Major 2XL

Hopefully this works based off the new regulations for the BWCAW.

This is a huge bag--exactly what I wanted! I'm so tired of trying to pack 10 days of food into a Bear Vault and so I wanted a bag that would carry tons of food. This is it! I figure it'll be good for 2 weeks worth on river trips (and I wouldn't likely carry that much food backpacking). It seems beefy in construction. I haven't had a chance to use it yet. I think my mode will be to pack food in a few different lightweight stuffsacks in my pack and once at the campsite, pack all the food into the Ursack for overnight safe storage. I actually briefly considered trying to make a bear resistant bag myself and did lots of research to find Kevlar fabric, etc. In the end, this bag was sooo much easier to justify purchasing.

I own two Ursacks, the XL and the 2XL. The first allow me to safely store about six days of dry food for one person, while the 2XL allows me to store about twelve days of food for one. Given the small difference in weight I think that the 2XL make a lot more sense for trips that are longer than a weekend.

The 2XL is very large, and can be quite difficult to pack efficiently in your backpack, not to mention that finding what you’re looking for at the bottom of the bag is quite challenging. I have found that using smaller, lightweight dry bags to store the food makes this a lot easier. I use SealLine' BlockerLite bags of different colors (other brands would work too, but these are good). Two 15 L (one for lunch and one for supper) and one 10 L (for breakfast) work well for me.

While hiking the Ursack is folded in my backpack and the food is in the dry bags. The smaller dry bags are easier to pack than the big Ursack, and it's also easier for me to get what I want when I want it. When I'm ready to go to bed, everything goes in the Ursack, which I then anchor safely.

So far, I haven't had a bear try to get my food (hopefully this will never happen). I have had in the past mice chew through dry bags, but since I’ve started using the Ursack this problem has gone away. Overall I feel my food is much safer that way, and thus I feel safer as well.

After deciding to upgrade from a standard bear hang I opted to go with the Ursack Major coupled with Opsaks. The 2xl size gave me enough space for five days of food for both myself and my two dogs. Securing the Ursack at night was so much easier than trying to find a good tree for a bear hang, saving time and giving me more peace of mind. Used my new setup on a two week section hike of the Long Trail in VT, where black bear activity has been increasing. Looking forward to many more hikes with this bad larry!

we had a bear at our campsite while backpacking in the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness August 2020. It likely was attracted to fish we cooked over the campfire although we thought we burned everything fish associated. It tried to rip our ursacks but just left huge claw scratches down the sides. One claw looked like it snagged but there were no tears in the ursacks. We lined them with aluminum and had our food in OPSAKS. The bear didn't try any more than that. We were very happy it left without getting into any of our food. So glad we had the Ursacks.