14ers.com

To All,

Just a reminder that bears are (as usual) a problem at Lake Como. Take every precaution.

Also a parallel at Capitol Lake: over the past few days a single male bear has been routinely ripping into tents in the daytime hours when people are out hiking. The Forest Service has been notified.

BE SAFE!

I read the recent conditions report from 7/12 (Blanca and LB). Sounds like they're pretty fearless. Question - how does the forest service handle problem bears in that area if they haven't had any bear-human incidents?

macgyver wrote:Question - how does the forest service handle problem bears in that area if they haven't had any bear-human incidents?

I think this is their normal practice in these cases:

A timely post! Just came back from a weekend somewhat unsuccessfully dodging the Lake Como bear. Our group of five met two more climbers who were already camping up there. When we arrived, they had no food. (Their hung food bag had been grabbed during the day while they were out climbing.) We all quickly hung up our own bags, not wanting to leave anything in tents or packs. Literally about 10 minutes after the bags were up, the bear came galloping into camp (with all 7 of us standing around) and climbed up a nearby tree where one of the bags was hanging. (Yes, we didn't put our food as far from camp as we should have.) He (she?) reached out and snagged the cord with his claw, then commenced ripping open the bags and eating the food as we all watched in amazement. None of us (pretty experienced backpackers all) had ever seen anything like it in Colorado.

The good news is that all of our food bags survived the night. He seems to be most active during the day. So if you are taking food up, you may want to carry it with you while hiking instead of leaving it at camp.

The bear also knocked around some gear that wasn't food, but might have had residual food smell (stoves, cooking pots).

If we had it all to do over again, we'd bring canisters to that area for the safety of both people and the bear.

I am heading up to Como to climb Little Bear soon and will bring my bear canister for sure. I've not been up there in a long time, is there anywhere to camp that's not in the high use areas and maybe out of the happy hunting grounds? Maybe down the road a bit?

desertdog wrote:the high human use areas

Agreed it can be annoying to camp near "high humans."

Approach up the Lake Como Road is not that long... Considering the bears, the mosquitos, the backpack in, the human issues (Camp Gladiator...), etc., perhaps a good bet is to camp low (where those side 4WD roads run off to north off the main LCR), and then just get an earlier start for the peak(s). With a light daypack and the 2-hr hike in, you'll still feel fresh by the time you reach Lake Como...and you've had a decent night's sleep, and your food is in you instead of that bear.

SoCool wrote:

desertdog wrote:the high human use areas

Agreed it can be annoying to camp near "high humans."

Got me!

Peppering a bear with bear spray accomplishes two important objectives: 1) protects you during a bear encounter and 2) re-instills a fear of humans in the bear. Since bear encounters are so rare in Colorado (compared to BC and Alaska), very few backpackers carry it. Hopefully someone will spray this bear before it has to be put down.

We camped above Lake Como last night July 12th just passed the LB turn off cairn and fortunately had no bear encounter (other than LB). We did hear the stories from other campers though (I think we spoke to maurer_kg briefly). We actually "buried" our food bag across the stream in the boulder field there and had no problems with the food either. We probably just got lucky but thought I'd share. We did have bear spray with us, the Lake Como bear seems to have caused havoc for several seasons now and seems quite brazen.

desertdog wrote:is there anywhere to camp that's not in the high use areas and maybe out of the happy hunting grounds?

We went up Sunday, heard the bear stories from the other people who have already posted, and another pair who said their tent was ripped into while they were hiking. We decided to keep going and skip the bear and mosquito infested Lake Como. We camped at Crater Lake (end of valley) which was a great place to camp and made for a quick scramble up Ellingwood/Blanca, but put us further away from the Little Bear trailhead than we would have liked.

In the What the hell were you thinking?!? department, we talked to one guy who said he was eating lunch by Lake Como, set his sandwich down on a rock while he went for a stroll on the lake shore, looked back and saw the bear eating his sandwich. That bear has definitely been trained to know that people mean food. Too bad, probably only a matter of time before there is a dangerous encounter.

We did carry bear spray but never saw the bear. I agree that it would be good for the bear to get a negative experience from a human, but it may be too late now for it to make much difference.

Managed to spend a night up above lake como last weekend without an encounter with the problem bear. wonder why I got lucky?