Sanitation
Until recently, you'd have been thought rather peculiar not to leave three things behind in the wilderness: urine, feces and toilet paper. Leaving behind the first is still always acceptable. Urine is relatively innocuous, since it rarely contains significant quantities of bacteria. In well-watered climates, simply get out of sight of the trail and at least 200 feet from any lakes or streams. Heavily-used desert regions like the river corridor through the Grand Canyon are a different story. Beaches there are used so intensively by river-runners and backpackers that if everyone urinated on the sand, the beach would soon stink of uric acid. The only solution there is to urinate directly into the river, which is flowing by at a rate of tens of thousands of gallons per second.

Leaving behind the second item – feces – is still okay in most areas, but not in all. The goal in disposing of feces is to promote rapid decomposition and to prevent the spread of bacteria from the feces to the water supply or to insects which will then land on your food. First, locate a site at least 200 feet from flowing or standing water or a marshy area. Avoid dry watercourses that may become streams in the rainy season. Try to find a place where you can easily dig a hole four to six inches deep. Don't dig deeper than that; the organic soil in many alpine areas is only that deep. If you dig deeper, you may go below the zone that supports the active bacteria which hasten decomposition. Avoid pure sand for the same reason. In many regions, digging an adequate hole requires carrying a small trowel. For years I resisted carrying the extra weight, thinking, "Aw, shucks, I can just dig a hole with my boot heel." It doesn't work, at least in a lot of places. Carry a trowel. Do your job thoroughly. My trowel, a sturdy steel-bladed model, weighs less than six ounces. When you're done, refill the hole. If you're digging a hole in a grassy region, try to remove the sod in one piece, then replace it carefully. In really remote regions above timberline, where you're certain no one will stumble across your handiwork for weeks, it may be preferable to deposit waste on the surface rather than digging a hole in the shallow and easily damaged soil. When you're done, spread the feces out with a rock to promote desiccation and decomposition. Properly disposed off, feces should vanish in one to four weeks.

In the winter in snow country, digging a hole into the ground will be difficult to impossible depending on snow depth and how hard the ground is frozen. The best solution now, given the relatively low numbers of people who go into the backcountry in winter, is to deposit your waste a long ways – like 100 yards – from watercourses, lakes and any place where a summer hiker is likely to go, literally or figuratively. In Rocky Mountain National Park, backpackers are forbidden to camp within 100 feet of a designated summer site for precisely this reason. If possible, locate a tree well (an area surrounding a tree where the snow pack is shallow) so there's at least a chance of feces getting down to ground level and beginning to decompose quickly come spring. In most areas, so far, this approach is working, given the relatively low level of overnight winter use. If use goes up, or if winter campers are careless about sanitation, this approach may present a problem. On Mt. McKinley, for example, traffic on the popular West Buttress route is so heavy in peak season that snow contamination is a real threat to climbers' health, since snow is the only source of water and no one wants to go too far from camp for fear of crevasses. At 17,200 feet, a harsh, windswept basin where climbers congregate in preparation for the summit push, clots of brown turds and toilet paper dot the landscape. Climbers are now required to defecate into a large plastic garbage bag, then throw the bag into the nearest large crevasse. All trash, however, must be carried off the mountain. No trash disposal into crevasses is allowed. If human waste becomes a problem in the mountains of the lower 48, land managers may start requiring backpackers to pack out everything. River runners in the Grand Canyon have been required to carry out all feces and toilet paper since 1979. As distasteful as this may at first appear, it is absolutely essential given that the narrow river corridor, with its limited number of campsites, receives over 160,000 user-nights every year, mostly in a five-month period.

In times past, it was considered acceptable to bury toilet paper alongside the feces. Too often, however, people failed to dig a deep enough hole to adequately bury everything. Or perhaps rodents dug into the hole, uncovering the toilet paper and scattering it about. "Toilet paper flowers" have become one of the most common forms of visible trash. I've seen scraps of toilet paper protruding from the sand smack in the middle of the trail alongside Utah's Paria River and in less obvious but equally unsightly places in Grand Canyon and Canyonlands national parks. While heading up before dawn one morning to do a spring ski descent of Grays Peak, a 14,000-foot mountain near Georgetown, Colorado, I realized I needed to take a dump. The trail was lined with dense bushes, but eventually I found an opening and headed away from the trail, quite convinced that no one had ever gone that way before. Almost immediately, however, my headlamp picked out the telltale white of toilet paper matted down and clinging to the base of the shrubs. Near timberline on Twin Sisters Peak, in Rocky Mountain National Park, I came across an incredibly twisted and ancient limber pine, a stalwart survivor of hundreds of years of winter storms. Entranced, I grabbed my camera and began circling the tree, searching for the most evocative angle. In my preoccupation, I nearly stepped into several piles of feces, complete with toilet paper, that more than one utterly irresponsible hiker had deposited on the ground at the base of this marvelous monument to nature's perseverance. Setting up my tripod with care to keep the tripod legs away from the sewage, I composed a photograph that excluded the mess at my feet – only to discover that some idiotic backpacker had taken a saw to one of the magnificent trees' gnarled limbs. To me, that whole scene represented vandalism far more offensive than the repugnant scrawls found on city bathroom walls.

The solution to these disgusting scenes is simple: pack out your toilet paper. Canyonlands and Grand Canyon national parks already require backpackers to do just that. Rocky Mountain National Park allows backpackers to burn their toilet paper, but the practice leaves much to be desired. If it's raining, the paper won't burn. In any weather, it often doesn't burn completely. Or a gust of wind picks it up when you least expect it and wafts it off to who knows where. An outdoor education instructor in Canyonlands once set off a minor grass fire trying to burn his toilet paper. He spent several hours busily trying to erase the evidence of his good intentions gone awry. Attempts to burn toilet paper have caused several significant fires in the Grand Canyon and in 1989 a federal judge in Washington found a hiker liable for $132,700 in fire-fighting costs after his attempt to burn his toilet paper ignited a 450-acre forest fire. I carry used toilet paper in a doubled plastic bag that rides inside the clean toilet paper bag. In some situations, natural substitutes for toilet paper work very well. Smooth rocks and sticks, smooth broad leaves from various plants (watch out for poison ivy!) and snow all work well.

When you're done, if possible, wash your hands using a small amount of biodegradable soap. Don't wash your hands in a lake or stream. Instead, have a companion pour water from a water bottle or pot over your hands while you scrub and rinse 200 feet from any water source.

Next Page: Noise and Visual Pollution

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