Poop talk makes everybody fidget and giggle uncomfortably. We like our poop to disappear. We want shiny white porcelain toilets and privacy.
But how do you cope when you’re in the woods behind a tree?
When I took my first course at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyoming, years ago, the preferred method of waste disposal was bringing a trowel to dig a six-inch cat hole, a practice still the norm for many backcountry travelers today. There was even a how-to guide by Kathleen Meyer, published in 1992, titled bluntly, How to Sh*t in the Woods.
We thought the soil would break down the nasty stuff pretty quickly. In fact, we were taught to stir dirt into our deposit to speed things along. But our faith in the speed of nature has been shattered.
Studies by a University of Montana research team have found that from as far back as the early ‘80s, high levels of pathogens remained in feces even after they’d been properly buried. Maybe a few piles of poop in millions of acres of wilderness weren’t so bad when it was just a few piles of poop. But if you visit the backcountry or beaches on public land these days, you know lots of people are visiting the outdoors and leaving their waste behind.
In 2020, 7.1 million more Americans participated in some form of outdoor recreation than in the previous year, for a total of roughly 200 million people, according to the Outdoor Foundation’s 2021 Outdoor Participation Trends Report.
Fifty-three percent of Americans age six and over recreated in the outdoors at least once in 2020, which is the highest participation rate on record. The Bridger-Teton National Forest, near where I live, recorded a 44 percent increase in the number of people camping between 2016 and 2020. Outdoor recreation is enjoying, if you can call it that, a boom.
Each human, on average, produces roughly a pound of poop each day. That adds up quickly. Anyone who has done a 21-day Grand Canyon river trip probably noticed the stacks of metal boxes that filled up over the course of a trip. By the time you got to the takeout, the cargo in one 18-foot raft was mostly poop.
Outside Magazine recently published a story about the changing etiquette of pooping in the outdoors, citing a startling study from 2007 that said 91 percent of the sand on 55 California beaches was contaminated with fecal indicator bacteria. Packing out poop thus became a necessity in that state if people wanted to avoid disease.
The Reliance Fold-to-Go portable toilet, fitted with Double Doodie bags.
But this is true even in a forest where people dig their perfect cat holes 200 feet from trails and water. If thousands of people hike the same trails every day of the season, that’s a minefield of waste festering below the surface. Over time, pathogens in that poop will leach into the soil.
What, then, are we supposed to do? Though we may not like it, just like river guides and other outfitters, it’s past time for all of us to pack out our poop. But good news: There are a number of products available commercially to make this as lightweight and odor-free as possible.
Trevor Deighton, of Victor, Idaho, an Exum Mountain Guide in the Tetons, recommends WAG bags, WAG being short for Waste Alleviation and Gelling. Since more people started carrying them, he says “There’s so much less poop on the Grand. The (bags) don’t smell and never break. It’s worse thinking about it than it is in practice.”
He adds, “You see a lot of plastic bags with dog poop left along trails around here. People don’t want to put them in their pack because the bags are so flimsy, but then they forget about them.” The beauty of WAGs, he adds, is that your sturdy portable toilet never fails and is easy to use.
But there’s no getting around it, packing out poop is still an inconvenience, especially for those of us who look forward to a mostly light pack at the end of a hiking trip. But for our health and for the health of the forest or anywhere we recreate, it’s our responsibility to leave no waste behind. It’s the right thing to do.
Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She writes and travels often through the West. Top photo: Markus Spiske/Unsplash
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I just bought the Reliance Fold-To-Go Portable Toilet, complete with WAG bags and will be testing the system out on a trip next week. Will report back, but it’s a comfy seat and takes up little space in the vehicle. – Ed.
At the risk of revealing myself as a cultural Philistine why did burying it gain widespread popularity? It is unsightly, smells, can spread disease, and maybe attract bears, but most animals don’t bury it. Most of the systems that process this (insects, sunlight, rain, and other animals) have little to no effect underground. Of course burying it makes it worse! Sort of blew my mind when I started reading about backpacking a year or so ago that this was standard procedure. I’m sure I’m overlooking something though.
Do you mean as opposed to just pooping on the ground surface? Or as opposed to carting out your waste in a bag?
Ground surfacd
You kinda answered your own question: “It is unsightly, smells, can spread disease, and maybe attract bears.” Idk about the bears part, but the unsightly, smelling bad, and, especially, the disease-spreading aspect are the biggies. Most backcountry camping occurs in places that get repeated use. If everyone pooped in open latrines, my god, it would be unbearable.
As a full time field biologist/outdoor photographer
and part time rafter/backpack guide (for more than four decades), it is obvious.
In high density use area- haul it out.
In remote areas with moderate use- bury it.
Leaving a big human turd on the surface- a very shitty idea!
Smelling, being unsightly, and spreading disease aren’t going to be real issues if you’re 200 feet from the trail and water sources, and people are going to need to go at different times so it generally won’t all be in one spot. Still not sure why burying it so you have this layer of dirt between it and natural decomposition agents became standard, or why people are now surprised that it is leaving traces behind for so long.
Most people poop where they camp and most people camp in the same areas.
Again, even if “leave it, nature will break it down” worked previously (it didn’t, sufficiently), as the article indicates, that DEFINITELY no longer flies: too many people pooping along paths for Nature to do her thing in anything approaching a timely fashion.
Plus, at least here in the Northeast, very very few bother getting very far from the trail anymore. We literally march past poop cairns on our busier trails. It’s lovely.
Not making light of your comment, I agree and I’ve seen that too. But just wanna say that as a musician “poop cairns” would be an awesome name for a punk band…
How about “Poop Cairns and The Turd Herders?” Naw, that sounds more country. …
Most of the bacteria and insects that break down poop are in the duff layer–near the surface, just below the leaf layer. Digging 6-inch deep holes goes below that layer and would radically reduce decomposition. So: surface is too shallow and deep is too deep. Isn’t the happy horizon the middle path, where the decomposers live? Has anyone here seen studies that compares these layers? Not that one shouldn’t carry it out in heavily traveled areas, but where that’s not a big issue, it seems like shallow burial might be okay.
I use WAG bags exclusively when in the backcountry but let me dispel a complete fallacy. The bags are not odor free, they smell, not as much as an exposed pile of fecal matter but enough that it can be quite bothersome especially as they multiple in number.
…and the smell permeates into whatever you use to carry the WAG, like your pack!
How about burning your poop? That would certainly destroy the bacteria.
Land managers need to update their policies as needed. Whatever the given land manager states as the requirement, will be my approach. Sure I could go beyond and do more, but generally I’m in remote areas and get well off trail.
So if a land manager has a remote region that sees perhaps 10 hikers a week over a 20 mile section of trail, then they could say burying is fine. If there’s another that is hiked by 100 people a day, then that could change to packing it out.
It would be interesting to make this a change for JMT and other popular trails, and see if that drives people to do other “bury it friendly” trails (Tahoe Rim Trail?) rather than doing JMT where you carry poop for a week at a time.
I’d always choose more remote hikes over populated ones anyway
What about all the plastic waste that ends up in the trash/our oceans? A lot more than burying your poop. I’m a ranger, and it’s something I think about when distributing blue bags to climbers. We hand out thousands every season.
I wondered the same. Are we a part of nature?
Oh, and pooping at a beach and burying it … that is just nasty!!
Ah, that was such a great river trip, one of 8 through the ‘ditch’.
Rowing the garbage | refuse boat has tremendous advantages cause you get the nod by the lead guide to wash your boat out. Standing atop the knoll overlooking Hance rapid my trip leader said ‘go get wet ’cause your boat is heavy – the rest of us are way to lite to mix it up in that wave-train. We’ll pickup your pieces if something goes bad!” – ‘big Wenatchee’.
An interesting side note about WAG bags. I am a 65 yo back country volunteer for a major Utah National Park. Basically you can think of my job as preventative SAR and I have adopted all of the trails. I have full access to all areas of the park and spend a lot of time in the back country. That said, the past couple of years have seen a huge increase in the amount of filled WAG bags left along the trail, arroyo, old 2 track, just about anywhere, like all those little doggie bags. There are lots of people out there doing some very fun wilderness routes and some apparently use the bags but don’t want to carry them. So, I guess my new job title also includes poop fairy. Please, if you are going to leave the bag anyway for some senior citizen volunteer to pick up, just poop on the ground as you obviously don’t care who has to come into contact with your bodily waste.
Personally, I use WAG bags whenever the need arises. Yes, the bags smell, but it is mine after all.
I was told at very high elevations to smear on a south facing rock and in days it would be gone via insects and sun. Otherwise, pack it out.
Hello,
I just wanted to comment that the WagBag® is a trademarked brand of pack out bags manufactured in the US by Cleanwaste. Cleanwaste began developing this Waste Alleviation and Gelling system back in 1999. Cleanwaste also offers a similar sturdier portable toilet that is made in the US.
Reliance is a Canadian company that is selling Chinese made products.
It is disappointing that our trademark the WagBag® is mentioned but not a word about our company or products.
Please visit http://www.cleanwaste.com if you would like to learn more about the WagBag®.
I would be very interested in the comments of a Ranger concerning the disposal of these bags. The trash cans I’ve seen at any park facility are ALWAYS overflowing.
Our maintenance of National Parks is years and billions overdue. Are they going to start waste treatment plants now?
And isn’t human waste a biohazard?? Is my city waste system ready for that bundle, when it gets pulled out of the trunk, wrapped in many futile layers of packaging? Even meat scraps gone bad don’t have THAT aroma…
What’s happening in other countries with very populated hiking communities, like Switzerland or Japan?
I need help with this sentence: “Studies by a University of Montana research team have found that from as far back as the early ‘80s…”
This is really vague. What studies? Do you have source material for your University of Montana research? Published papers? Please share.
What about all the plastic waste that ends up in the trash/our oceans? A lot more than burying your poop. I’m a ranger, and it’s something I think about when distributing blue bags to climbers. We hand out thousands every season.
Wildlife poops in nature constantly. We are nature. On a tour of a vineyard/fruitery they explained how when a vine dies, that they don’t dig it out, but leave it there and plant a sapling underneath
it and that the shade of the dead vine provides shelter for Wildlife who fertilise the soil.
Humans carry E Coli in their feces. Hence the occasional produce recalls from farms without functioning facilities for harvesters. All People do scratch their butts on occasion as well.
Are you saying that it would be fine to poop in vineyards and orchards?
We wash our food for MANY reasons…
Our poo contains E Coli.
Does the wildlife pooping in the vineyard also carry that?
It looks like animal poop contains E. Coli based on a search. Again though very few animals bury their waste. We’re insulating ours from all most of the natural processes that deal with it by burying it. Has anyone get compared pathogen levels over time of buried vs. left on the surface human waste? Seems like a big potential article here given audience reaction to this.
How come a composting toilet works though?
Or does it not?
Bought a delightful book in Portland years ago: “How To Shit In The Woods”, Ten Speed Press. Chapter for women: how to not pee on your boot…
It was actually a thesis, if I recall.
Good point about composting toilets. Could those enzymes be adjusted for portability cost effectively?
For my off grid car-camping, a “shower shelter” tent can be had for $35, a camp toilet for $20 plus the bags and then the additional bags for trunk insurance, if one is transferring it to a municipal system. It’s a lot of strong packaging that’s not going to decompose in a landfill anytime soon. And nobody is going to revisit handling their sewage: unsafe!
The line between wilderness and civilization gets jagged when there are so many of us in the ‘wild’ places.
How do communities high up in dry, often frozen, areas deal with waste? What practices have ensued from their experiences?
Nepal trekkers? What did you observe?