In the good ole days at Crater Lake when rangers had the morning patrol shift one of my first jobs was to cruise the campgrounds and take bear incident reports…report any damage and interview the campers from the night before. Most of the time the damage was because the camper did not put their food away. One morning a camper flagged me down and said a bear had taken their food. It was the same story and I replied, “You should have put your food away”. He replied, “We were eating it”. It seems they had dinner set up on the table and the bear came into their camp and growled…they jumped up..the bear helped herself to the food they had set out. Here are some photos of some of the damage I recorded and other photos of the bears at “work” . I have chased bears out of the back of vans….then she chased me…that is another story. I remember Helen even chasing a bear out of our cabin with a broom. Kenneth and Keith are in one photo inspecting the cabin damage.

[most of these photos are Ranger Lloyd Smith. The black and whites are from the CLI photo collection.]

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