There are definitely areas in the Sierra where the bears are bad; Rae Lakes particularly so. The reasons are obvious. Where there are lots of people spending the night I am particularly cautious with food and cooking. I've been too cheep to purchase a Bearikade, but in the past have had a couple of Garcias (which we sold on e-bay easily). These worked fine but are HEAVY and AWKWARD. I've rented the Bear Vault 500 when needed and have not had any problems with using it. I have never had ANY of my canister's investigated by bears however.

A decent summary of where I at with these things would be:

Lightest and largest volume at $225 is the Bearikade. For some reason there is still some question about it's use with Grizzly's. Not exactly sure why at this point.

BearVault 500 is the "next best" (as long as you are not in the Adirondacks ) weight and volume wise and a much less expensive price. 2lb 9oz, $80, 700 cuin

Lighter1 looks like BearVault's competition. Very similar but maybe with a better cap design? Worth looking into in my mind.

I'm not one to buy the smaller canisters. Bear canisters are necessary evils and I struggle to find multiple uses for them. Using the lid to heat water (Lighter1) would make 4 uses for the thing. I like that. I am still looking for something better at this point. Anyway, that's my take. You might want to rent as has been discussed.



Have a good trip!!