. . . for your Sigg water bottle.

I hesitate as I post this, but if it saves one person from having to go through this ordeal, it was worth it.

(Note: I’ve been known for some odd posts on this forum, but what follows is an honest account of what transpired. My hiking companions J.J. and my wife Debbie are willing to sign affidavits verifying this story.)

A little background: We’ve just returned from a 3-day, 2-night backpack on the Buffalo Meadows loop trail in the Buffalo Peaks Wilderness, Pike Nat’l Forest of Colorado. (I’ve posted the hike in Trip Reports, BTW.)

Gorgeous hike. We camped the first night about seven miles in, amidst the trees on the edge of the Buffalo Meadows at about 10,600’, our two tents set up amidst the pines. About 4 a.m., an hour before first light, I awoke with a strong thirst and an even greater need to urinate.

Foregoing a headlamp, I crawled out of my bag and unzipped the Cloudburst II tent. I knew Debbie had brought her new liter Sigg aluminum water bottle into the tent, so I fumbled around until I believed I had grabbed it. I was still groggy, and in my stupor I held the bottle with my right hand and screwed off the top with my left. I put the opening to my lips and was shocked to feel something sticking up in the middle of the opening. Hmmm.

With two fingers I felt around and into the lip in the dark and there seemed to be a small plug about the size of a pencil eraser poking out of the opening. And then it hit me. This wasn’t her Sigg bottle; it was the can of bear spray she always keeps at her side in the tent. I felt around the lip again and found nothing squirting out. I was shocked – and relieved – that the contents of the can hadn’t shot out all over us and the tent when I screwed off the top/trigger.


"Shall we be having the Siggs or the UDAP?"

But the reason for waking up overcame me and setting it aside, I donned my camp-side Crocs and in only my underwear wandered off to find a pine trunk to pee on. Finished, I stumbled back to the tent. Licking my lip, I was curious as to what was causing a burning sensation on the left side of my mouth. As I zipped up the screen, I was surprised at the heat rising on that tender patch of skin. But as I crawled into my bag, any concern over my lip was overwhelmed by the sudden fire flaring up in my underwear.

As I lay there, it was as if someone had fired up a blowtorch and was putting the finishing touch on a dessert of crème brulee in my pants. I’m surprised I wasn’t smoking. As the temperature skyrocketed, I realized that I must have spread some residue from the bear spray can onto my fingers, which I then transferred while relieving myself.

Our can of bear spray is the 9.2 ounce UDAP Pepper-power Bear Deterrent. The contents are 2% capsaicin and related capsaicinoids, some pretty hot stuff if it can stop a Grizzly. We’ve hiked with a can on all our Rockies backpacks since we got caught (without it)in a brown-bear standoff in Canada’s Kootenay Nat’l Park a decade ago, yet never had to use it. Since we were air-hiking back then, we always bought one on arrival (having to register in Canada when buying it) and left it with the rangers or a fellow hiker when we left. Now that we’re in Denver, we’ve kept a can with our overnight bp’ing gear – and we had never had a problem with it, although I must admit that we haven’t practiced or “shot off” one ever.

But back to the story: Debbie hadn’t stirred since my whole ordeal began, and I wasn’t about to wake her. It was the first night in her new Big Agnes bag and Neo-air pad; she said later she’s never slept better in the wild.

So I laid there in my bag stifling a scream and trying to think this thing out, all the while repeating the lyric in my head of rockabilly-great Jerry Lee Lewis: “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!”

It just kept getting hotter and hotter. Like "treading water" -- in a pool of flowing lava. I figured out I must have got spray residue on my underwear so I shed them. I unzipped my bag and tried fanning myself with it. But I fell into that burning ring of fire, and them flames – well they just got higher.

I realized what a foolhardy sailor must have felt like in his bunk two days after a wild shore leave. And as the dim glow of dawn filtered through the tent, I knew that I had to do something, and I figured a wet wipe might cool me off and remove any remaining residue. Only problem was I had capsaicin on my fingers and the wet wipes were literally “up a tree” outside.

So with my sleeping bag pulled off and the soles of my feet in the air on the ceiling of the Tarptent, I called over to Debbie. She woke and turned and looked at me quizzically as I said, “I need you to do something, and I’ve got a really funny story for you.”

She later said she was happy to know the story wasn’t that I had poo-pooed in my sleeping bag – there sure wasn’t anything funny about that – because that’s what it looked like with me laying there out of my bag with my feet up in the air bare-assed like a baby on a changing table. She got up and headed off to retrieve a wet-wipe packet from the food bag hanging in a distant tree.

Within 15 minutes of my wipe down, the heat and pain began to subside. I donned new underwear, zipped up my bag and began to recover my lost sleep. The thing to remember from all this is that a drop of capsaicin – of bear spray – when misapplied, can go a long, longgg way.

(I’d sure like to thank UDAP of Bozeman, MT for how that can was designed. Even when some fool mistakenly unscrews it in his tent, the pepper spray doesn’t shoot out all over the place. The container works just like a can of refrigerant for your car’s a/c system and pierces a stopper when you screw the cap/trigger on. If that can had “gone off” in the tent, they probably would have had to airlift us out of there.)