Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Thieving Bears at Whitney Portal

It was July 2014. I organized a group of 10 to do the climb. Several of us camped right at at the portal. I slept in my SUV, my friend Dan and others in tents. We wanted to get started about 1:30 AM so we were up early and I was cooking oatmeal on the tailgate of my SUV, packing sandwiches etc and handing them to Dan. His pack was in the back seat. ...the by the back seat was open, pack partially sticking out, being loaded with food. As we were standing at the back of the SUV eating breakfast we heard a thump. "What was that ?" Dan suddenly said "A bear took my pack." I am saying "What !!?"

The thump we heard was his water bottle as it fell out, other than that the bear had been silent and had been within 5 feet of us. The bear took the pack across the stream and just stood there looking at us. I threw rocks at him, flashed my headlights. did not want to make too much noise because other hikers were sleeping. After a bit of confusion and realizing the bear was not going to give the pack back we went on without it. we just shared water and food.

All day long I was wondering what was going to happen with that, if we should report it, if we would get in trouble, if the helicopters overhead later were looking for a missing hiker having found the pack, etc. Well after summiting I went in to the store to ask, still worried I could get in trouble. Someone else had turned the pack in. Zippers open, trail mix, sandwiches, energy bars all gone, some very small tears in the side. Portal store people told us that happened all the time, rangers would not do anything if called, unless the bear had taken off someones arm, technically it was our fault for leaving food out. "Yogi" knew exactly what he was doing, and he sure got the picnic basket with no problem.

"Technically"?

" Thieving?"

Hmmmm...