You were *watching* me, on independence pass????
God that's funny.
The last step for me is to walk around the campground, and find a friendly person who will let me put my food panniers in their car. Works like a charm.
Also, Aspens have pathetic little wussy branches too.
Once, backpacking in the sierras, we had a tiny amount of food that wouldn't fit in our bear-proof container (required where we were). So we had to hang it. The trees were like 15 feet high and had little branches about 6 inches long (we were at treeline). Se we decided to hang our food bag in the tree right next to the tent, so we could scare the bears away if they came.... yeah right.
So, I wake up in the middle of the night, my friends are squirming around and whispering... there is a small black bear, in the tree directly overhead. Needless to say, no one volunteered to be the scarer-away-er.
We lost all our starbursts.