You’re 90 miles into a 170-mile circumnavigation of Unimak Island in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Unimak is a storm-ravaged island 700-miles from Anchorage, Alaska. Unimak has over 400 bears. Not little grizzly bears, but huge salmon-eating brown bears. Your team is doing the trip unsupported, traveling by foot and packraft. To save weight, your team has forgone heavy bear gear and is relying on good ol’ Alaskan bear smarts.

On the fourth night, you pitch camp on a knoll and cook downwind on the beach below. It’s raining and windy. Upon returning to camp you find a bear inside the Black Diamond Megamid, romping and trashing everything. The bear reluctantly leaves and you assess the damage. The Megamid has 24-feet of tears, the sleeping pads are shredded, packrafts ripped, drybags trashed, sleeping bags torn and most of the food is chowed.

False Pass, a town of 64 people, is 90-miles back where you started. Your emergency communication is an EPIRB radiobeacon for alerting search and rescue.

What do you do?

This is a true story from my neighbor and friend Eric Parsons. Eric had joined Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman for the final segment of their 4,000-mile, one-year traverse from Seattle to Unimak Island. Eric, Erin and Hig are smart and extremely tough. As Eric told me, “You’re not going to use an EPIRB because you’re hungry.”

First question: Why was the food in their tent? Because the toughest Alaskan adventurers protect their food by sleeping with it. Second question: Why didn’t they have bear canisters? Because you can’t lug three-pound canisters on a 4,000-mile self-supported trip. Why didn’t they hang their food? No trees. How about a gun? Too heavy. Why not a Sat phone for aerial resupply? Too expensive. We can second-guess all we want, but these are some of the toughest and smartest adventurers in the US.

Fortunately, it’s difficult to get in this situation. Most US backcountry is relatively close to road access – buck up for a day and you’ll have pizza for dinner. If civilization is further away, you’ll get really hungry, and be miserable, but you won’t die. Humans can survive three weeks without food. To put hunger in perspective read the classic survival epic The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz.

On the other hand, preparing for a remote backpacking trip in bear country includes studying survival foods of the region. Carry and read a natural history book specific for your area, such as my all-time favorite Cascade-Olympic Natural History by Daniel Mathews. Natural history books engage you with the mountains and teach you about survival food. Learn which berries are edible and carry some hooks and 20-yards of 10-pound fishing line to have the option of catching fish.

After sizing up their food, Eric, Erin and Hig shifted plans from a circumnavigation to a week-long lollipop tour in order to reach the western end of Unimak Island. “We were putting in long 20-mile days on 1000-calories each,” Eric said. “We didn’t have a choice but to cover the ground. It tears you down to your inner demons. It makes things very simple. You wake up hungry in the morning and you just keep walking because there’s nothing else to do. You lose the energy to do anything but walk.”

If a bear chows your food on a long backpacking trip don’t hit S.O.S on your SPOT. Don’t sat phone the search and rescue. Be like Eric, Erin and Hig and buck up. You’ll survive. You’ll be miserable. You may hallucinate. But you’ll have an incredible story. And you’ll forever understand food for what it is: precious.

Liked it? Share it!