YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming – If you’re hiking in bear country, bear spray should always be within quick and easy access on your body. It’s a simple rule, but sometimes it’s easier said than done. For one, you can’t fly with bear spray, not even in your checked bag, so if you’re traveling by air for a wilderness experience, you’ll need to get the canister when you arrive at your destination.
There are stores that sell and rent them, but getting there means waiting until normal business hours, or traveling out of your way to find a store. There’s also the problem of price. Buying your own bear spray canister can easily cost $35 or more, and you don’t want to do that every time you travel. So two Utah based individuals came up with the Bear Spray Shack, a much more convenient option that’s already showing up in America’s National Parks.
“Hassle free 24/7 rental machines, conveniently located, making it super duper easy to rent bear spray for ONLY the days you need it, all at a price that won’t attack your wallet. Rentals start as low as $10.” -Bear Spray Shack
Holly Longen (web developer) and Ryder Febo (mechanical engineer) started Bear Spray Shack in 2022, getting their first two locations out in 2023. The idea came during a 2021 trip to Alaska, where they had an issue getting bear spray in a timely manner and thought “there has to be better way.” When they returned to their home in Salt Lake City to got to work. Bear Spray Shack, a fully automated 24/hour bear spray rental vending machine, was the result. It works much the same way as Redbox movie rental kiosks, allowing visitors to rent a bottle of bear spray for as low as $10 and return it at anytime.
The technology behind the Bear Spray Shack ensures that every canister is fully intact, unsprayed, full, and safe before renting it out again. A three step system, using machine vision, scales, & tech that can identify if the canister’s been used prior to weighing, ensures that the canisters are good to go.
At the end of the day, these vending machines help ensure that hikers and national park visitors have access to bear spray, while reducing the number of canisters that wind up in landfills. If the canisters are no longer safe for use, Bear Spray Shack ensures that they’re properly recycled.
“We don’t want to bore you with all the nitty-gritty details, but our Shacks contain some awesome technology with cool sounding buzz words like “Machine Vision Algorithms”, “Edge Computing”, and “Proprietary Technology”. What that all means to you is that each canister needs to pass six different checks before it’s allowed to be re-rented. If a safety check fails, we put the canister into the reject pile, and it won’t see the light of day again.
Walk-up Rentals
For the free spirited and the spontaneous ‘outdoorsy’ people who fly by the seat of their hiking pants, answer when nature calls them unexpectedly, and don’t take life too seriously–unless in this case it’s yours.
Any Location Drop Off
Multiple 24/7 Shack locations means returning your can of bear spray has never been easier. Even if you’re out exploring nature from dusk to dawn, you can conveniently return your rental to any location, any time.
Coming 2025 – Online Reservations
For the practical, precise humans that are uber responsible. The salt-of-the-earth, used to ordering ahead types of ‘outdoorsy’ people.