Sniff, sniff. I cracked open one eye. Sniff (pause), sniff, I couldn’t believe what I was smelling: not in the backcountry, not mothballs! Musty tents, sweaty socks, and dirt are the smells of backpacking; mothballs are the smells of my grandmother’s house. They were as misplaced in Denali as the steel mills of her beloved Pittsburgh would have been.
I wondered if the mothballs had “gotten loose” or if my bear-fearing friend, Lisa, sprinkled them around the tent on purpose. While laying there, I flashed-back to my foggy days in organic chemistry lab and convinced myself that mothballs, if mixed with campfuel, made a bomb. I had naphalene-induced visions of accidentally spilling fuel on the mothballs and being the first backpackers in Denali to blow up. When investigators found our charred bodies and the dozens of pseudafed tablets I was carrying for my allergies spattered across the backcountry, and I imagined the headlines: Campers explode trying to make crystal meth in tent. Nevertheless, I took solace knowing those pesky moths wouldn’t raid our nylon home in search of smelly wool snacks. The grizzlies might be another story though.
After smelling mothballs for a while, I just couldn’t take the suspense. I popped my head out the vestibule and spotted several clusters of pearly white mothballs shimmering in the Alaska night light. I snickered to myself. I didn’t believe mothballs repelled bears, but that didn’t matter, Lisa did. And if it eased her mind, she slept better, which meant that I slept better.
Lisa’s paranoia wasn’t exactly her own doing. They forced her to watch “the mandatory backcountry orientation video” at the ranger’s station and every second of it intensified her deep-seated bearphobia. While appropriately educational, and possibly lifesaving, the video left us with the impression that the grizzlies in Denali hunt down human prey like the Velocoraptors in Jurassic Park. I asked one of the rangers about this. She smiled and said, “It keeps the Samsonite Backpackers out of the backcountry.”
Actually, I once saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel where a meddling biologist sprayed mace on a patch of rocks and set up a video camera. He intended to prove that mace could be used as a bear repellant, but it didn’t turn out that way. Instead, bears came from miles away to roll on the mace-covered rocks just like old farmdogs roll in horsepoop. Apparently, bears like almost anything stinky. I figured Lisa’s mothballs would chum in the grizzlies while we were asleep, and we’d be the first backpackers squashed to death by half-ton bears wanting to bathe in the latest mothball perfume.
For the first few evenings, Lisa would sneak out with her baggy of mothballs and, in a ritual that would give the best voodoo priestess a run for her money, bearproof the tent. Sometimes I swear I heard her chanting softly as she performed the rite. She would walk from corner to corner and place the mothballs into neat little triangles by each tent pole. I let her complete her ceremony in private. Afterward, I would mention that I was squirreling away some “snacks” in the tent for later. She would practically strip search me looking for powerbars and gorp. Of course she didn’t find any. I wasn’t dumb enough to bring food into the tent; that’s a good way to get mauled.
But we weren’t relying on just the mothballs. We were well equipped with the latest and greatest bearproofing: whistles, bells, and yes, she brought mace – complete with its own belt holster. Lisa didn’t leave camp without it.
The bear spray didn’t inspire confidence either. Sometimes I felt like we had a gun in the tent. I feared I would accidentally snap the nozzle off as I was rummaging through our piles of gear. I even planned my escape route in case of a friendly fire pepper-gas attack.
Lisa couldn’t wait to show me how to use the mace. In order to shoot it you had to draw it from its holster, figure out which way the wind was blowing, remove a red piece, slide another mechanism, and push some gizmo. AND, most importantly, you had to be sure you were pointing the business end at the bear and not at yourself. By the time I remembered all that, I’d be blind and bear food. Not exactly how I wanted to end the trip.
Meanwhile, I was putting all my faith in the only proven bearproofing item - the dreaded Bear Resistant Food Container. “Bear containers” look like oversized black PVC pipes. Their tops have metal twist-locks that you open with coins, knives, and other things bears usually don’t carry. You put all your food and smelly items, like toothpaste, in them and then hump the humongous, heavy, cylinders through the backcountry with you. The containers keep your food from becoming bear food, and if everything works according to plan, you from becoming bear food. Granted, your chow is the only thing that really gets bearproofed, but supposedly bears that never taste human food rarely attack humans. At least that’s what those meddling biologists claim.
Dealing with the bear containers was like backpacking with small children (some people even name their containers). Although they are hell to pack and heavy, and often start smelling like compost after a week, bear containers are arguably the only bearproofing measure proven to work. Many places require backpackers to use them and many National Parks now loan them for free.
Rangers suggest storing the containers (and cooking) at least one hundred yards from camp. When it was my turn to put the containers out, I had a knack for plunking them only ninety-eight yards from camp, at which point Lisa would scream, “Not far enough….keep going……that’s not a hundred yards…… farther!” Some days she had me slog so far that I needed a compass to get back. The funny thing was, when she put them out, I swear they were barely seventy-five yards away.
The bear containers seemed to work, though. Once we were munching some chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast when a bull grizzly started lumbering towards us. We crammed the half-eaten pancakes in the containers, locked them, trotted away, and anticipated a front row seat at the greatest grizzly thrashing ever.
Luckily he was more interested in finding a pile of snow to snooze on than sharing our flapjacks. While he slept way upwind, we ate way downwind.
When Lisa first mentioned she brought the mothballs because somebody told her they repelled bears, I laughed and teased her. Realizing her paranoia would have to run its course I said, “Okay, whatever makes you comfortable.” It became my mantra for the trip. In hindsight surrounding our tent with stinky mothballs probably wasn’t the safest idea, but it did calm her nerves. Who knows, maybe her mothballs did repel the bears.
As we encountered more grizzlies, Lisa’s paranoia shifted from fear to respect and her nightly rituals stopped. We ate, slept and cooked in the bears’ backyard. We photographed them (carefully, with really long lenses), changed our routes because of them, and several times found ourselves unavoidably too close to them. One evening we were hiking along a creek when a sow and a pair of cubs popped over the embankment, practically on top of us. As they approached we made lots of noise and quickly backed away. When they passed I asked Lisa if she had drawn the mace. She said, “Between the retreating, the awe, and the confusion, I forgot I had it.” Incidents like these made us realize that the grizzlies weren’t hunting us.
Bears are radically unpredictable and you can never assume your experiences will match ours. Denali has a long history of hiker education and food control measures that many places do not. Still, in bear country you have to accept the real possibility of getting hurt or killed in a bear attack. That risk is, precisely, what makes the wilderness experience so appealing to me.
I don’t have a death wish and I don’t want to get mauled by a bear, but I do want them to be there. In everyday life I’m at the top of the food chain, in bear country I’m not. I don’t go backpacking to feel the control that I have in everyday life: I backpack for the unpredictable and unexpected, the joys of not only new sights but new feelings. Bears keep the wilderness wild.
People who are too scared to go into bear country think I’m crazy. I feel sorry for them, though. When they hide in their cars and peer into bear country from the pavement, they surrender to their fears, and they lose. They’ll never see or feel or know what true wilderness is. I think that makes them the crazy ones. They’re right about one thing though: the only way to completely bearproof yourself is to stay home. But if you love the wilderness the way Lisa and I do, you already know that’s not an option.
Tags: Alaska, backpacking, bear phobia, bear repellent, container, Denali, grizzly, outdoor writing, safety
