The poop scoop: Shitting in the mountains ain't what it used to be, by Yale Lewis
CLIMBING June 15-August 1, 1995
When John Muir climbed Mount Rainier at the turn of the century, he probably did his private business like any respectable fellow and went on his way.
When people climb Mount Rainier today, however, private business becomes public business. Climbers who use Camp Muir are expected to go in either the pit toilet or a dehydrating toilet built not far from where Muir and party spent the night. Climbers who have to go elsewhere on the mountain use a blue bag issued by the Park Service, then carry the bags to one of the 55-gallon drums placed along the two most popular routes.
The Park Service cleans out the toilets and drums at least once a year, then flies the stuff off by helicopter, says Roger Drake, who manages backcountry sanitation for the Park Service. He usually collects about 30 full barrels each summer. Years back, the stuff from Drake's drums was taken to a sewage treatment plant for processing. Now it's taken to an incinerator because the plastic bags gummed up the treatment plant. People who climb the trade routes on Rainier have their waste disposal problems more or less taken care of for them. But what about those who climb less-traveled routes?
What to do with waste is an important question, not just on Rainier. Human waste is accumulating on other big-name peaks like Denali and Everest. The stuff is unsightly and can contaminate water supplies with hepatitis, round worms, giardia, and intestinal parasites.
Some national parks suggest you go in a paper bag, then pack it out in a large plastic bag. Marit Sawyer, who studies minimum-impact camping for the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyoming, agrees, though it is not required for NOLS students.
Once you get out of the mountains you can dump the paper bag and its contents into the nearest r.v. sewage disposal facility. The plastic bag can then be re-used. Don't put the bag and contents in a dumpster, Sawyer says. The contents of the dumpster will eventually be out in a landfill. Once there, the paper bag may spring a leak and contaminate the leachate coming out of the landfill.
Paper bagging it is a reasonable solution, but it still isn't ideal. What about the costs associated with the manufacture, distribution, and disposal of the paper and plastic bags?
In an ideal pristine world, a paper bag would not be necessary. You'd dig a shallow hole in the rotting organic matter of a healthy forest, wipe with a few large maple leaves, then bury everything. Within weeks, the worms and soil microbes of the forest floor would have eaten your leavings for dinner. The carbon, water, and nutrients would thus be recycled back into the web of life. "The cat-hole is the basic method," Sawyer says. "Do it far away from water sources."
Many people, however, don't travel in such forests. We find ourselves in sub-alpine environments where the frost-free season is short and the decomposers in the soil are few or non-existent. If you are in a remote enough area, Sawyer suggests smearing it on a rock. "If you pull up the plants they are likely to die. Better to smear it, dry it out in the sun." The sun's ultra-violet rays can kill some of the bacteria and micro-organisms.
The real world is not likely to have a bunch of maple leaves handy either. What if the only broad-leaf plants for miles around are poison ivy, stinging nettle, and devil's club? In those cases, most of us are going to use toilet paper. NOLS used to tell people to burn their toilet paper, Sawyer says. But, often times, burning your toilet paper with something less than a forest fire is not going to do the whole job. NOLS now tells people to put their toilet paper in a bag and pack it out.
If you're traveling on a glacier, going in a crevasse is still preferred. Crevasses provide a natural trash compactor that can crush and grind the waste for a thousand years, killing some of the bacteria. The Park Service has tested a few other methods on popular routes, to no avail. In 1993, J.D. Swed, South District Ranger in Talkeetna, and colleagues set-up a throne on the southeast fork of the Kahiltna at 7200 feet. Three days later, the 85-gallon plastic drum was full.
The Park Service flew out the drum without much trouble, but then it had 85 gallons of waste and plastic bags to ponder. "The attendant on the pump had to go through the barrel and pull out the plastic bags," Swed says. "You can imagine what that was like."
For its next experiment, the Park Service established a rangers-only drum at 14,000 feet to test the toilet with a limited number of people while others kept to the crevasse technique. Swed says it worked better but still presented a "huge handling problem."
The next year, the Park Service built another throne at 14,000 feet and invited everyone to use it. Underneath the throne was a cardboard box. When the box was full, one of the rangers heaved it into a crevasse. Unfortunately, everyone accepted the invitation. Climbers left trash as well as offerings in the throne. The trash got covered with the offerings, and the wind blew it every which way. If you're on Denali, Swed says, "crevasse it."
Even the north side of Everest is hammered with waste now, and latrines haven't worked any better. A few years ago, the Chinese built a pair of big concrete latrines at basecamp. Unfortunately, these latrines are rarely, if ever cleaned. "They're pretty gross," says Eric Simonson, who led an expedition there pre-monsoon 1994, Simonson's group used the latrines as a wind and privacy screen and went outside.
Jim Wickwire, another Himalayan veteran, and John Roskelley spent most of a day trying to flush the latrines with buckets of river water and a stick when they were there during the monsoon in 1993. Apparently they were able to knock down the pile somewhat, keeping it away from their posteriors, but doing nothing to treat it. "What can you do?" Wickwire asks. "You can't carry it out."
Everest basecamp presents another set of human waste disposal problems because there aren't any latrines at all, but the need is probably greater. Simonson's group used a solar toilet. The toilet, which Drake designed and built under the sponsorship of the American Institute of High Altitude Mountaineering, was not an overwhelming success.
The toilet was able to produce temperatures of only 114 degrees F, Drake said, enough to dry the waste out, but not enough to turn it to ash. At the end of the expedition, Simonson and company threw the dried-up waste onto their bonfire, doused it with kerosene, and burned it. Since the waste was in a big lump, it had to be broken up and stirred constantly.
Simonson is ambivalent about the solar toilet. "In theory, it was good," he says. Whether in the end it would have been easier to have dug a pit and buried it, I don't know. The expedition needed to do something, solar or deep burial. The main point is to try to do something."
Drake thinks the solar toilet wasn't given a fair chance. "It was built different from the way I designed it," he says. Drake figures he could improve the design and make it work better next time around.
Modern solar toilets have, in fact, worked well under ideal conditions and are a vast improvement over the composting solar toilets of the 1970s, according to Michael Reynolds, an architect from New Mexico. Reynolds has designed two different types of solar toilets that can be installed in most any home and can generate temperatures up to 400 degrees F, according to his book, Earthship vol. III. The solar toilet works like a solar oven, concentrating the rays of the sun, and turning feces into ash. "We have put this black ash/powder into water and had the water tested," he wrote. "The tests showed no bacteria in the water."
In September 1993, Reynolds and Bob McConnell, co-founder of the Everest Environmental Project, took a solar toilet to India to be set up at the basecamp of Kangchenjunga where it would be used by climbers associated with the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. Unfortunately, the toilet never made it out of customs.
Reynolds and McConnell, therefore, built a new solar toilet using materials bought off the street.
Colonel Ajit Dutt of the Indian Army, took a fancy to the project and said he'd look after the toilet and evaluate its performance, McConnell says.
In December Col. Dutt sent McConnell a letter, saying the toilet was working. Later, the medical officer of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute sent McConnell a letter saying that the toilet generated temperatures of 214 degrees F. Presumably, this is enough to kill germs and reduce the waste to crumbs, if not ash.
McConnell's next foray into solar toilet technology was closer to home. Using materials available in the Third World, McConnell built a solar toilet next to his teepee on his land near Colorado Springs. "The flipper model installed at the ranch is cooking shit," McConnell reports. Unfortunately, some of the people using the toilet were also using prodigious amounts of t.p., which decreased the efficiency of the toilet and the contents never quite became ash. McConnell now asks his solar toilet users to put the t.p. in a can so he can burn it periodically.
In May, McConnell returned to the Himalaya to build more toilets. One toilet is in Kathmandu, he says, at the offices of the Kathmandu Environmental Education Project. Climbers can photocopy the plans for that toilet and, with the support of local authorities, build their own. "I don't advocate climbers building toilets without the support of local authorities." McConnell says. "You've got to have someone look after it when you're gone." McConnell also built a toilet at the Namche Bazaar on the way to Mount Everest. It was working when he left early this summer. He hasn't heard about it since.
But dealing with waste takes extra time on any expedition that many people don't want to bother with. "It takes a special breed," McConnell says. We all need to be trying to find ways to decrease the impact of our presence in these countries. Our personal adventure should not come at the cost of damaging the environment."
So, if you're somewhere where there are regulations, such as Mount Rainier, follow them. If you're way off the beaten path in the woods, bury it. If you're above timberline on a popular route, pack it out. If you're above timberline and far away from people, spread it as thinly as possible, and the sun will dry it out. If you're on a glacier, use a crevasse. If you have to use toilet paper, always pack it out.
As far as solar toilets go, they have yet to work perfectly in an alpine environment, but if you're in a sunny, warm climate, they are the way to go. Liz Nichols, co-founder of the Everest Environmental Project says, "I feel like we're still in the research stage...[solar toilets are] a good idea. We just need more work to perfect it."
Yale Lewis is a freelance writer based in Pocatello,Idaho.
He recently built a solar toilet at the advanced basecamp
below the north side of Mount Everest.