From Deseret News archives:
High-altitude hikers cope with loss of privy privileges
High-altitude sanitation is too hazardous a business. Helicopters no longer make regular journeys up the steep-walled canyons in tricky winds while rangers in hazmat suits wait below to tie 250-pound bags or barrels of waste onto a long line dangling below the aircraft.
So from the granite immensity of Mount Whitney in California to Mount Rainier in Washington to Zion National Park in Utah, a new wilderness ethic is beginning to take hold: You can take it with you. In fact, you must.
The privy here, which sat about 14,494 feet above sea level, and two other outhouses here in the Inyo National Forest — the last on the trail — have been removed within the past year. The 19,000 or so hikers who pick up Forest Service permits each year to hike the Whitney Trail are given double-sealed sanitation kits and told how to use them — just as they are told how to keep their food from the bears along the way and how to find shelter when lightning storms rake the ridges.
The kits — the most popular model is known as a Wagbag — are becoming a fixture of camping gear.
"It's one thing to take a risk to fly up there to pick up a sick or injured person," said Brian Spitek, a forest ranger who works in the Inyo National Forest. "To do it to fly out a bag of poop is another."
Other options, like burying waste, are ineffective where there is too little soil, too many people or both.
The Wagbags (WAG stands for Waste Alleviation and Gelling) are manufactured by Phillips Environmental Products in Montana.
Their appearance in places like the John Muir Wilderness or the Grand Canyon is one more indication that park stewards want visitors to take responsibility for themselves. For several years, the National Park Service has required visitors who need helicopter rescues to help pay for the cost of sending in the copter.
Hikers on the Mount Whitney trail, in most cases, willingly shoulder the burden of the new sanitation regimen.
"If I've got to do it, I've got to do it," said Scott Whitten of Danville, Calif., about halfway up the trail. "I'm not a big fan of it."
Generations of hikers have boasted about their moment on the seat at the Whitney summit. Behind the single rock wall that hid it from hikers, the seat was open on three sides to the swirling clouds and the immense granite ridges that rise from alpine valleys.
"It was a photo point for a lot of people," said Rob Pilewski, a Sequoia National Park ranger.
