A camp­ground in the White Riv­er Nation­al For­est, about 13 miles south of Car­bon­dale, has been shut down because of sev­er­al black bear inci­dents, includ­ing one involv­ing a destroyed tent.

The Avalanche Camp­ground, which has six first-come first-serve camp­sites, is locat­ed off of Col­orado 133. One of the main trail­heads into the Maroon Bells-Snow­mass Wilder­ness is adja­cent to the pop­u­lar campground.

On Fri­day the U.S. For­est Ser­vice announced that the camp­ground has been tem­porar­i­ly closed because of recent bear activity.

“Near­ly all prob­lems with black bears at camp­grounds can be traced to improp­er food stor­age, which teach­es bears that camp­grounds mean food,” the USFS said in a news release.

Bears in Col­orado are cur­rent­ly in a late-sum­mer feed­ing fren­zy known as hyper­pha­gia. Bears are con­tin­u­al­ly seek­ing food and eat­ing as they ready for hiber­na­tion in the fall.

The bear inci­dents demon­strate the need for peo­ple to prop­er­ly store food while camp­ing, the release said.

“The White Riv­er Nation­al For­est has a food-stor­age order in place for all its devel­oped camp­grounds and many dis­persed camp­ing areas to help pre­vent black bears and oth­er wildlife from obtain­ing food from humans and becom­ing a nui­sance or dan­ger­ous,” the USFS said.

No one was injured in the most recent inci­dent, when a bear destroyed a tent, but peo­ple were present at the time.

“There was not a bear attrac­tant such as food in the tent, but clear­ly the bear was famil­iar with camp­sites being a poten­tial source of food,” accord­ing to the release.

The camp­ground is closed through at least the Labor Day week­end as a safe­ty precaution.