Posted: Thursday, March 20, 2008 12:00 am
Wes Smalling
Star-Tribune Outdoors Editor
I was a kid on my first backpacking trip with my dad and I was scared of bears. We'd car camped dozens of times but this was my first backcountry trip. My dad, an avid outdoorsman, assured me (and my worried mother back at home) we'd be fine. I wasn't so sure.
My fear of bears came from his made-up campfire stories. Oh yeah, as a youngster my dad had fought off grizzly bears armed with only a fishing pole and a Buck knife. He'd repelled attacking bruins with a canoe paddle back when he was exploring with two frontiersmen named Lewis and Clark. Stories like that.
When I was in the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, he won a troop leader of the year award, partly because of his epic storytelling. He took great pleasure in scaring the bejesus out of hundreds of kids at the annual Camporee with his tall tales of near-death experiences in the outdoors. I knew most of his stories weren't true, but they still kept me awake at night in the woods, especially his bear stories.
As my dad and I headed up the trail, before too long a black bear appeared. We backed away but it kept following us. It acted like it knew we had food - one of those conditioned bears that had gotten into somebody's camp food before.
My dad stopped, yelled at it and waved his arms. It scampered away.
Wow, I thought, my dad just scared off a bear. He's really tough. I felt a little better.
He talked about bears for the rest of the hike - how important it is to keep a clean camp, how to act in an encounter, and so on. He also reviewed what we'd already practiced: hanging our packs from a tree.
We got to our camp spot and set down our packs. Within seconds a shape appeared across the meadow. It was a huge black bear. It started boldly coming toward us just like the other one had.
Calmly but quickly, my dad got out the rope, tied one end to the packs and the other end to a rock and tossed it over a tree branch. With the bear only a few steps away he yanked up the packs and tied off the rope. The whole process took him less than 10 seconds, probably a world record of some kind. If anyone's ever done it faster, I'd like to know.
We stepped behind a big boulder to watch. The giant bear sniffed the ground, looked up at the packs, then walked away.
Wow, I thought, my dad's amazing. He can do anything. I was going to sleep great that night.
As it was getting dark, I looked around for the tent. There wasn't one. To my horror, my dad informed me that when you're backpacking you just sleep on the ground in your bag.
I was mad. Having no tent wasn't part of the deal. But I had no choice.
That night as I lie there unable to sleep, of course he couldn't resist telling a scary story. It wasn't about bears this time. No, it was about how on a cool night rattlesnakes can sense a person's body heat so, one by one, they slither into a man's sleeping bag to curl up inside it for warmth. Then the next morning, the person wakes up in a sleeping bag full of rattlesnakes.
Yeah, that was a long night. Thanks, Dad. To this day I carry a tent into the backcountry.