There’s pretty much one way to poop indoors: In a toilet. No real room for creativity. Or at least functional creativity. When you’re camping, though, the world is your canvas. Dig a Leave No Trace six-inch hole and make yourself comfortable. Here are seven different strategies, of which we can recommend five. Actually, just four.
1. The Squat
The original outdoor stance. Just like it sounds. Dig a hole, put your butt close to the ground, and make the magic happen.
2. The Tripod
Sometimes more comfortable than the plain old Squat, this is when you dig a hole, squat over it, and place a hand behind you for stability. It’s definitely a more active position and probably safer if you have any reservations about your, um, solid waste getting on your shoes or hiking boots – the Tripod puts your bum farther south of those north-facing feet.
3. The Tree Hug
If the roots cooperate, you can dig a hole close enough to a tree, and if the tree’s not too big around you can wrap your hands or arms around the trunk for support as you squat over the hole and rock it out.
4. The Natural Toilet
Sometimes you can get lucky and find a fallen log or a large, well-placed boulder to hang your butt off as you poop over the edge. This is an advanced technique, and as scouting an appropriate prop can take time, not to be attempted when you’re in a hurry.
5. The Lean-Poo
Much like the Natural Toilet, except you press your back against rock or tree, which takes some of the weight off and allows more clearance. Two precautions, both heading off the same tragic result: Make sure your heels aren’t dug into loose, slippery soil, and confirm that the tree or rock won’t fall or roll under your weight.
6. The Sometimes When We Touch
I don’t actually know anyone who’s pulled this off, but we used to demonstrate it at the beginning of trips I helped lead for first-time teenager backpackers. Get a partner, face them, grasp their hands in your hands (or their wrists in your hands), and place your feet opposite theirs. Squat back simultaneously, evacuating into perfectly-placed six-inch deep holes in concert as birds sing, butterflies dance in the air around you, and Julie Andrews sings off in the distance. Might be too intimate for many.
7. The Clench
This is like all the other pooping stances, except you don’t actually take a poop. You just tough it out for two, three, sometimes five days, because you are deathly afraid of shitting in the woods. I had a teenager do this for five days on a backpacking trip in the Wallowa Mountains once. By day five, he was cranky and far more excited than a person should be by the sight of a pit toilet once we finally got back to the trailhead. He went in, came back out, and said, “I don’t think that was all of it.” I said, “There’s no way that was all of it. That was like the cork on a bottle of champagne, buddy. The rest is coming sometime today. ”
Camp Notes is a big high five to the fun of sleeping outdoors and all that comes along with it. You know, camping and stuff.
Photo by Taylor McKnight
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I’ve always been partial to using the folded head of the shovel i dug the cat hole with as a nice stable rest for one cheek
#6 is definitely a staple of Outdoor Ed ice-breakers for the uninitiated wilderness pooper. At least the demonstration and subsequent laughter are; you could also combine the Lean-Poo and that into an incredibly dangerous and trust-dependent situation.
Wait a second… you guys don’t wear Depends into the wilderness and then throw them away when you get back to the trailhead?
That’s what I smelled!!!!!
Great list. “The Clench” is too funny.
There are more ways to poop in the woods than just digging a cat-hole and proper sanitation practices should be always taken into account!
#8 – the ape hang. Squat and hang onto a sapling
One and four. My go-to techniques.
there’s always the aquapoop
some of these amazing and hilarious.
if you have any rope or cord you can easily go for what i like to call “the loop n poop”:
1) tie a loop however you care to (10-12ish ft rope length)
2) girth hitch it to a tree and hold the loop in your “non-wiping” hand, or around the wrist.
3) poop
its amazing and works very well, don’t knock it til you try it…
Bend the biggest sapling over you can handle. Hold with one hand whilst dropping drawers with other hand. Spin round and sit back onto sapling till complete. Return sapling to it’s original position…….
No one’s ever done the “Send iiitttt”?
Find a sapling that’s fairly springy, starting at its base walk through the sapling so that it’s trunk is in between your legs until you get relatively close to the top of this sapling.
At this point there should be a relatively decent amount of leaves in the booty area. You’ll want at least two to three feet of leaf branch sitting out in front of you.
This is the challenging part unless you took your pants off completely at the beginning but this step you need to pull your pants down to a comfortable position while holding the sapling in place.
Finally (and this takes some practice) push that douche out like you’re having a baby and release the sapling at the same time. if done correctly it will send your waist flying thousands of feet directly behind you and wipe your ass in one swift motion.
With enough practice I’m seeing some professionals actually do this and with a special not tied at the very tip of the sapling to the back loop of their pants it actually pulls their pants up for them. When done this way I’ve seen a man straddle a sapling walk up the sapling and without even breaking stride, blast the 30 plus hikers behind him with some good old Appalachian mud, and because of how steady his walk was he was the last one anyone expected. I only knew cuz I was walking adjacent to him and heard the little chuckle that came through his grizzly beard. The most amazing part of this story is that when we get home he had the cleanest ass of all the hikers. I later learned that he perfected this technique even further by dropping a dab of bleach on the tip of the sapling. Just imagine in a matter of 4 seconds sapling bends, pants drop, shit flies, booty gets wiped, sphincter gets bleached, pants get rapidly pulled up, everyone is confused but no one suspects a thing. Dirty Jim was a real legend of the forest, god rest his soul.