Bear Box While Camping: What to Know

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I grew up camping at the beach and in the desert, so when I first camped in the mountains and had to use a bear box, I was a little worried about it. Would it be big enough to hold my belongings? What would need to be put in it?

We’ve camped with bear boxes at campgrounds in June Lake, Lake Tahoe and Bass Lake. While the bear locker information will vary from campground to campground, this post will cover some information you’ll want to know before your first bear box camping adventure.

How Big is a Bear Box?

You can usually find the exact bear box specs online. I can’t find them when I look at recreation.gov (where you make the reservation). But I can usually find them on the National Park or Forest Service websites. In my experience, bear boxes are usually large enough to store at least an ice chest or two, a storage container of food and a small grill.

What Goes In a Bear Storage Locker?

Anything that has food in it or the scent of food should definitely be stored in a bear box. The very first time we camped where there were bear boxes, we were told to put anything with a scent in there. This included Chapstick, baby wipes, deodorant, shampoo, lotions, medicines, etc. Since we use tubs for our camping kitchen supplies, we place the entire tubs in there.

Different places might suggest different things, especially if they have been having a lot of bears in the campground. The big thing is not to store any food items in your vehicle (unless it’s a trailer or RV) or in your tent. You don’t want to have any bears nosing around in there.

We have been to campgrounds that are very strict about bear box usage and will ticket you if you leave any food out or your locker open for longer than a few minutes. Yosemite is one of those places. You need to pull your cooler out, grab what you need out of it, and put it back immediately. We were making sandwiches once with our cooler out, and they came by to tell us to put it back in while we made the sandwiches. Again, different places will have different rules and will enforce them differently.

Tips for Using a Bear Box

Check the size of the bear locker before you go, especially if you have more than one cooler (or if you’re sharing with multiple families). You might need to condense to just one cooler or both bring smaller coolers to fit in the box.

Be strategic with how you load the bear box. Using a bear box can be a little bit annoying when you have to dig to the back to find what you’re looking for. Organize your stuff in a way that you won’t have to take everything out every time you open your box. When we have room, we try to put dry food in a storage container so that it can easily be moved out of the way when we need to pull the cooler out.

Don’t stress. Now that we know what to expect, bear boxes don’t phase us at all. In some ways, it’s nice to have a spot to put all the food. At other campgrounds there have been many times we’ve had birds and squirrels go through our food and trash, so having the bear box helps cut down on those kinds of incidents as well.

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Interested in more? Check out:

• Camping in June Lake: Oh Ridge Campground
• Kid-friendly Hikes in Yosemite Valley
• Meeks Bay on Lake Tahoe, CA
• Campgrounds in Big Bear, Ca