u/GroundbreakingEar450

As a long time camper in bear country I have always carried bear spray and know how to use it. My girlfriend however is new to camping and was not familiar with how to use it. This was our third trip together and I had shown her how to use it in the past, but not had her actually pull the trigger since there were other campers around in dispersed camp sites.

This time we camped in a site all by itself, very far (miles) from any other sites and about 80 yards from the logging road it was off of. I had an old canister that was only about 50% full from me doing my own testing with it in the past. I decided to take it along this time (I usually only take new ones that have never been discharged) to let her actually pull the trigger and know what to expect if she had to use it.

So, while in the middle of cooking fajitas I asked, you wanna try the spray? We were camping on a sort of cliff. Three sides of the camp site pretty much drop straight off and down into a valley while the trail in is flat back to the main logging road. With a decent wind at our backs she discharged the can towards the drop off. Everything went well.

Since the can was many years old and almost empty I decided to go ahead and purge the rest of it. Still, the wind at my back and into the valley.

About 5 minutes later we were back standing over the fajitas cooking and we both coughed like at the same time and noticed a tingle in our throats. We looked at one another and one of us said "is that the spice in the fajitas?" We quickly realized it wasn't as our coughing got worse and our eyes started burning. I said oh shit, it's the bear spray. We went to run out to the logging road out of the site but I thought we may still be in the cloud so I said, get in the truck. Once in the truck with the windows up and AC on full blast we continued to cough and eyes burn and water for a while but got better in about 5 minutes.

We ended up getting out after that and all was fine. We had no more bear spray attacks. We stayed in the campsite with no issues. I guess the wind shifted and blew the spray back up the valley and into our little hillside campsite. I apologized and felt like and idiot but she was cool and we both laughed about it the rest of the trip. It was a funny story to share but in the moment we were freaking out. We didn't know how bad it was going to be and if we were going to be able to stay in the site, and if we couldn't, how we could get our stuff packed up with bear spray lingering. But yea, all was fine and we enjoyed our trip. Just a heads up to anyone who isn't aware, bear spray can come back to get you 5 minutes after you stop spraying it if the wind is right.

I can't imagine how bad this stuff must be to get a direct shot in the face of it with a fresh can. The little bit that got to us was pretty damn intense!