BearVault BV450 Bear Canister Review
The BV450 is a necessity I wish I could leave home, and the canister is the right size for the trips I take.
The canister in a campground bear box before my solo trip near Mammoth Lakes, September 2024.
I carry the BV450 on every trip. Scoring a bear canister feels wrong, because I wish I never had to carry one and I would never leave one behind, so this review carries no stars.
Before the canister, I hung my food. On a 2014 trip in Desolation Wilderness I rigged a proper PCT hang and slung the line over a dead tree. The hang was decent and the tree was wrong, since a bear could have snapped the branch and brought dinner down with him. A bear canister is the rule in Desolation now, and the hang belongs to that trip.
For the trips I go on, the BV450 is the lightest canister that does the job, and I feel the BV450 is the right one. If your food does not fit in a BV450, you are packing too much. On the Tahoe Rim Trail I resupplied every four days, and four days of food fit.
The canister is missing from most of my trip kits, so the real packed weight on those trips ran about two pounds higher than the kits show. The one list that carries a canister is the Lost Coast trip in February 2022, where the King Range requires one.
What works
- The lightest canister that suits my trips.
- Holds four days of food for one person.
What does not
- About two pounds that no backpacker wants to carry.
Open the BV450 in Backpackers Friend
The link adds the BV450 to Backpackers Friend as a small gear bundle with the weight filled in, ready to apply to the gear list of your next trip.
The trip kits in Backpackers Friend
The BV450 appears in one of my trip kits, and the kit opens in Backpackers Friend with every item, weight, and quantity.
- Lost Coast Trail, February 2022Three nights on the King Range coast, with a tent and a bear canister. 73 items on a 30.8-pound total pack weight. Read the trip report.
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Keep your own gear list with the trip
The gear checklist in Backpackers Friend weighs every item by category, charts the pack as you build the list, marks each item packed, and saves a list as a reusable bundle for the next trip. The checklist lives on the phone next to the route, the camps, and the offline map. The gear checklist is part of Premium, and planning a trip, drawing the route, and tracking the walk are free with no account.
