Aside from bear canisters, there are few – if any – pieces of gear that backpackers can be required to have. Don’t want to bring a tent? That’s your choice. Feel like skipping the stove and eating no-cook dinners? Go for it. Trust the forecast and decide to leave the rain gear at home? No big deal. The ability to choose what we bring and the multitude of options for nearly every type of gear that exists are part of the fun of planning a backpacking trip. However, for certain national parks and other public lands, it can be required that you possess an approved bear canister to store your food.

Ideal for shorter and / or solo trips, the BearVault BV450 Jaunt bear-resistant food canister can hold enough food for overnight backpacking trips up to trips of 2-3 days.

Design and Details

The BearVault BV450 bear canister ($84) is a Sierra Interagency Black Bear Group and Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee approved canister and one that I recently began using on trips in grizzly country or where hanging food would likely be difficult or otherwise less-than-ideal. However, it should be noted that the BearVault is not suggested for use within the High Peaks of the Adirondacks per the manufacturer due to several bears in the past that have been able to open the canister in that area. With an advertised weight of 2 lbs. 1.6 oz. and a weight of 2 lb. 0.80 oz. when measured on a scale at the Post Office, this piece of gear is certainly not going to be unnoticeable when in your pack or strapped to the outside of it. That said, it is one of the lighter bear canisters out there and one that also has several distinct advantages to it. Previously the BV450 was nicknamed as the "Solo" model in BearVault's lineup; most recently it's been referred to as the "Jaunt".

As superficial as it sounds, one of the first things I noticed about the BV450 was that it looked like a good piece of gear. Looks can be deceiving, but it’s always nice when a piece of gear can mix utility with aesthetics. The icy blue polycarbonate of the canister’s squat, cylindrical body allows one to easily see exactly where specific items are inside. This may seem like a trivial advantage, but I found it to be immensely helpful and to save time and frustration. Simply put, it’s nice to be able to see what you’re opening the bear canister to retrieve and hone in on it rather than having to empty out most of its contents or try to remember exactly where you put the bag with the electrolyte mixes and energy bars. The only other bear canister I have experience with was an opaque one and, while I didn’t recognize that as a major drawback at the time, I would definitely have a difficult time transitioning back to one after having used a transparent canister.

In the Field

So, positive initial impressions out of the way, I’ll move on to the actual functionality of the BV450. To use it you of course have to open it (and it has to be designed in a way that a bear, through brute force or brilliance, cannot) and the design was so simple as to be almost disconcerting. The lid screws on clockwise and two small snaps in the lid click past two housing bumps on the canister itself. Other than the snaps and housing bumps, it’s pretty much like putting the lid on a huge Nalgene bottle. To open, one simply turns the lid counter-clockwise and when the snaps hit the housing bumps you push in firmly on a textured area near the snap where the plastic is a bit more pliable and the snap can be slid past the housing bump. You should be able to open the canister in half the time it took to read that last sentence after you do it once or twice; it’s fairly intuitive but does take a bit of getting used to in regard to timing the twist and the amount and location of pressure needed to depress the snaps, but overall it’s fairly user-friendly.

Compared to the other bear canister I have used, I strongly preferred the way this canister opens and closes. While it does seem to be a bit stiff on crisp mornings (I’m not a physics major, but I suppose this is owing to the rigidity of the plastic at colder temperatures), I did not experience any of the difficulties that other reviews of this canister have noted and firmly believe that the design of the lid lies somewhere between absolutely ingenious and merely excellent.

The dimensions of this canister (8.7 x 8.3 inches) allow for a total volume of just over 7 liters, which was plenty of room for a two-night trip. It seems that this could hold enough food for a three to four night trip, depending on the bulk of your meals, but anything past that would be pushing it. The wide-mouth lid allows for easy packing and I’ve found that with you some practice you can learn how to utilize the space effectively, eliminating wasted space.

Just to double-check the “difficult to open at cold temperatures” issue, I popped the canister in the freezer at home for a few hours and then tried to open it. Like it had been on my backpacking trips, it was a bit stiff and required a bit more pressure and finesse, but it wasn’t a challenge or overly frustrating.

I’ve only used the canister in dry weather, but was curious about its weather resistance in addition to its bear resistance. So, in the interest of a thorough review, I decided to put the canister in the shower to simulate how it might fare if it was left exposed to rain. While not scientifically conclusive, I did not detect any water entering the main part of the canister after 15 minutes of “rain” pouring on top of it. That said, it might be a good idea to store this upside down or in a plastic bag (it would easily fit in the ubiquitous grocery store sack), or both, to ensure that it stays sealed from the elements. I try to place the canister at the base of a tree or nestled in some rocks to offer it a bit of shelter from the elements, but short of a deluge that would cause the canister to float away I feel fairly confident in finding my food dry in the morning regardless of overnight weather.

Even for someone as wordy as I am, there’s not too much else to be said about this bear canister. Unlike sleeping bags or tents, bear canisters don’t really lend themselves to nuanced reviews and in-depth analysis of their components and the various design flourishes or clever engineering that set them apart from their competitors. They’re simple devices designed to serve a purpose of paramount importance – keeping your food safe and thereby keeping bears safe by preventing their habituation to food sources brought by humans. Durability-wise, with no moving parts in any meaningful sense, or any major points of stress, I expect the BV450 to last for many, many years.

That said, in addition to complying with regulations set by land managers I found that using a bear canister has several other benefits which are worth noting. Perhaps this is unique to me, but I found that having a bear canister kept me much better organized in regard to food storage than I usually am. Having one dedicated place (that takes up a lot of room in a 55 liter backpack) made it easy to stash everything in there rather than having food bags placed in the pack wherever they would fit. This also made it easy to round up all the food at the end of the day before stashing the bear canister. Maybe I’m just a bit unorganized with the food in general, but there was something about having this canister that really made me more cognizant about where food was at any given time.

Another benefit of the bear canister that surprised me was just how nice it was to not have to go through the task of searching out a tree or trees that I could use to hang my food. Especially in dense coniferous forest, it can be a challenge to find a decent branch to toss a line over and I’ve found that it can be tempting to use a less than ideal (and perhaps less than effective) branch after a day full of hiking, sunset approaching, and when there are other camp chores left to do. It’s just really nice to be able to cross one thing off the “to do” list upon arrival in camp, although you are paying a pretty hefty weight penalty in order to do this. Something like the Ursack bear-resistant food bag would be a compromise in this regard.

Lastly, if you don’t mind waiting for it to dry, the bear canister makes a great bucket to haul water for filtering, dousing a campfire, cleaning up, or whatever else you want to use water for. The lid can also serve as a convenient place to lay utensils when cooking and for kitchen organization. If you’re hauling a bear canister around, you might as well find as many uses for it as possible.

The transparent nature of the BV450 canister makes it easy to find what you're looking for.

Conclusion

Overall, I found the BV450 to be a well-designed, practical, and functional bear-resistant food canister for use in areas where such items are required or where a bear canister is preferred due to lack of other options (i.e. above treeline). The price seemed fairly reasonable, given the quality of the product and how long it would likely last, and I would have no hesitation to recommend this bear canister to other backpackers.

The Bear Vault BV450 retails for $84. Find it here at REI Co-op as well as here at Amazon.com, with a larger capacity BearVault BV500 model also available if more capacity is desired. You can find all sizes, as well as other backpacking bear-resistant food storage options, on this page at REI. See our backpacking in bear country article for additional food storage strategies and bear country backpacking considerations.

Editor's Note: This review originally appeared in Issue 30 of TrailGroove Magazine. Read the original article here for additional photos, pros and cons, and our rating of the BearVault BV450 Jaunt Bear Canister.