Stealth (Wild) Camping Stories Wanted



stokell

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Jan 20, 2005
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It has snowed 20cm in the last 24 hours in Toronto, so I'm on the computer going over the images I've taken while stealth camping this last summer. I'm attaching one of my favourites.

It was taken in the bush in bear country. I got permission from the landowner, but even then I was suprised that when they wanted to, not even the land owner could find me.

I use a Hennessy hammock and just sling it between 2 trees about 4 metres apart. The hammock is asymetrical, so you sleep almost flat.

Normally I sleep through the night, but just before dawn, when all the forest has woken, I heard strange branch crushing noises nearby. I never saw the bear (if that is what it was), but it scared the heck out of me.
 
stokell said:
It has snowed 20cm in the last 24 hours in Toronto, so I'm on the computer going over the images I've taken while stealth camping this last summer. I'm attaching one of my favourites.

It was taken in the bush in bear country. I got permission from the landowner, but even then I was suprised that when they wanted to, not even the land owner could find me.

I use a Hennessy hammock and just sling it between 2 trees about 4 metres apart. The hammock is asymetrical, so you sleep almost flat.

Normally I sleep through the night, but just before dawn, when all the forest has woken, I heard strange branch crushing noises nearby. I never saw the bear (if that is what it was), but it scared the heck out of me.




You know, when it is very quiet, in the dark of a forest, a very small animal can suddenly sound extremely large.........byfred
 
stokell said:
Normally I sleep through the night, but just before dawn, when all the forest has woken, I heard strange branch crushing noises nearby. I never saw the bear (if that is what it was), but it scared the heck out of me.
This isn't wild camping, or even camping actually, but since you mention bears...

Some years ago I stayed at Yosemite National Park in a "tent cabin", which was a canvas tent arrangement with a metal frame mounted on a wooden base. The rangers put a lot of effort into warning everybody about the bears, pointing out the bear traps, and so on. I was awoken in the middle of the night by all these strange snuffling and snorting sounds right outside my tent :eek:. "It's a bear! It's a bear!" Only it wasn't. It was the guy in the next tent cabin, snoring. :eek:
 
I was camping on Catalina Island with my two sons and a group of about 20 other members of the Y.M.C.A. Indian Guides. I was the Chief of the Sespi Tribe from Santa Anita, Ca. at that time. We camped on the opposite side of the island from Avalon Bay. My son saw a Buffalo (not bison) on the other side of a small gorge and began calling him saying "here buffalo, here buffalo". I told him that he shouldn't do that, because it may get him upset, but, it was too late. the buffalo (standing on the sandy beachbelow us about 100 yards away) started running as fast as I think he could straight at us. I put my one son on the picnic table, and my other son was sleeping in his 3 man tent. The tent next to him was occupied by the son of the mayor pro-temp of our home town at that time. The tents were so close that the tie straps that are spiked to the ground crossed each other. The buffalo disappeared as he descended down the gorge and reappeared as he breached our side, ran right between the two tents without tripping or pulling up the stakes (that was a big relief) and was heading straight towards my younger son and I. I stood at the narrow side of the picnic table shooing him away sweeping my hands off to the right and yelling "hee-ya, hee-ya". When he got about 10 feet of us, without even slowing down, he made a real hard left turn. About 20 feet from us, he stopped and turned around to look at us and then he just walked away like nothing happened! Catalina Island is a great place to camp. I have camped there on several occasions with my kids. We had rubber rafts and brought them into a cave you can only row into at low tide. I caught a baby octopus and found quite a lot of sand dollars on the beach. Also, I will never forget when it happened. All I have to do is look up on the internet and find out when Natalie Wood died. It was that same day Sunday Nov. 29, 1981. She died on the island while we were there on this very trip. For me, it's a moment frozen in time.