(1) Bats.
(2) Fruits.
(3) Nuts.
(4) Spiders.
(5) Preferred method of punishment for those whose food has been very, very naughty, in countries where this practice is still allowed.
(6) A way of keeping food out of the reach of unwanted midnight snackers.
The conventional method of hanging food.
First get a rope. If you didn't bring one, then go home and start over.
Find two trees about 20 feet apart (6.1 m). If there are no trees in this part of the country then you are doing it wrong. Go home, pull out a map, and move to a part of the country that has trees, for crying out loud.
Your rope should be at least 60 feet long (18.3 m). Pick the first tree. Tie a rock or small animal (hamsters do have a use in backpacking!) to one end of the rope and throw it over a sturdy tree limb at least 17 feet or 5.2 m high (no one knows where the number 17 came from, so it must be correct).
Tie one end of your rope to the tree.
Go to the other tree and repeat.
Now take your second rope and tie one end to your bag of food. What? We didn't tell you to bring two ropes? Too bad. Go home and get another one.
Again, tie a weight to the one end of this second rope and sling it over the middle of the line you have strung between the two trees. (At this point in the process, use of your spare hamster is allowed, but is considered bad form — the first one should still be in working order unless you are very, very clumsy.) Hoist the bag of food by pulling on the free end of the rope that you tied to the food bag. Make sure when you are done that the food bag ends up at least 12 feet off the ground (3.7 m).
Now you will find that either the trees are too thin and lean toward each other when you do this, or that the first rope was tied too slackly. The result either way is that everything sags down toward the ground, and your food bag is probably three or four feet off the ground at best. Too bad. Start over, and keep trying until you get it right.
When your food has been hung high enough, tie the free end of the rope holding your food bag to one of the trees.
If you are camping in an area with educated vermin, you will find that they know which rope to chew through, so this method is useless.
Time to go home in disgust.
Counterbalancing.
(Disclaimer: Go ahead and try this if you want, but the truth is that no one has ever successfully hung food this way, though various authors and government agencies keep repeating this bogus crap. Well, keep reading anyway — what else do you have going on?)
The counterbalance method is an alternate technique that needs only one tree, and does not require you to tie a line where sneaky drooling toothy critters can come along and chew through it.
The recommendations from Backpacker Magazine are to "locate a branch that's at least 20 feet up, sticks out at least 10 feet from the trunk, and is about an inch or 2 in diameter (strong enough to hold the food bag but too thin to support a bear)."
Check.
Go ahead and try it.
Won't work. Forget about an inch (2.5 cm). Forget about an inch or 2. You need a limb that is significantly thicker than two inches if you actually want your food bag to stay up there in the sky.
Finding a branch meeting all the listed requirements (and thicker too) may take several hours, and you might have to hike well into the next county to locate one, but this is important so don't let that stop you.
First, having found such a branch, take your trusty rope, weight one end with a rock or your hamster. (Let's call him Bob, and it helps if you can convince him to stuff some small stones into his cheek pouches for extra heft while you're at it).
OK, so Bob's on deck. Now what?
So hurl Bob over the tree limb. If you can't make it, don't feel bad. That's quite a long way up. Let's hope that Bob knows how to fall. Well, whatever.
Now, possibly hours later, having successfully hurled Bob over that limb, release Bob and tie his end of the line to your first food bag.
Whoa, didn't we tell you that you have to have two food bags now? Too bad. Go get another one.
Pull that first bag as high up as you can, and while holding it suspended, go get your second bag. Good job. (It's nice that you have those long, long arms, or this wouldn't nearly so easy.) So make a loop in the rope while holding the first bag suspended, and attach the second food bag to it.
Right.
At this point we should tell you that both bags need to weigh exactly the same amount, because they have to counterbalance each other. And you need six hands to do this, besides those long wiggly arms of yours.
OK, OK — once you've done all that, and while continuing to hold the first bag suspended, put any extra rope inside the second bag, and push that bag upward. The weight of the first bag will help to pull the rope over the limb until you've got the second bag as high as you can reach, which should be around seven feet, max (2 m and a skootch). Not good enough.
How about you go off and hunt around for a long stick? Does that work for you? How long? Say about six or seven feet (that 2 m and a skootch again). We'll wait here for you. Even if it takes weeks.
So then, you've got your stick now, and you can push the lower bag up higher and higher until both bags are hanging "at least 12 feet off the ground, 10 feet from the trunk and 5 feet below the branch. [3.7, 3, and 1.5 m, respectively] When time to eat, hook one of the loops with a stick and pull the bags down."
Loops? What loops?
Forgot to put nice loops up there somewhere? No problem, just do it all over, on your next trip, because you'll never get those loopless bags down. Ever.
Can't make your stick hook anywhere on either of the bags, even if you did put some loops in the line? So you can get your food down again? Once again, no problem, you're only screwed. Just finish your trip without food. The stress of starvation will provide a nice, rigorous tuneup for your immune system, in case you survive.
No, I've never seen anyone hang food this way either, but the same idiots keep writing it up over and over again.
As always, Effort or Eff it. Your call. No sniveling.
Source: How to talk in the woods.