Have you ever gotten into a scrape while camping?

I don’t know how much any of you will remember of this, but we were all there on a camping trip to Alice Lake, north of Squamish. Jennie would have been perhaps three and it was I think one of our first forays into camping as a family. The campsite at Alice Lake is part of the Provincial Park there and was well set up with quite a lot of sites, all very well set up and ( perhaps deceptively ) comfortably well organized. We had set up our camp kitchen/eating area at the picnic table, and all was shut down for the night, whole the family settled in our big tent, I think all of the kids asleep.

I heard a rustling and a snuffling and a banging of things on our camp table and whispered to Dad, ‘Are you awake?’. He whispered back ‘Yes’, as we both held our breath and didn’t dare to move. There was all sorts of snuffling around the tent which seemed like for ever, but it did eventually move on. I have to say I was terrified with apparently only tent canvas between us and a black bear.

In the morning we found our pots and pans swiped off the picnic table and holes in the lid of one pot made by bear claws….. yikes. Our Tupperware pot of sugar had been knocked over, cracked open and pretty much scattered. I still feel it was a pretty close call, and was certainly a lesson about putting all foods and cooking utensils away in a bear proof spot. I have to admit that as newbie campers in what seemed like a ‘civilized’ campsite, we had not given enough thought to the fact that we were really out there in the bush, and the bears were there first!