by Phil » Sun Jul 30, 2017 3:55 pm
Yes, set up camp. Leave it set up. If you don't have anything in your pack that smells, leave it inside the tent. For bears, the smell is the attractant, and the pack is a visual cue. I'm usually pretty confident about thwarting bears, it's people I worry about messing with my gear. But the further out I am, that fear/risk diminishes proportionately with distance. All said and done, when I walk away for any length of time, I minimize what's out and laying around to the point where it's just my tent, cooking kit stuffed into the rocks, bear can tossed off to the side.
With the 10 essentials, a lot of new packs have built-in day packs. They've become almost de rigueur in modern design and expectations. When in place inside the pack, those daypacks serve as more internal storage. If you take advantage of that storage, make it for those essentials whenever possible. Add whatever you need up to above those items, but always be diligent about the routine and planning for contingencies, then basically just grab-n-go. Without that diligent routine, Murphy's Law says that whatever you forget is what you'll end up needing.