opinion: campervan w/fridge at trailhead

[mschnaidt]

This Summer we camped in our travel trailer at Meeks Bay (Tahoe). The campground staff warned us to remove all food, spices etc and store them in the provided bear box. We thought that might be a little extreme so we talked to some of the other campers. They said they had been coming to that campground for years, didn't bother and had no issues. So we kept everything inside.

Later that evening a bear fresh out of the muddy creek walked right up to a trailer, opened the shut door using the door handle and proceeded to open their fridge and help himself to a package of ground beef and a couple of hard boiled eggs. Unconcered he sat in their campsite and ate his entire meal as the group banged pots in a vain attempt to shoo him away. He then went to another trailer and repeated the performance. Quite the show and what a mess! Wet, muddy bear! We were thankfully spared. The bear did avoid trailers that had people inside.

One thing we did was smear a little PineSol around the doors, windows, slide and the back side of our fridge. We had heard that bears dislike PineSol. I don't know if it actually worked or if we were just fortunate. We were there for another 3 nights and weren't targeted.

[c9h13no3]

This Summer we camped in our travel trailer at Meeks Bay (Tahoe). The campground staff warned us to remove all food, spices etc and store them in the provided bear box. We thought that might be a little extreme so we talked to some of the other campers. They said they had been coming to that campground for years, didn't bother and had no issues. So we kept everything inside.

Later that evening a bear fresh out of the muddy creek walked right up to a trailer, opened the shut door using the door handle and proceeded to open their fridge and help himself to a package of ground beef and a couple of hard boiled eggs. Unconcered he sat in their campsite and ate his entire meal as the group banged pots in a vain attempt to shoo him away. He then went to another trailer and repeated the performance. Quite the show and what a mess! Wet, muddy bear! We were thankfully spared. The bear did avoid trailers that had people inside.

One thing we did was smear a little PineSol around the doors, windows, slide and the back side of our fridge. We had heard that bears dislike PineSol. I don't know if it actually worked or if we were just fortunate. We were there for another 3 nights and weren't targeted.

So to summarize:

Campground staff said don't do it, you & others did it, bears ate people food, and you kept doing it.

[mschnaidt]

Guilty as charged.

[Gogd]

Sad thing is.. ..Bears get too comfortable with the easy pickings and eventually the the park service is compelled to address the risk habituated bears pose to the public. This never ends well for the bears. Make the effort, use the critter proof lockers and keep the wildlife wary and less motivated to engage in these encounters.

Ed

[mschnaidt]

Sad thing is.. ..Bears get too comfortable with the easy pickings and eventually the the park service is compelled to address the risk habituated bears pose to the public. This never ends well for the bears. Make the effort, use the critter proof lockers and keep the wildlife wary and less motivated to engage in these encounters.

Ed

Agreed. However considering the responses I'll share a little more info as it is relevent to the OP's post.

I've had multiple bear encounters in the backcountry. I respect bears and feel blessed when I see one. I only view from a distance, move on quickly and give them plenty of room. I've never had a bear enter my campsite. I follow leave no trace ethics, use a bear can and understand the reasons to do so.

When we camp in our hard sided travel trailer we never leave food out unattended. Food is sealed in containers, stored out of sight mostly in the fridge which has tight seals. Trash is dumped into the dumpsters before dark. We are a little OCD when it comes to cleanliness, our trailer is not a bear magnet.

We've camped in our hard sided trailer many times in the Tahoe Basin and beyond. We've never had an issue with bears. On this occasion we were staying in a private campground that had recomendations/rules different and more excessive than the state park campgrounds in the area we are accustomed to including the adjacent one.

In retrospect should we have moved our spices and packaged snacks to the bear locker? Probably should have. The food in the fridge? It was a judgement call based on the circumstances, we didn't have a cooler to move it into.

Back to the OP's question, I would be hesitant to leave food in a campervan fridge at a trailhead. If it's a remote trailhead there isn't enough human activity to discourage a bear from can opening a van door or two.

[Gogd]

Ok, for fun I will reply.

I've never had a bear enter my campsite. I follow leave no trace ethics, use a bear can and understand the reasons to do so.

As far as you are aware of, no bears visited your campsites! Perhaps you sleep sound enough to not be aware of their presence. I am a VERY light sleeper and camp cowboy style under the stars. We run a tight ship; nevertheless get visited by bears on almost every hike. My companions (and most everyone I talk to) are likewise blissfully unaware of how frequently bears check out our camps. I've been backpacking since the1960s. I noticed around the early 1990s that bears were becoming regular late night visitors to BC campsites along certain popular routes (e.g. JMT, Bishop Pass Trail, the trail network east of the Ritter Range, various routes in Tuolumne Meadows and other popular trailheads along Hwy 120, etc). If your camp is clean they will only sniff around. Even dirty dishware's are not enticing enough in many instances for them to make a racket and risk our attention, all for some residue on a spoon or bottom of a pot. Get yourself a trail cam and set it up, you'll be shocked at who visits your camp when you are not looking.

We are a little OCD when it comes to cleanliness, our trailer is not a bear magnet

Oh but it is! Just like every tree is a potential lightning rod, your camper can become a ursine fast food take-out at the whims of nature. So far you are lucky you haven't been struck! Consider: the DEA, TSA, and local law enforcement all use K9s to counter drug smuggling and trafficing. Smugglers have yet to devise a technique to elude K9 detection. A bear's nose is 20X more sensitive than a dog's sniffer. Our camps may look spotless, but wherever you had food, there is residue. If a bear can smell carrion miles away, they can certainly smell your breakfast skillet from 8", regardless you Pine Sol bombed every surface for a fifty yard radius around your cook stance. Food scent may draw them in, but so does our body odor. Bears are smart, stealthy, and learned to associate BO and other human mief with food opportunity. Thus adult bears home in on our camps, and quietly go about their mission, and sneak away if they fail to find a snack. Meanwhile we are none the wiser. Most of the time I cannot find their tracks the next morning, regardless I knew their exact route through camp. They too, usually leave no trace. But sleep tight, you're good!

I am very OCD when it comes to food and bears. Check out my food hang technique viewtopic.php?p=178173&hilit=bear+hangs#p178173. Rangers on patrol admire my efforts and don't bother making me take down my hang, even though they see I also have a bear can. My hang technique has never been defeated by any bear, but I have spotted them looking forlornly up at my piñata of freeze dried victuals suspended 15-20' overhead, between two trees. Yea we all have heard about mama bears teaching cubs to scale trees and chew through haul lines, etc. I never heard a first hand account however, or even someone who knew someone who knew of the person who claimed to have a first hand account. It seems all of this folklore traces back to a scant few such incidents, some of which I suspect were staged by conditioning bears to perform these deeds. In any case these occurrences are attributable to specific bears. You can count on one hand the number of bears currently alive that are credited with this feat. The overwhelming majority of food hangs fail because they were poorly erected. I'll take the odds of my food hangs prevailing over the odds of a bolt striking me down in the mountains. But don't get me wrong I was an early adopter of bear cans; however, I still use a food hang for trash, because I don't like comingling my food with trash, soaps, etc.

We've never had an issue with bears.

I also never had bear issues. Very few people ever had a problem with bears. But we can claim only partial credit for this statistic. It is like getting struck by lightning, mostly a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it does happen; therefore it behooves us to seek shelter in a thunder storm, and likewise pack away our food in the forest.

In retrospect should we have moved our spices and packaged snacks to the bear locker? Probably should have. The food in the fridge? It was a judgement (sic) call based on the circumstances, we didn't have a cooler to move it into.

I posit the judgment call pertaining to whatever technique was utilized to store food in a camp was made back home. Going camping without proper food storage is like going out on a date without "proper protection". Both are judgment calls made well beforehand. We should own up, that we make such choices long before the gravity of situation made us actually seriously ponder the consequences.

If it's a remote trailhead there isn't enough human activity to discourage a bear from can opening a van door or two.

This logic is probably irrelevant, if not contrary to how bears see the situation. Sex predators don't lurk in the wilderness where their deeds are likely to go unwitnessed, because there are also few opportunities to exploit. Same goes for bears, they want the odds to favor securing food. Habituated bears have no problems trolling mountain resort communities and other human/wild interface zones, when an easy meal is there for the taking. I've seen more bears around Mammoth Lakes than any other location in the Eastern Sierra. In So Cal, the town of Sierra Madre is notorious for its daytime wildlife sightings, as Yogi and Boo Boo bring new meaning to dining al fresco. Bears in these communities conduct daytime raids with near impunity. Three cars parked ten miles from the nearest paved road offer a bear only three chances for food. Nah, they'll take their business somewhere with better odds, like the campgrounds and trailheads around Lake Mary and Tuolumne Meadows, the towns of Mammoth Lakes and Sierra Madre, and anywhere where there is potentially enough groceries to warrant the effort.

Having fun, hope you are too!

Ed

[balzaccom]

Good post, Ed. I would point out that the bear incidents in Yosemite, where they were horrorific back in the 1990s, have dropped by something like 99.5% since the park started its rigid new food storage guidelines. And those guidelines include food storage at trailheads. The bears in Yosemite regularly ransacked locked cars parked at trailheads. Now all food must be stored in a bear box, provided by the park service, and not in your vehicle.

I have seen many bears in the backcountry, and they have all run away once they spotted me. But I don't camp where lots of other people camp. And all it takes is one camper to let one bear learn that people=food, and we all suffer. Most of all, the bear.