A couple of years ago, a friend of mine and I did a back packing trip into the interior of Algonquin Park.
It was to be a 60km trip, spanning 4 to 5 days (we ended up taking the full 5).
When we returned, we stopped into the main outfitter for the park and met some weekend canoeists who were returning early.
Apparently, a raccoon got into their food and made off with everything they had for the weekend.
Fortunately for them, they could paddle back, re-supply and head back into the wild.
Needless to say, when we go into the interior, we are visiting the home of the wildlife.
And, equally needless to say, the wildlife does not necessarily view us we view them.
In fact, it is probably safe to assume that most wild life view us as a threat that is also a food supply.
With this in mind, it is important to keep our food out of reach of the wildlife.
And the best way to do that is to hang it from the trees. Now, most of the trees we find in this part of
the world will be pine trees and not very suitable for hanging food from.
What you need to do is to find two trees that each have a branch that you can easily throw a rope over at
roughly the same height. In fact, the higher it is the better, but make sure it's at least 7 meters (20 feet) high.
Then, throw a rope over each branch so they hang down between the two trees.
Then tie the two ends of the ropes together. Make a couple of loops in the ropes between the two
trees.
Now, here's the tricky part, and it takes two (and possibly three, depending on how much food you have).
A person get's on each rope that is slung over a branch on each tree.
Then, they both pull on the rope in order to lift the food off the ground and into the safety of the trees.
The reason I say that this may require a third person is that somebody may
have to lift the food off the ground to get it started on it's journey tree-ward.
Then tie the ropes off to nearby trees. It should look like the picture when it's all done.
I'll try to get some photos of this system on our next outing, but that won't happen until
spring of 2001.
A variant of this method is to bring along a pulley that can be attached to the middle of the ropes.
Then string a third line through that, raise it up so that it is centered between the trees and then, voila, you have a
really slick "food suspension system". Also, you can use the pulley as a weight when
you're throwing the lines over the trees.
