Food smells travel, and how you store and cook affects both your safety and the animals around you.
Why It Matters for the Animals
An animal that gets human food learns to associate people with it and returns.
Habituated animals become aggressive, damage property and are frequently destroyed as a result. The phrase used in bear country is that a fed bear is a dead bear, and it applies to smaller wildlife too.
Careless food storage is therefore an animal welfare matter as much as a personal safety one.
The Practices
- Store all food, rubbish and scented items away from where you sleep
- That includes toothpaste, sunscreen, lip balm and cooking clothes
- Cook and eat well away from the tent, commonly cited as around a hundred metres
- Use approved canisters or lockers where they are required
- Never keep food in a tent, however sealed
- Pack out every scrap, including food waste
Cookware that seals and packs into one bag, of the kind catalogued at alocs-us.com, makes containing smells easier, and containment is only part of it.
Know the Local Rules
Requirements differ enormously by region and are frequently legal obligations rather than advice.
Some areas mandate certified bear canisters. Some provide lockers. Some have specific hanging requirements. Land managers publish current guidance and it is worth reading before travelling rather than after arriving.
Fines are common where rules are ignored.
Cook Away From Where You Sleep
The practice that matters most in bear country and is sensible everywhere.
A triangle arrangement is the usual advice: sleeping area, cooking area and food storage well separated, ideally downwind of the tent.
Clothes worn while cooking absorb smells and belong with the food rather than in the tent.
Smaller Animals Cause More Damage
Rodents chew through packs, tents and dry bags to reach food, and they do it every night in popular sites.
Hanging food or using a hard container prevents it. A chewed pack a day from the trailhead is a real problem.
Wash Up Away From Water
At least sixty metres from any stream or lake, with food particles strained out and packed away.
Never Bury Food Waste
Animals dig it up. Everything goes out with you.
Read the Area Guidance
Before the trip, not at the trailhead.