Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Bare update!!!!!

Just learned this weekend from a nice young hiker that you don't need to put your pack in a bear box Bears have never bothered her pack , The people missing packs keep looking. We are up to 9 bears in the Portal now ,two seem to be pissy will not leave and hang around the trailhead lockers and backpacker campground .The rest are spending time at the campground and the trailhead. Some how the bear storage lockers are being opened by the bears , Friday night I heard one loud noise at a box and found a bear removing all the items stored , She did not want to leave , this bear has two cubs about 20 - 25 pounds and will learn from mom .


The bears are aware when you drive in and when you open a box so watch your car and box as you unload and load. DO IT FAST I watched many people over the last several weeks leaving food out and cars/ trunks open and not putting food away after eating.

Picnic area parking is not hiker parking , limited to use in the Portal Parking lot is under study and patroled .


Another two falls at the waterfall older person and young boy both are very lucky ,older person didn't think he was hurt and young man fell into a deep pool.


Last week of August most years we see snow ????? Thanks Doug

Wow, Bet you didn't know you could learn so much from a young hiker. Next some hiker will tell you THEY don't need a wag bag for poop and that THEY didn't leave the bear boxes open, the bears really did get on the internet and learn how to open the boxes from that video posted last year. Hmmmm.....I'm already missing the Portal.

Hey if we didnt have stupid people than we wouldnt have anything to talk about.

Doug...Is it possible some people are not latching the lockers to lock them?

You may want to try the pine sol..just the regular kind, put it in a spray bottle and spray it on the outside lockers just a little bit.
The Bears are smelling all the food in those lockers. Does the forest service come to check them from time to time,removing any old food that has been just left? Also it would help if those lockers got scrubbed out with hot water and pine sol really good to get rid of any food smells.

When we were at the campground a couple weeks ago I noticed that it was possible to close the bear box doors without the latch securing it. The bears have probably found this out. My wife said the bears would walk up to the box and hit it, hard. I would guess this pops open the unsecured box. Kept my wife up most of the night, me - I can't hear so never bothered me.

KAC49

Good advice regarding bears knowing when you pull in. Watched bear approach a hiker pulling in a parking spot at 2 a.m. Saturday morning. The bear approached as he opened his trunk. He chased the bear away, but it came back and was persistent. It eventually left.

It's my belief the bears are at the Portal to get some good eating at the store. Those ham,eggs and potatoes can't be beat. Had the sausage patties the second day. The chicken salad for dinner was excellent. This bear gives the food a paws up!

Enjoyed all my meals there this weekend.

John

Same here on 8/13/2010--8/15/2010---We had bears all the time everywhere--no problems tho--just 1 large bear that tried to eat dinner with us at 8:30pm after our trip to the summit that day. A little hard on the nerves after hiking all day.

I was just wondering when the bears arrive and leave the portal each year. The past few years I have been at the portal in mid June and mid September and have not seen any bears. I am very cautious with food and such. From what I am reading, it seems that the bears are becoming more "bold" in their quest for food. Just wondering what your thoughts were. Im taking my 8 year old up mid Sept this year to camp and dont want the bears freaking him out.

Thanks!

Hi I will try to answer this straight forward , It is what happens in April, May, June and July that leads to the bear party fest in August , as campers, hikers come and go they will allow bears to get food then more bears/ more people and by 4 July weekend the pattern is set. Bears every night and they travel from the valley floor to outpost in search of food , they locate the feeding grounds and stay , the moms raise the cubs and the adult males pass on to another area we seldon see large adult males .


This time of the season it seems the bears are very active eating and putting on mass. We see them double mass , about two weeks from now they tend to drift off and return sometime around the last of Sept. stay about a week and are gone for the season.


So now we may have 10 adults, 4 cubs and a good supply of food , If we did not have food out the bears would travel to the next food source, lower campgrounds and the houses in the Alabama Hills, (orchards, gardens dogfood left out etc.


The bears are getting packs at the campgrounds and the trailhead and near the bear boxes , so they wait for the box to open walk up scare the poopers out of the people, the people run the bear gets the food...... repeat .Same cycle with the cars driving into the campsite car stops door opens bear walks up people run and the food is removed this is the next step as people get wise at the bear box. recall the movie Groundhog day ?


So is it safe I say yes do the food storage clean your car and be honest about having nothing out and you will be fine the reason I can feel secure this works, is based on the 20% that will have food out, ice chest under the table, stuff stacked roof high in the car and the pickups will be loaded with food. the bears test this every night.


Well the bear/bears just entered the backpacker campground I can hear the noise. Thanks Doug

Those Bears have a lot of nerve. We should shoot everything that bugs us.
Bring on the Bears I want to see them again. The Bears havent been around the last three years. I guess thats why campers call it the great outdoors?

Thanks for the info. I actually hope that my son gets to see bears. Surprisingly, with all of my camping trips growing up, I never saw a bear until I was in my 30's.

I will be staying in site 44, which has a pretty good distance between the parking spot and the bear box. I just want to plan accordingly. If I know what the bears are doing, I can plan ahead so I dont contribute to the problem.

I have taught my kids that they bear boxes stay closed and to throw trash away immediately. I'm not concerned about being around the bears. I was just concerned about their behavior so I can discuss ways to react to what they are doing with my son ahead of time.

Doug, if I'm understanding correctly, the bear presence this time of year is made up of mostly sows and cubs? With the density of people at the Portal in the summer, especially in the campgrounds overnight, that seems like a really volatile combination. I'm surprised I haven't read about some bear interactions gone bad, particularly with cubs around. I realize that Sierra blacks aren't known for their aggressiveness (just their smarts), but it's amazing that you can pack that many people and bears in such close proximity for weeks on end without having a few news stories on your hands.

Was just in Yosemite and talked to a ranger at White Wolf campground. She said a bear there learned to put its paw under the locking rod of the bear box and push up, opening the box. Every time humans come up with a way to protect our food, a bear eventually figures out a way to defeat it. Amazing.

FYI: For those who may be interested, I arrived at White Wolf about 7 PM on Tuesday night and there were about a half-dozen campsites available at that hour. Decent campground; very quiet.

So, anything change with the bear situation? They still around, or have they gone somewhere else?

The bears are still active. I was in site 42 on Friday evening and had one stroll by the site around dusk. He came back 5 minutes after we retired for the night (about 9pm). He tested our bearbox, then strolled up the hill, tapping the box 4 times. The final visit that I am aware of was around midnight.

In short, yep... They are still hanging around.

A side note, it was cool for my 8 year old to see a bear. He learned a lot about their behavior, and why it is important to properly store and handle food in bear country.

I know some of you will hate this, but a bear tag in CA costs about $40.00. They can be hunted in National Forests, but there is probably a restriction in the Whitney Zone for any kind of hunting.

Yea, not into killing bears. I used to hunt many, many years ago and of course ate everything I killed. As I get older, the death "thing" doesn't go over real well with me. I'm not against hunting and understand the ecological and financial benefit of it, but bears? Don't get me wrong....I've eaten bear, boar, deer, elk, etc, but I don't see why bear would be on anybody's nutritional list.

California used to have a Mountain Lion season. Always found that strange as most people have never seen one. I've seen one in 53 years. One of the posts here talked about how the guys son had never even seen a bear until he went to the portal. I think that might speak of the population....not many, with the exception of fishing camps, campgrounds, National Parks, etc. Yea, I know a bear always gets caught somewhere near a city from time to time, but then it becomes a news story because.....they aren't there that often.

I would think if you wanted to hunt for food, then quail, ducks, rabbits, doves and the like would be better as there are millions of them. And, they're a bit easier to hunt and tastier to eat. Deer are very plentiful also and I believe they need to have their herds culled from time to time.

Hope I didn't start a swarm of controversy, but I really did try and stay away from the word....."guns".

Joe doesn't hunt bears, he just herds them.

And you left grouse off your yummy list . . .

I've very mixed feelings about the whole issue of problem bears.

I've had the opportunity to talk personally with a number of people who've devoted their lives to bear management, and learned a lot.

Once a bear becomes habituated, they will never become un-habituated. Habituated mothers effectively teach their cubs their bad ways.

Bears are in no danger as a species. In fact, the opposite: "In an unusual reversal of most wildlife trends, the black bear population is at an all time high and occupies a greater range in California today than it did before the Gold Rush."

There are double the number of bears in Ca now, than in 1982.

From a population management perspective, I see no problem with killing the problem bears, sooner than later. Spending millions in trying to get bears to not act like bears is futile.

I really dislike the thought of doing that, but at some point, it seems simply better to be pragmatic. Of course, it is not the bears that need to be trained.......

http://www.wayoutwestnews.com/2010/08/26/california-black-bear-population-at-all-time-high/

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/hunting/bear/population.html

I was told that in the 1930's the "problem" bears from the Sierras were brought down to the San Gabriel Mountains. (There were no Black Bears in the SG Mountains before 1933) Some believe that the bears in the San Gabriels have inherited the gene that causes them to be problem bears.

This is a great link to bears in the San Gabriel Mountain. There don't look to be any census numbers, though there are surveys from time to time.

Number of Black Bears in SG Mountains