Why use a canister?

You have planned for this trip all year and now here you are on your first night out. You have been walking all day and having finished dinner you are after some hard earned sleep in your tent.
SCRATCH, CRUNCH CRUNCH.
In the wee hours you are shaken from your slumber by a noise which sounds like something – like an animal getting into your foodbag!
Alarmed and realizing it is a LARGE animal getting your food – MAYBE A BEAR - you search your soul to find the courage to go out and try and rescue your food and the rest of your trip. Fighting the fog of sleep you run out of your tent screaming, banging on a pot and the bear runs off. Miraculously, you are unhurt
BUT …
Your food is gone!
Fortunately, you tell yourself, you were only one night out on the five day trip and not three nights out.

Slowly you realize that your trip is over.

Or You Could Have Slept.

This is an all too common occurrence these days. In fact, many backpackers actually have a carefully imagined plan in the event this happens.
There is a way to save your sleep, protect your food and in doing so insure your trip.
If your food had been in an ultra-lightweight Bearikade, your biggest decision would have been whether to get up and take a picture of the bear or roll over and go back to sleep.

The Problem
Bears can easily take the food from your pack, tent, vehicle, or the tree where you hung it, whenever they want to, according to the U.S. National Park Service. Doing so is a piece of cake, so to speak, for a grizzly or any other bear, not to mention a raccoon, fox, marmot, or even a mouse.
Everyone loses when you don't effectively protect your food. You could lose the last several days of your trip, hurrying to the nearest supermarket on an empty stomach. And your tent or pack could be destroyed, or your vehicle badly damaged, by the hungry animal. The next dozen people whom the bear meets might lose their food, too.
Or worse.
Finally, a fed bear is a dead bear. The bear might lose his life because of what you helped to teach him. Rangers will kill bears, whether a whole family of black bears or a single black bear juvenile, for the safety of humans, if a bear's experience with your food teaches it that "human presence equals easy food."

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