Storytime Sunday: Bear Country

This took place in a mystical time before Rachel had a metric buttload of medical and psychiatric problems. Back when I was in shape. When I was 5'6", 120 lbs. of pure lean muscle mass, ascended ropes for fun, ran a 5 minute mile at 7,000 feet, could carry an 80 lb. backpack 20 miles a day... I was ripped. I was also mostly sober, only smoking pot on weekends and breaks and never drinking (this was before my brief coke phase, though admittedly after I tried acid the first time). (And god, if I could have transitioned with that body...)

Anyway, it was August before my junior year of high school, i.e. the August before my life as I knew it ended. I was all into backpacking and so was my mom's boyfriend (the guy who thought he was an amoeba), so us four (me, bro, mom, mom's bf) went on a little camping trip. We went to Mammoth in California. We had a lake picked out to go to, above the treeline and near some glaciers to hike to.

It was only something like 10-15 miles to hike in, but it was also gaining over 2,000 feet in altitude, so it was a respectable hike. We got most of our gear brought in by pack mule, but I was still carrying more than 60% of my weight on my back. This included a lawn chair strapped to the pack, because priorities! Other critical provisions included Nalgenes full of vodka and blue peppermint schnapps.

It was late in the day when we finally arrived and found our delivered gear. We scoped out a campsite and moved the gear to it in 3 or 4 trips.

Something about this spot: I mentioned it was above the treeline. I don't know if you've ever been to that altitude, but real trees suddenly vanish above a certain point. All that was there was scraggly things that could just as well be shrubs. One problem with this is that you have no way to keep your food away from bears. No worries, we had bearproof containers for like half 10% of the food. Good enough.

The first few days went well enough. We ate all the MREs we brought - heavy, but tasty by camping standards. We caught some trout in the lake, which still had ice floating in it in August. They made for a nice break from the freeze-dried food. One thing we learned quickly: do not eat the chili macaroni. That shit was foul. One day me and mom's bf hiked up on one of the glaciers, so you can add "never have I ever walked on a glacier" to options you can use against me.

It was getting close to the end of the trip. Just two more nights and we'd be hiking out. We made Bisquick with schnapps in it for breakfast - green, minty pancakes. Yum!

We met a group of women hiking past our campsite. The Women's Sierra Club, or as I now call them, "Dykes on Hikes." They opted to camp a bit uphill so we wouldn't all be up in each other's shit. We did the nightly routine of piling all the food and stuff up and throwing the lawn chairs on top because, I dunno, a bear would look at it and think it was a solid wall or something.

In the middle of the night I woke up to a clanging and mom's bf shouting for me to wake up. I lept out of my sleeping bag into the freezing air and unzipped the tent. "Huh? What?" Clang.

"There's a bear."

I shrank back into the tent. "Uhm... a bear?" Clang.

"We need to chase it off."

"Chase it off? How?"

He shrugged. "Lights. Noise." Clang.

"But what if it attacks?"

"It won't attack. Come on." He strode off toward the clanging, shining his flashlight. I grabbed mine and headed after. I thought I saw something move and almost shat myself.

Then I remembered hearing somewhere that bears are scared of dogs. So I started barking. "WOOF WOOF WOOF ARF ARF WOOF!" I followed the clanging, barking the whole way. The clanging stopped, but I kept going. I seemed to reach the end of the trail of debris and finally stopped. It was too dark to try any cleanup, so we went back to bed to deal with it in the morning.

We took an inventory of what was missing. Basically all the food except the little bit in the bearproof container. Ripped bags. And one lawn chair. Who the hell took the lawn chair? Of course - the Women's Sierra Club. They must have taken it, then the bear came and ate all the food.

The trail of debris had to be a quarter mile long. Food pack after food pack ripped to shreds. Except the chili macaroni. One of those packs was partly nibbled through and the rest left completely untouched. Jesus, even the bear didn't want that shit.

And then we found the lawn chair, at the end of the trail of debris. It was slightly bent and a little dinged and scuffed, just fallen over on a rock. That's when we realized what happened: the bear stuck its head through the lawn chair to get at the food and got it stuck. The clanging was the bear trying to knock it off.

Anyway, apparently my mom chatted with a couple of the women uphill about the bear situation and they should be careful about it. They thought we had an actual dog to deal with that. Don't call me a dog - that's cold, girl.

Packing up and leaving was completely uneventful, and with the lighter packs and downhill grade it was a much faster, easier hike back. We were good about leave no trace protocols. We left only footprints and took only memories of lawn chair stealing bears.