More Than A Drop In The Bucket
I love to climb high mountains. I love the crisp clean air. I love the silence, serenity, and peace that nature and landscapes afford. I love the physical and mental challenge of ascending a steep slope to the summit. I love the camaraderie of climbing with partners who share the same passion and excitement for the outdoors. These are some of the things I love about a high-altitude climb. But there’s one thing, one very inconvenient thing about climbing that I do not love: the bathroom situation.
In the high, cold reaches of a mountain’s slope, there isn’t anywhere suitable to sit for those moments when nature calls, and so one is left to decide between the lesser of two very uncomfortable options: a blue plastic bag, or a one-gallon can. Neither has an advantage but each has clear, tangible — sometimes odious — disadvantages.
Blue bagging works great on steep slopes. You can even shit while still attached to a rope. Just get some extra slack, drop your drawers, and make sure the wind is blowing away from you. But aiming into a bag while standing on a slope is harder than it might seem. Do you look over your shoulder or do you look between your legs? What if you miss? And, what if, God forbid, the breakfast muesli isn’t settling well? Several years ago, while climbing a steep slope on Mt. Rainier in Washington State, my climbing partner took some extra rope and a blue bag and got to work. Unfortunately, he ignored the wind rule on the morning his breakfast hadn’t agreed with him and he suffered some serious blowback. No dry cleaner should have to deal with what happened to his shell and pants. We dealt with it all the way up the mountain.
Recently, I was climbing Denali in Alaska where the preferred method for taking a dump was the one-gallon bucket. Though only suitable for use on level ground, the foam o-ring afforded you that extra comfort the blue bag lacked. And you didn’t have to worry about shit blowing back in your face. This put me more at ease and I found myself regularly reading books on a padded one-gallon can at the 14,000 ft camp as fellow climbers walked by. Being within a protected national park, regulations specified that climbers must use these poop buckets instead of blue bags which historically ended up being discarded into a crevasse. The rangers enforced this regulation by weighing the poop buckets once you arrived back at base camp and before boarding your plane back to civilization. There was an approximate shit to human ratio that mustn’t be violated or an onerous fine awaited the guilty party.
As we ascended Denali’s flanks, the bucket would fill up. We would pack them up the mountain until they were full after which we would cache them in the ice for retrieval on our descent. Literally adding shit to your load always felt so unnecessary; however, being a two to three-week climb, the buckets we were given began to fill up. But in a way that was good because it meant we were probably overperforming the shit to human ratio against which we would be measured back at base camp.
After three long weeks on Denali, having summited despite repeated storms, avalanche conditions, and frigid temperatures — having taken many shits along the way — we returned to base camp with six full buckets — sealed up and ready for weigh in. The rangers were impressed. “You were very regular,” they observed. No onerous fines for us! I wanted nothing more than to never have to look at these buckets again. But it was not to be, for somebody had to fly back to Talkeetna and drop the buckets off at the ranger station in town so their contents could be properly disposed of.
I suck at rock, paper, scissors. And losing this time would cost me my dignity, for I was assigned the unenviable task of loading the buckets on a small Cessna, flying with them back to Talkeetna, carrying them through town, and dropping them off at the ranger station. I wouldn’t wish this chore on my worst enemy. But such was my lot that fateful day.
As I briskly walked down main street of the small town of Talkeetna — three full buckets of foulness in each hand — my eyes were laser focused on finding that ranger station and reaching its doors as quickly as possible. Quickly I scampered through town, through crowds of bustling tourists from a local cruise ship. My self-consciousness was palpable as was the odor wafting from my clothing, having not showered in more than three weeks. I needed to make the drop off, and I needed to do it quickly. Time was of the essence, and the last thing I wanted was any human contact or interaction.
Soon, I arrived at the target site: the ranger station. Where is the ranger? Must. Drop. Load. Now. I have never felt more focused in my life. Then suddenly, I was quickly surrounded by a dozen tourists who had been in the ranger station’s visitor center learning all about Alaskan flora and wildlife. Having just arrived freshly off Denali after a successful summit, I was a novelty. They wanted a play by play account of the adventure, and they wanted stories. I was in no mood to comply. I knew that the only way to complete my shitty quest would be to disperse this crowd as quickly as possible. So I went into full on crass mode. “Excuse me, everyone,” I proclaimed. “I have six buckets of shit that I need to discard here, so please let me through.” Like the Red Sea, the crowd miraculously separated and dispersed, and I was able to walk through and continue to my destination. My burden had been lifted — I had delivered the entire shit. I then hopped and skipped all the way back to my motel room for three consecutive showers to finally become clean again.
