What are the best methods for hanging food in a tree?
My friends and I are planning our first backpacking trip and the date is less than a month away. We just have a couple of loose ends to finish up on.
We were wondering what the best method to tie your food into a tree is. I would imagine 20ft above the ground would be plenty - but then again I don't know.
Parks Canada website suggests a minimum of 100 meters between yourself and your hung food/cooking fire/cooking clothes, but the image they show with an example of hung bags seems pretty complex (see picture below). Would we really have to have someone climb all the way to the top of a tree to hang our bags effectively? Not that this would be an issue, but I feel like that is a lot more work than necessary.
Is the method shown in the picture the best/safest?
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/8831. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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In most places without extremely human habituated bears, a simple hang with the line tossed over a sturdy, isolated branch and tied off to an adjacent tree trunk is suitable. The bag should end up being roughly 12 feet above the ground, 5 feet away from the trunk and 5 feet below the branch.
The PCT hang is a clever variation of this which eliminates the possibility of a bear swiping the line with its claws where it's tied off to the trunk. You begin the same way, but ensure you have a carabiner at the end of the line, then clip the line back through it again before pulling it up as high as you can go. You then take a sturdy several inch long stick, put a clove hitch into the line as high as you can reach, and slide that stick into the clove hitch before gently lowering the line back down. The stick will bump into the carabiner, preventing the bag from lowering any further and preventing any cutting of the line below from releasing the food bag. To get your food back down, pull down on the line until the stick comes back into reach, remove it from the clove hitch, and then lower as normal.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/8832. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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