How to Hang a Bear Bag

Video Transcript

"If you're trying to keep your food or other smellable items away from the bears, one of the most effective ways is to hang a bear bag. And that is basically, if you get a bag, a stuffed sack of some kind, don't use your sleeping bag bag, and don't use your tent stuff sack because then after you put the smellables in it, and then you put your sleeping bag in it, your sleeping bag becomes a smellable basically. So you got to get a whole specifically different bag for your bear bag, or if you've packed well and your pack is light enough you can just put your whole pack as a bear bag. What you do is you're going to use two pieces of rope and the best way I found is tie them both to a water bottle. Cause that'll give you some weight. And then you want to find a branch that's hanging out really far, basically that's reaching out. It's not close to the trunk of the tree. And you want it to be strong enough to support the bear bag, but not strong enough to support a bear. So you want it to be, you want the bear bag itself to hang at least twenty feet in the air so that the bear can't reach it from the ground. And you want it to be like eight or ten feet out so that the bear can't crawl out and get it. You also, when you throw it over, so basically you're going to throw it over and then you're going to attach your bear bag and then pull it up with the two ropes so you'll have two separate ropes. You're going to tie each rope to a different tree. That way, if one of the trees ropes gets slashed, then it'll still be hanging on by the other rope. And chances are, the bear's not going to figure out to slice both ropes. It's really important that you also don't hike it all the way up so it's flat against the limb, because then other animals that are smaller like squirrels and stuff can actually get in and they can actually tear the surface of your backpack or your bear bag and get in and eat your food."