In Yosemite Valley, I’ve had bears enter my campsite under cover of darkness while I’m cooking on a stove. You turn around and there it is. They make no noise and are very stealthy. You can avoid this by getting your meals out of the way before darkness falls.

Sleeping with your food can't save your life, as the thumbnail caption says. Sleeping without it can.

I sleep with my beef jerkey cause its the best shit ever and a bear is gonna have to fight me to get it 😂

Did anyone else assume the title was suggesting to sleep with your food so if  bear broke into your tent he would eat the food and not you?! Lol

Here in Montana, everywhere is grizzly bear country. I have never been able to hang food to recommended specification My scoutmaster friend witnessed a black bear climb a tree and retrieve food that was hung by boy scouts to specification. Some of the places we find ourselves camping don’t have trees big enough or don’t have any trees at all. We vacuum seal our food and stow our food wrappings in odor proof bags. We use bear canisters unless we find ourselves in a national park where they require food to be hung on equipment provided at campsites. We use Ursacks int those situations. We take the grizzly bear triangle seriously We also always carry bear spray, even when back country skiing in winter.

We attach a bunch of bells to our Ursack. Probably won't scare the bear but will allow us to hear the bells and chase the bear away if we are stupid enough to do so.

Alaska, at the base of a volcano. Used a large metal ammunition canister. Bolted down four sides. Came back to camp and it was gone. The bear had rolled it upstream almost a half a mile, couldn't open it but the slobber was ridiculous. Good that we found it!

This makes me really grateful that most of the places I go are so rarely visited that the wildlife is not used to humans.

I started on the JMT in '93 when bears were definitely a problem for most hikers.   Talking about bear problems was the main point of everyone's conversation in camps, where most camps lacked steel bear boxes.  Now that era has totally vanished since bear cannisters were brought in.  My second JMT in '99 was also before the bear cannister era, and bears were still a problem.   What we always did was counterbalance hang which was not shown in this video.  The counterbalance rope system is tricky for many but is learnable and sometimes just takes ten throwbag throws for the perfect branch end to hang off that black bears simply will not risk going out onto, on firs and pines generally in the Sierras.   I never lost food to counterbalancing but it was super common in the nineties for hikers to lose food even if they slept with it  because most of the JMT bears were habituated and knew how to get food like if you used your food bag for a pillow in your tent.  I do know a trail crew boss in the modern era who sleeps with his food but the bears now are much less habituated along the whole JMT due to the cannisters' advent.  

For black bears, the hang method shown with one bag on a line does not work where the bears figure out what is suspending the bag, a line you can reach and they can reach.   With the counterbalance you and they cannot reach either bag from the ground.  The lower bag gets pushed up with your throw to above 12 feet and the upper bag descends from say 18 feet down to 12.   IN the morning, you pull loops of line out of the lower bag that you stuffed into its carabiner by hooking them with a stick which bears cannot do, then with the line you can pull the lower bag down to you, unhook, and then lower the upper bag.  Generally today the highest wild black bear concentration along the JMT would be down the Middle Fork at Tehipite in the oak forest where the most scat is found every 25 feet, and those bears are so wild they do not come into camp to inspect.  You can easily counterbalance but bear cannisters are required there by law.    since the bear cannisters did solve the bear problem and stopped culling problem bears, I have to grudgingly support that system knowing most people don't put in a little time mastering the counterbalance even though it is not rocket science.   Sometimes it takes a while to make good throws is the only challenge.  A hang close into the tree trunk will be picked off by black bears and their cubs easily.   You have to be able to choose the right long branch and hit the branch end with a throw bag made of a Cordura pouch that holds a golf ball sized granite rock available everywhere in the Sierras.   It's no longer legal though.

I often hear, "I never had a problem..." when people describe their method of choice as though it is evidence their method works. The only evidence a method works is if a bear actually tried to get it.

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My Bear story is way old circa 1990 ,but has a twist at the end.  

My brother , nephew and family friend went backpacking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Upon entering the trail right next to the Ranger station a big sign read "frequent bear activity do not enter". Of course in my mind that sign could not possibly pertain to our group and off we went down the trail.  After about 12-15 miles down the trail we found a great spot by the river to camp.  As we unloaded our backpacks to make dinner a black bear was right on top of us. They are silent and stealthy  and with the din from the river we were caught completely off guard. The bear grabbed my Nephews backpack and took it into the woods . After what seemed like an eternity the bear was back for round two and circling us.  At that point we decided it was best to hike back out using our then junky headlights and pray we have enough battery power to make it. It had to be the scariest hike  out ever as we thought we could hear branches snap in the distance.

We got out at 2am and all of us were beyond exhausted. We managed to sleep in a Motel that night and went back to the Ranger station the next day to tell our tale of woe. Well wouldn't you know the Rangers had a clipboard a mile long that had stories just like ours. Funny I remember the female ranger from the night before coming out and saying where are you guys headed and we of course ignored here .  How dumb we were.  

Turns out they had to Euthanize the bear it was causing so many problems. The bear had lost all fear of humans and I think at one time they tried relocating problem bears but it must have been too expensive and they came back anyway.

Fast forward to last year (2025)  I hiked roughly the same trail. When I came back out I spoke with the ranger about our experience many decades ago and he said there was a problem bear just like the one we had right there on the other side of the mountain. It was so funny though as the ranger I spoke with this time around could have been my son he was so young. And decades ago I could have been his.

There was a trailside campsite with many platforms on the steep side of the mountain  and  the bear had molested  a few tents and terrorized a few campers. .  Well wouldn't you know it just exactly the moment  the ranger and i were speaking two hikers came out of the woods to tell us they were in the that exact campsite area last night  and got circled by a Black bear.  They both said they had noticed two other abandoned campsites  that looked  literally like a bomb  went off.   They too had to leave their gear and hike out in the dark just like us many moons ago!    What  incredible timing.

Turns out the rangers moved in right away on the  bear that AM  as it was getting way too close for comfort and euthanized him.    

Honestly  this story is so weird and the timing of it all so wacky you just cant make this stuff up.

Ill post my Post traumatic Bear  plan  PTBP in another post.

It doesn't matter if there is problem bear or not. One should be bear aware all the time in the wild!

I always enjoy watching Andrew Skurka speak. Thanks for all the great advice over the years!

By algorithmic rite of passage, thought I had already subscribed to the best backpacking channels, where have you been? Nice gear talk

I think in yellowstone the bear hangs are effective on the full size grizzly bears.  The adult grizz don't climb like a black bear.

I live in Ontario where we have tons of black bears. I always hang my food in a tree and I've never had any problems with that method aside from the fact that it's often very difficult and time consuming to find the perfect tree limb and get everything tied up. I've even used it in an area where they were so common that I literally had to chase one out of my camp site when I arrived. Yeah sure, bears are smart and good climbers. But at the end of the day, most bears probably aren't THAT motivated, and it's way better than leaving your food on the ground for easy access.

I installed food hanging systems in Olympic National Park, where we did have bear problems at the time, at numerous backcountry stations throughout my district. I worked there as a backcountry ranger, living up trail pretty much full time. Our system involved a cable pulley system you could clip your food bag into and run it up via a pulley so we could make it easy for folks to use it, but I often (dozens of times) had to hang food using the old fashioned cord and tree limb technique. I am unaware of any time the cable system was not effective in my time there ('98-'01), and I only had one instance where a rodent was able to do some serious gymnastics getting into a food bag I hung via cord. I've heard one ever report of a bear climbing a tree and stomping on the limb food was hung one, while teaching the technique to her on-looking cub, and successfully breaking a limb with practiced skill, but that was multiple states away if I remember correctly.
The main limitation with using trees is you have to have them with size enough to get distance from the ground and trunk with strength enough to avoid breakage from the bear, and that's pretty hard to come by in the high country. That's when the installed cables between two trees was very handy. In a forest of decently sized trees I've found that hanging food is very effective, is the lightest weight and least bulky method, and it only utilizes materials an outdoors person should probably have in their pack anyway.
Now I want peanut butter m&m's.
Bears can not only smell better than any known land animal, but they are also extremely curious. They are well known for chewing up gas and bar oil cans for chainsaws in the north (I have one), and generally investigating anything with a smell to it. Food motivated as they are, it is not their only motivation. Regarding sunscreen, likely anyone carrying it is probably also smothered in it. Regarding food, the smell of it is on our breath, clothes, and skin. Protecting food is not about not attracting bears, it's about about protecting your food, and the bears. We always need to be prepared to encounter bears, no matter how many precautions are taken with our food.

Best practice is to cook and clean your dishes well downwind of your camp and food storage.  That is going to be the heaviest odor draw.  If you're in a crowded campsite, there's minimal value to this, but when you or your group are isolated, going at least 200 feet downwind to cook, eat, and clean up (and brushing teeth, etc), will create an odor decoy.  I'd also be looking to store your food downwind of camp.

If you can't tell which way is downwind, or there is no wind, go downhill.  Air moves downhill in general as it cools.

I was at one of the southern shelters on the AT in the Great Smokies National Park. I was in the shelter with aprox 1/2 dozen others & at least a dozen tents were set super close to the shelter . We could all see each other. In the am , I learned 2 people had left their best canisters on the ground in the middle of everyone, just slightly off to the side. Bear had gotten both canisters . Immediately a woman claimed to be a tracker & found both canisters fast . They were all bitten up but intact . We were all stunned the bear approached so many of us so close too. I couldn’t believe they didn’t hang canisters . Sometimes someone comes into camp late & they get lazy about hanging food .

I worked in bush camps in remote northern Alberta Canada doing thinning and spacing trees  and I used to sing " 99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall " as loud as I could while I walked into my work area to scare the grizzlies away. Once I started up my bush saw I was safe.