we passed through
various pedestrian gates with rubber handles and at times we could not
be sure whether we were on the protected side of the electrified fence
or the human picnic side.

This past summer we camped in our Vanagon for 6 weeks, Alaska, Yukon,
BC. We cooked our meals inside the van other than most meat which I
cooked outside. We spent about 30 nights in campgrounds with assorted
dire bear warnings and a bunch more nights camped in the wild, such as
along the Denali Highway and Dalton Highway. We saw lots of bears, both
kinds, but never in our camps. We had some long hikes alone with varying
amounts of bear activity in evidence on the trails but again we never
saw any bears on those trails. We did have bear bells and bear spray and
several nervous moments passing through torn up berry patches. On some
trails we saw hikers with bear spray supplements, of the 6 round type,
in holsters on the same belt as their pepper spray. I was surprised by
this but not bothered. More like envious.

It was after we got back that I heard about the deadly bear rampage in
Montana while we were gone and I then researched the news stories to
learn what I could about the incident. It is disturbing to read from the
wildlife experts on the scene that the people did everything right and
still suffered attacks. I saw numerous stories that discussed the food
storage issues and which said the campers were deemed not to have
violated proper food procedures that night. This is where that linked
NPR print story seems to fall short. No mention of the import detail
that the attacks occurred in spite of positive human efforts to comply
with food storage standards. Why did they leave that out?


Mark



Richard Koerner wrote:
> About 6 years ago, I stayed at a real nice campground near Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Canada.  They had a very fancy electric fence around the campground that looked like it meant business...Gulp!...must have had some agressive bear problems in the past.  Only time I've seen that.  Can't recall if they had a gate, too....but they must have.
>
> (PS  Was also a weird sensation to be able to read a newspaper at 10:30 at night outdoors with no artificial light during the summer...that's the furthest north I've ever been.)
>
> Rich
> San Diego
>