True Stories of Troubled Trip

The Bottle and the Bear Float

For those of you who do not know, bears are a big problem when camping in the interior. Not only do they steal your food, but they have a nasty habit to prowl around you campsite, making you unable to leave your tent. In Algonquin, where I do the majority of my canoe tripping, bears are a big problem, especially around Joe Lake. We trippers carry our food in either a large wooden box that you carry via a strap around your forehead, or in a bright blue barrel. We rather originally call this barrel the food barrel. Great name, I know. Anyways, when on trip it is generally good practice to hang your barrel in a tree in what is called a bear hang. The barrel is hung upside down so that a bear cannot open it. Very effective, as bears have a nasty habit of ripping barrels apart, and eating all of your food.

We arrived at our campsite on Joe Lake. It was beautiful, with a small cliff on one side. As we were putting away he pots and pans for dinner, my tripper surveyed the area. "Guys," She said. "The trees here don't have any low branches. I think we are going to have to do a barrel float." We all nodded. When there are no favourable trees to hang the barrel in, sometimes we have to float the barrel. This is when we tie the barrel to a tree on the land ad put it in the water. They are designed to float if the canoe dumps. I, myself, was not too pleased with this. I had just put juice in my water bottle, which meant that I had to put it in the barrel. I am unfortunately blessed with a perpetually dry mouth, so I wanted to have my water bottle near me for as long as possible. You can consider my water bottle my best friend. Its faded purple metal exterior is a feast for the eyes, and when at camp I keep it as close as possible. But, alas, 'twas not to be. My tripper decided that she wanted to flat the barrel as early as possible so that we weren't looking for a good spot in the dark. So, after doing the dishes, we set off to look for a good place with water access. My friend, let's call her Mary, was the first one to find it. Mary led us to a spot where the shore sloped gently down to the lake. There were trees all the way down, so we quickly tied the barrel to one of them and then headed off for the night. It was then that our whole trip changed.

"Wake up," I was startled awake to someone vigourusly shaking my by the shoulders. It was Mary. "Its the morning and our tripper, (Lets call her Alex), wants you to help her make breakfast. I slowly got up and surveyed the inside of the tent. Everyone's sleeping bags had been thrown to the side, and other then Mary and I the tent was abandoned. I slowly got up and made my way to the fire. Alex was nowhere to be found.
"Where's Alex?" I asked, and my friend Rose replied. "She's getting the barrel!" With nothing better to do I busied myself in feeding the fire.
After a few minutes, though, our tripper rushed out of the woods.
"The barrel isn't there!" She exclaimed. Which of course incited the rest of our party to race off into the woods, looking for something they knew want there. Sure enough, the place that we had left it was empty, and its blue roundness was not visible anywhere. We immediately packed up and paddled around the lake looking for it, but it was nowhere to be seen. Finally, we had to admit defeat. Since we were on our first of four days, we knew that we had to turn back as there wasn't anywhere that we could pick up food. Spirits were pretty low that morning as we headed back to the portage that we had completed the previous evening. We had only gone over one, however, when we ran into another trip from the boy's camp Pathfinder. We got talking to them, and they told us that they were on their last day and were heading back to their camp. After hearing our plight, they readily offered us their extra food barrel. Why they had two beats me. Anyways, we soon parted ways with them and since we had a barrel headed off back to Joe lake. We were moving pretty quickly, and after about four portages we caught up to another trip in front of us. They consisted of a family, and their accent was either Russian or Ukrainian. They were moving pretty slow, with packs that were half full and they were lunchbox ing their canoe to get it to the other lake. As per tripper's code, we decided to help them out, and I volunteered to take the barrel. I picked up the heavy thing, and began walking. Almost immediately I noticed a rattling sound coming from within the barrel. I thought nothing of it at first, but after a while I got fed up with it and took it off my back. There was nothing visible from the outside, but once I had opened it I immediately saw the problem. Loosely held inside the barrel was a faded purple metal water bottle with a blue caribiner. A bottle that looked very familiar. I sucked in a quick breath when I realized that I had found our barrel. As fast as I could I raced down the portage to the end, where our counsellor busy dropping off our canoe. "Maia!" I whisper shouted.
"Yah?" She answered, looking back at me over her shoulder.
"Look at this!" I opened up the barrel and showed her my bottle. Instantly her mouth opened in an O of recognition.
"Is that...?" She asked.
"You bet." I answered. "What do we do?"

We managed to recover our barrel from the Russian/Ukrainians. Apparently they had "found it" while it was floating in the lake. I am inclined to believe them, but the soft covering of the barrel was not wet at all. Needless to say I am never doing a bear float again. As for the barrel belonging to the Pathfinder boys, well, we returned that another day.