Bears, Bears, Everywhere

Did you know that they used to feed bears with the hotel food scraps in Yellowstone National Park?

There we’re actually “Bear Feeding Platforms“ with amphitheater style seating that were built to entertain the tourists. These food scraps would be put out at certain times of the day so that the guests could watch the bears do their thing. Those bruins would show up like clockwork for the all you can eat buffet, sometimes dozens of bears.

Eventually the park realized this wasn’t the best for the bears and put a stop to this. There were also dumps inside the park which didn’t help with this problem. The Trout Creek dump in Hayden Valley closed in 1970 ending the bear feeding era.

Today we try and keep our bears as wild as possible. There are bear proof trash cans all over the place. At some campsites there are metal bear proof containers to store your food in while away from canp. At backcountry campsites there are “bear poles” which are essentially a strippd down lodgepole pine suspended in the air around 20 or so feet in the air. You bring some rope to suspend your food and other smelly objects in the air when away from camp, sleeping or not attending to those objects when in camp.

Thanks for following along on the trail of the Mountain Man!