Re: Food storage at the trailhead- what do YOU do?

So many posts turn to this topic, I thought I would start a new one. I find myself between the "rules". I drive (and stay in over 30 nights a year) a camper van. We all know the rules for cars- ZERO tolerance- however for "RV's" the rule is simply all windows covered, nothing in sight. I often have several days of food in the fridge and 2 people's toiletries - this takes 15+ minutes to move, so I usually don't. Furthermore I often leave my dog in there, so needless to say I worry. Would love to hear others thoughts/level of paranoia. J.

My husband scours every square inch of our Honda civic for stray lip balm and food wrappers in bear country. He doesn't even let me keep lip balm in the tent and he rolls his eyes when I want to keep Advil in the tent. We store all our food in bear lockers in a plastic office box or cooler when hiking/camping. When backpacking we use bear canisters. After a backpacking trip we found someone stole our potato chips out of the bear locker. Mean!!

The more popular trailhead have bear boxes. Use them if available. Don't leave any food in the vehicle and, for that matter, don't leave anythign in sight that looks like food.

This is for backpacks; you don't need to worry for day hikes as long as you get back before dark.

I purge my suburban at the trail-head and hide under the seats or cover up anything that doesn't look like part of the car. Things like empty water bottles, the clothes we will change into when we get back form the trek, and any spare gear. Normally we have our packs packed before we leave home and don't have any surplus groceries to worry about while we're gone. I do hide some water under the seats for washing up at the end of the trip except at the Hetch Hetchy trail-head.

Since you probably cook in the RV I don't think that putting your stuff in a food locker would make a bear think there is nothing of interest inside the RV. However if you did store the bulk of your stuff in a locker and a bear did break in you could tell your insurance company that you had followed all the NPS rules relative to food storage and thus could not have your claim for repairs denied due to a violation of the law. You would have clean hands.

Eeek could probably give some stats on bears breaking into RVs.

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Old Dude

mrcondron wrote:

> Eeek could probably give some stats on bears breaking into RVs.

Actually I can't. I've often wondered about it, but I've never heard it mentioned at all.

One thing is for sure, if a bear rips the RV open, it's going to take a lot longer than 15 minutes to fix it. My advice is not to cut corners simply because you don't want to spend a mere 15 minutes moving food into a locker. Be smart, not lazy.