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More recreators privy to matter of Whitney privies |
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Wednesday, 12 September 2007 |
 The decison to take out the toilets on the Mt. Whitney Trail made national news, and didn?t dissuade any would-be peak-baggers from making the climb while bagging their poop along the route. Photo by Jon Klusmire By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 9-11-2007
It seems there is something enchanting to New Yorkers about the idea of people pooping in the woods, picking it up and packing it out.
A Sept. 6 story in the New York Times about the first season on Mt. Whitney without the stinky pair of privies on the trail to the nation’s highest peak was a runaway hit with the paper’s readers.
For two days, “No More Privies, So Hikers Add a Carry-Along” was in the top 10 “most e-mailed” stories on the paper’s Web site.
As county boosters and economic development pros have noted previously, you can’t buy publicity like that.
The story itself didn’t resort to such cheap puns as, “Without Potties, Business Is Picking Up On Mt. Whitney,” although that was one of the conclusions presented by local forest officials, such as Garry Oye, who was the District Ranger who put the program in place.
The story quoted numerous Whitney hikers who, although not overjoyed about picking up and packing out their own waste, were sympathetic and not too bothered with the new poop policy. As one noted, people pick up their dog’s poop all the time, thus taking a “Wagbag” up Whitney to hold a few nuggets, so to speak, during the hike wasn’t all that bad.
In other words, it looks like hikers have no problem “handling” the poop problem (the Times missed that pun, too).
Hikers were willing to “shoulder the burden of the new sanitation regimen,” the Times article stated. Which if correct implies a serious misunderstanding of how to actually carry a bag of poop during a hike. Oops. Sorry. Guess that “shoulder the burden” line was just a figure of speech. Never mind.
The idea of taking out the old, wooden toilets prompted some concern among local Lone Pine businesses that the move wouldn’t sit well with hikers and might decrease the number of those attempting the climb.
However, there were about the same number of poop-packing hikers on the trail this year as ever, with nearly 19,000 permits issued. Hikers coming through the Inyo National Forest and using the eastern approach via Whitney Portal out of Lone Pine get a Wagbag, as do those coming up from the western side from Sequoia National Park. (The Wagbag is actually a Waste Alleviation and Gelling bag, consisting of two separate bags to secure the waste.)
Thus, it appears the idea of sharing toilet facilities with hundreds of yournewest best friends didn’t have much of an impact on the number of trekkers seeking to scale the highest peak in the lower 48.
Of course, some old poops were nostalgic for the sight and smell of the barrels of human waste at the Trail Camp outhouse, for example. One said it was a nice place “to get out of the wind.”
Only if one was upwind of said toilet, he should have added.
And only if you didn’t have to empty said toilet. As Oye stated, using a rather graphic, but somewhat poetic visual image, “If you didn’t clean the outhouse regularly, it was a cascading nightmare.”
And he wasn’t talking about a waterfall, group.
Wilderness Ranger Brian Spitek researched far too many personal-poop-pickup systems in preparation for the big moment when the toilets would be gone. He also had the lovely chore of supervising the helicopter pick-up of barrels of poop (talk about the potential of a “cascading nightmare”).
Spitek gave the Times the straight poop (would that have been so hard to include, oh NY Times?) when he said, “It’s one thing to take a risk to fly up there to pick up a sick or injured person. To do it to fly out a bag of poop is another.”
The story mentioned several other national parks or popular locations where poop-packing and other instances of users taking more responsibility for their actions have become the norm, not the exception.
Whitney hikers have deposited more than 4,500 pounds of human waste (safely stored in Wagbags) in receptacles at the Whitney Portal trailhead.
So when it comes to the saga of taking the toilets off the Mt. Whitney Trail and having hikers pack out their poop, it’s safe to say the whole maneuver has been a success and worked well for hikers and the environment, with no ifs, ands or butts. Er, that would actually be, “buts.” Sorry, couldn’t resist.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 26 October 2007 )
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