[philmont] Bear Ropes

I agree that the problem is much worse on public land where there are
people that are ignorant of the bear issues they cause due to poor camp
procedures. We were run out of a camp in the boundary waters by two
bears that had little fear of us. Although we practiced Philmont
procedures, they came into camp at 4:30 in the morning anyway. We could
run them off, but they would be back in less than 5 minutes. We had to
split into two groups, one to hold off the bears, the other to pack. So
we started paddling that day very early in the morning. After that, I
did not have to talk to the boys again about keeping a clean camp, the
importance of hanging bear bags, etc. They were anxious to hang bear
bags when getting to camp and careful not to spill food when
cooking/eating. So maybe a little healthy respect (close to fear?) is
not totally a bad thing.

Phil Brown

-----Original Message-----
From: philmont@troop47.com [mailto:philmont@troop47.com] On Behalf Of
Lou Schwing
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 7:42 PM
To: philmont List Member
Subject: [philmont] Bear Ropes

On Jan 18, 2007, at 4:02 PM, JVH2099 wrote:

> Your suggestion that "they love to play up the bear problem" is
> unfortunate, and could lead some to believe that bears at Philmont
> do not pose a threat. They do. The fact that you didn't see any
> on your trek may reflect the success of Philmont's bear precautions.

Jim and Phil -

Oh, no doubt, you're both correct. I think that Philmont has done an
excellent job of instructing and enforcing bear precautions. You are
quite correct.

My experience is in the Sierras, and the Tetons, where the bear
problem is very bad. It's very true that a large portion of that
problem is due to the many people who do stupid things in the
wilderness. We're always *very* bear aware - the bears are quite
aggressive.

I suppose that if I were to pick nits with the Philmont bear program,
it would be that I think they over emphasis the bear problem to the
point of scaring the kids. I always try to temper my instruction on
bear awareness so that I don't end up scaring a kid completely out of
the wilderness. However, it's better to be safe and for many kids,
this is the only time they'll be around bears.

Where we are, we have bears in most of our campgrounds, and we are
extremely careful about bear procedures. None of our tents *ever*
have food in them, we all wear separate sleeping clothes, our packs
are put away from our tents and we cook/clean at least a hundred feet
from the sleeping area. Our troop owns 12 bear canisters, and we use
them frequently. So far, we've never had a problem - even when we
had a bear in camp, not twenty feet from us! He checked us out,
kicked our canisters around, and left.

A healthy respect for bears is essential, and Philmont certainly
provides that.

Lou

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Received on Thu Jan 18 19:55:41 2007