Eight tips for pleasant pooping in the backcountry
WORDS • Matt Coté | PHOTO • Bruno Long
1. Squatting
You won’t be able to sit on a log in winter and squatting in deep snow is tough. Stomp out a pad and hang with one hand off a tree or rock for balance. If neither is available, slam your shovel in the ground in front of you and use the handle. Remember this is only an aid; don’t hang your actual weight on it—branches break and grips slip. It’ll be a god-awful mess if you fall backwards.
2. Wiping
Always keep a supply of “shit tickets,” but if you don’t have any, or prefer going au naturel, use a snowball—it’s cleaner anyway. Make two or three oblong snowballs and scrape until no signs are left. Try to save some TP squares for the end so you can dry up. Otherwise, there’s some wet squeaking for the first few hundred yards of striding after you finish up.
3. Bibs
First, get bibs with a “dumper flap.” If it’s too late for that, you will have to take your jacket off, potentially put it back on depending on the weather, and then off and on again. Make sure to scrunch your bib up real good and pull it forward between your legs and pinch it out of the way while you lean back. Poop falls predictably straight, but your pee is the wild card here. Don’t send it right back into your pants.
4. No trace
Burn your TP so a raven or pine marten doesn’t make off with a used piece, and shovel snow back over the rest so no one’s the wiser. Some purists, however, believe we should leave only footprints—especially on a glacier. A sandwich bag can do for packing out, but can also fail and dreaded Zip-Loc smear can ensue. Solution: Get a three-inch piece of PVC pipe threaded on both ends, add two caps and store your group’s poop in there until you’re back in civilization. Colloquially known as a “poop-edo,” draw straws to see who has to carry it.
5. Rope
If you’re walking in broken terrain on a glacier, you’ll have to get off the rope and take your harness off. Before that, probe out a safe spot where there are no crevasses, and accept that you’ll only be able to safely get 15 yards or so from your group. Get your friends to look away, and if someone has an operatic singing voice, now is the time to use it.
6. Camp
Make your “shitter” far enough from camp that you can’t smell your deposits, but close enough to walk in down booties. If on a glacier, probe the spot first. Next, stomp out your path, dig a six-foot-by-six-foot hole to about waist height, and stack snow to make three walls and keep the breeze and peeping Tanyas out (the back wall should face camp). Dig a hole within your hole big enough for the number of number-twos per person, per day. Use the shovel technique for leaning back and baby wipes to “shower.”
7. Steeps
With no one below or above you, plunge your ice axe into the slope and hang on. Clip your pack to your axe as well so you don’t lose it fumbling for TP. Try to hold all the tension in your forearms so you can relax where it counts. If you’re climbing where you’re going to ski, take special note of where you did this, and try not to slough out your run.
8. On a peak
Honestly, once you make it to the peak, you can do whatever you want. Deuces wild.
