Pacific Crest Trail: Northern California. Jeffrey P. Schaffer
hiking alone; there is safety in numbers. If you hike alone, you may be safer with a backpack than a day pack because with the latter, more of your body, especially your neck, is exposed. Second, if you bring children, watch them closely; they are easy prey. Should you see a cougar, don’t approach it. Hopefully it, like you, will try to avoid a confrontation (also true for bears and rattlesnakes). Prey such as deer run, so don’t act like prey and excite its killing instinct. Stay calm, not fearful (easier said than done). Hold your ground, or back away slowly. Face the cougar and do all you can to appear larger and more threatening. Grab a stick; raise your arms. If you have small children with you, pick them up. If the cougar behaves aggressively, wave your arms, shout, and throw sticks and/or stones at it. Convince the cougar that you may be dangerous. Finally, if attacked, fight back. To flee is to die.
Bears
Black bears, which can come in a variety of colors and hues, are almost as far-ranging as cougars. While they are present along the entire northern section of the PCT, you are more likely to encounter them in the areas that traverse Sequoia and Yosemite national parks. Here, bears have become used to people and more aggressive in seeking out human sources of food; unfortunately, this means that many become “problem” bears, forcing the park service to take action. On occasion, you can see a helicopter fly over with a black bear dangling from below as it is transported to back country. In the future, bears may also become a problem in Desolation Wilderness, west of Lake Tahoe. In the High Sierra they can be found well above their normal range, taking the PCT over alpine passes, such as Glen and Donohue, despite these being, respectively, about 12,000 and 11,000 feet in elevation. Up here there’s little for them, except for what trekkers have brought along. If a bear does go after your food, and if you try to stop it, especially if you try to retrieve your food once it has taken it, you could end up in the hospital.
Black bear
Novice backpackers dread the thought of meeting one of these incredibly strong, 300-400+ pound adults who can out-run, out-swim, and out-climb you. Waking up in the dark of night to have one sniffing your head certainly gets your adrenaline rushing. However, although bears are carnivores by structure, in California they are mostly herbivores by habit, only about 10 percent of their diet being animal matter, and that is mostly insects. Humans are not a part of their diet. For example, in Yosemite National Park’s history not even one visitor has been killed by any of these usually gentle creatures (unlike grizzlies, which once ranged over much of California, but went extinct there in the 1920s). It is best for both you and the bears that they not get your food in the first place (problem bears are killed). Bears are boldest in Sequoia and Yosemite national parks, so the park personnel there have installed anti-bear food- storage devices, mostly bearproof metal boxes.
Safeguarding Your Food
There are several strategies you can use to safeguard your food. First, in the national parks use the food-storage boxes, vertical metal posts, or horizontal wire cables where available. Black bears are incredibly good tree climbers and are very intelligent, so suspending your food in trees, or “bearbagging,” is not always secure. You can store food inside deep cracks found either in the bedrock or in oversized, cracked boulders. If the crack is at least 3 feet deep and less than 6 inches wide, then neither adult nor cub can reach food placed in it. Before you store your food in one or more of these deep cracks, first place it in a stuff sack and then push it into the crack with a stick. Alternatively, if you are a good rock climber, you can climb up to a small ledge at least 15 feet off the ground and leave your stuff sack atop it. Bears are poor rock climbers. Many camping areas have adequate rock cracks and/or ledges within a few minutes’ walking distance. Be aware that rodents may eat through your stuff sack to get at your food, although this is very unlikely. Finally, you can carry your food in bearproof canisters. These are heavy and expensive (you can rent them), but are okay if you will be out for only a few days. A prime advantage of them is that you have quick access to your food.
Bearbagging is time consuming, both getting the food sacks hung and then getting them down. Still, it may be an acceptable option south of Sequoia or north of Yosemite, where bears aren’t likely to be as common or as savvy. You bearbag your food either on a cable (if one is available) or on a tree branch. The process is essentially the same for both. If you must use a branch, be sure your food is suspended at least 5 feet below it, at least 10 feet from the trunk, and at least 15 feet above the ground. Use the counterbalanced method of bearbagging, described here for a tree branch.
Counterbalanced bearbagging is simply suspending your food sack at one end of a rope and another weight (which may also be a food sack) at the other end, so carry two stuff sacks. When you set up camp, set aside your dinner food and put the rest in your two stuff sacks. To bearbag, you then:
1 Tie a rock or other object to the end of your 50+ feet of parachute cord and toss it over an appropriate branch.
2 Remove the rock and tie on your heavier stuff sack (one should be noticeably heavier than the other).
3 Hoist that stuff sack up to the branch and then tie your other stuff sack (or counterweight) to the cord you are holding. Tie it on as high as you can reach.
4 You will have some cord left over. Stuff all of it in the stuff sack except for the end. Tie a small loop on this end.
5 With a stick or similar object, push your smaller stuff sack up until it is the same height as your larger one, hopefully 15 or more feet above the ground, though this is often hard to do. If these two sacks are equal in weight, you’ll have difficulty pushing your second sack up due to friction. (Because a tree branch creates more friction than a cable, in trees the first stuff sack should be perhaps twice as heavy as the second.)
6 To retrieve your food, snag the small loop at the end of the parachute cord with your stick. Without a stick or similar object, adequate bearbagging is almost impossible. Unfortunately, sticks left by knowledgeable backpackers too often end up in someone’s campfire.
Weather
If you adequately prepare for bad weather, your backpack trip won’t be all that bad even if such weather occurs. Storms come in two categories: frontal storms and thunderstorms. The farther north you are on the PCT the more likely you are to get caught in a frontal storm moving east across the state, since the storm season is several months longer than in southern California. In northern California frontal storms may come in mid- or late August, but they don’t get serious until sometime in September. By October you’ll generally want to be out of the highlands, which likely will become snow-covered before month’s end and stay that way into early July. When you’re in the Klamath Mountains you can get snow any time of the year, although in July and August the storms are infrequent and may dump only a few inches, which is no real impediment if you’re prepared. In the High Sierra, from about the Lake Tahoe environs south to Sequoia National Park, the storm season is shorter. In average years these lands are not closed by snowfall until late October or early November; you can still have frontal storms in August or September, but the snow usually melts in several days. In southern California frontal storms may occur in November, but the serious ones will more likely be from January through March. Still, through-hikers starting in April from the Mexican border can get snowed on anywhere en route.
Contrasting with winter-centered frontal storms, thunderstorms are centered around summer and move north up the state. If you’re caught in one, you can get a real drenching from copious rain or a beating from hard-hitting hail. This can occur in the San Jacintos and the San Bernardinos (the San Gabriels are less likely), and in the southern and central Sierra Nevada. Especially in the high lands of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, these storms are likely, particularly in July. They are less frequent in Yosemite National Park, and once you’re north of the Lake Tahoe area they are rare events. The cumulonimbus clouds that create these storms build in the afternoon, and the storms themselves typically occur from midafternoon into early evening, that is, from about 2 or 3 p.m. until about 7 or 8 p.m. Therefore, if you have an exposed alpine pass to cross, try to do it before midafternoon. As mentioned under item 12 of “Trail Advice” earlier in this chapter, if you see the clouds looming and hear distant thunder, be prepared to seek shelter. Exposed