A bear in Yosemite taught me to stop trusting cheap coolers

I was camping at Upper Pines last fall with what I thought was a decent budget cooler. It was one of those $40 ones from a big box store, and I figured it was fine for a weekend. We put all our food in it, locked the latches, and went to bed. Around 2 AM, we heard this awful scraping and banging. A black bear had gotten the lid open in maybe two minutes flat. It wasn't even trying hard, just kind of popped it with its claws. We yelled and it ran off, but it ate all our bacon and crushed the lid. The ranger came by the next morning, took one look at the busted plastic, and said, 'Yeah, those don't count as bear-resistant. You got lucky.' Now I'm saving up for a proper rotomolded one. Has anyone else had a cooler fail on them in a big way?

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3 Comments

beth_sanchez476mo ago

Proper rotomolded one" is the only way to go, learned that the hard way too with a raccoon raid.

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val3236mo ago

So what did the raccoons get into, @beth_sanchez47?

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drew_grant524mo ago

Aw man, I gotta disagree on that one. I've had a regular old plastic bin with a snap-on lid hold up fine against raccoons for years. The trick is just adding a bungee cord or a weight on top, not spending the cash on a rotomolded one. Those things are heavy and overpriced for what they do.

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