Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Wagbags stink!

My hiking group’s recent experience with the WagBags on Mt. Whitney was a real let down. I was actually looking forward to test driving these bags. The Ranger in lone pine told me a single Wagbag has a capacity for 4-5 uses. This is a farce. The Wagbag has a very small amount of powder, which I estimate at no more than 3 cubic milliliters. Just one of my dead otters overwhelmed the deodorizing and gel encapsulation potential of the entire bag. Additional uses of the bag were a disaster. The Wagbag doesn’t stand a chance against high metabolism people like myself. The Wagbag simply has insufficient powder and water to entomb more than a single belly flopper.

There is also evidence many hikers are not using the WagBags. The sheltered boulders surrounding trail camp are rife with toilet paper, but stools are conspicuously absent. Why would someone pack out their stools but not their toilet paper? My assumption is that the marmots who reside at trail camp are feasting on human waste.

I fondly remember using the solar toilets 10 years ago at trail camp and outpost camp. I really don’t believe the solar toilets detract from the wilderness experience any more than the all of noisy children and families running around trail camp. In addition, the forest service currently has a sloppy maintenance area filled with barrels, hoses, and shovels located at trail camp. This is more of an eyesore than the old toilet structure.

Why not increase the trail fees for the Mt. Whitney trail and re-install toilets? The WagBag policies are critical for the glaciated summits of Mt. Rainier and Mt. Shasta. However, Mt. Rainier’s camp Muir has toilets. Even the boulder field camp at Long’s peak in Colorado has solar toilets. Given how cheap Mt. Whitney trail permits currently are, it would be worth a fee increase so that the forest service could pay for toilet waste removal.

There has been quite a few discussions of this topic, my favorite recently is here: Wag Bag Hey, I guess we finally found a good use for those marmots.

Please express displeasure with a letter to Jerry Bailey and Gary Oye at the Inyo National Forest. Later, if ever, but not sooner, they will get back to you with a response that says everything is working out splendidly.

I have never believed the pack it out program will work, unless Mr. Bailey or Mr. Oye is satisfied with 60% compliance. In the future every rock at Trail Camp will have a surprise underneath.

Totally agree. Increasing the fee for the permit should generate enough money to have new solar toilets installed.

it is true

Maybe we should open a store and a souvenir shop up there. I for one was happy to know they yanked that solar crapper down. The Wagbags did its job for myself and the two other people in our party a year ago.

The way I dealt with my wag bag was: double bag it with 2 ziploc bags and put it into a plastic bag with rest of the trash I had to carry out, and tie the trash bag to the outside of my backpack.

Also I put snow in the wag bag instead of peeing in it.

Dumped it in the bio-hazard receptacles first thing I came out.

picture is here .

They do stink. But rather than ask them to charge us money for backcountry disposal, why not take care of the problem yourself? Bring along a lightweight odor proof container.

I hiked up there for the first time recently. Two nights, but only one wag bag provided. I have some at home and would have brought extra if I'd known. They don't always make it past one use.

We got checked for a permit on the way in. But on the way out, with our strapped on wag bags a-stinkin' in the wind, the ranger just smiled and let us pass!

I was pretty disappointed to see the wag bag disposal bins overflowing. And several bear boxes there (and at nearby Horseshoe Mdws) were non-functional. One box the Portal was stuck open and it was full of food and clothing (clothing?). Another bear box actually contained luggage with wheels.

It's tragic when people stuff bear boxes with clothes and then leave them open. I've seen it! The bears strut around in full sartorial speldor for a while, then the rangers have to do them in. What do you think happened to Yogi?

Haven't had the pleasure of using wagbags on Whitney yet (sob!), but on a 4 day Mt Shasta excursion 3 years ago the guide service told us to bring our own. Cut up grocery bags 12" square, put in at least 1/2 cup of cat litter per square, fold the corners in after use, use another sheet folded the same way to prevent leakage, then double bag it in zip lock containers. It worked great for our group of 10, no complaints at all. One fellow asked how he should pack it on the way out and the guide told him, "On top of your crampons, underneath your boots." Maybe dna testing on deposits left under rocks to catch cheaters on Whitney? I found some ignorant sob's poop under a rock at a Lost Coast trail campsite last year, after I had set up my tent. Disgusting! Needless to say, I moved on a ways that nigbt.

I've regifted unused wagbags to my friend Tom.....

"On top of your crampons, underneath your boots." lol

Mt. Whitney is an international Destination! I've been on the trail with Japanese, Turkish, Romanian, Bavarians (wearing the Alps uniform of shorts with embroidered suspenders and cute little hats), Hungarian, British and Korean. It's sad that people from other countries will come over, hike it, go home and tell everyone the mountain was basically a huge pile of excretement and toilet paper. So is Mt Fuji which literally has a trash dump at its base, but they have volunteer teams now going up that one to clean it up.

These mountains are ICONS and should be treated with the utmost respect! We are so lucky to have Whitney in our country and have it be so accessible. Yeah, after a hike, I kind of do the Sherpa thing and turn back at the trailhead and thank the mountain for having let me climb safely and return.

Maybe Inyo County could host a toilet design contest for toilets that really work and do so on a reasonable budget.

I know the wag bags are required on the MMWT, but are they also required to be used on other trails, like between Horseshoe Meadows and Mt Whitney, or is 'cat holing' acceptable?

Squeeze the air out before you seal it. Less chance of it inflating and leaking stink under pressure.

Dave - Wagbags are required between the Crabtree ranger station and Portal. Last August when I got to the Crabtree ranger station, there was a sign informing us of this, and a cooler on the ground by the sign that was supposed to have wagbags in it for people to take. When we got there the cooler was empty. So most of the people in my group did not get a wag bag. Shortly after we went through the cooler was restocked, and a few stragglers in our group picked some up.

You had me cracking up over your "dead otters" and your wag bag. Now I am a bit concerned about them myself! Thanks for the good laugh, even though I am sure you didn't think it funny at the time.

Actually, I was just excited to get those otters out, and then I floated up the remainder of the trail.

Face it, Outpost and Trail camps are heavily impacted remote campgrounds. This is a major destination location just a few miles from the cafe. Its beautiful country, but it not true wilderness in my book. Pretending that it is a pristine wilderness can lead to mismanagement.

Modern solar-powered composting toilets are great and they should be used at more of these kind of grand central station locations. The ones on Whitney were not working properly when I was there. They stunk bad and the waste volume was probably not significantly reduced due to poor composting and only passive evaporation.

A well designed solar composting toilet is a lot better than a typical vault toilet. They make perfect sense in these locations. The ones in Little Yosemite Valley & Nevada Falls have been working great for years. They get about 300 "hits" a day according to a field maintenance person. They mule pack it out weekly. I just used a brand new one at Havasu Falls with cedar chips. This is the way of the future, not feces-filled glad bags. I remember hiking far apart coming down from Shasta just to avoid the smell of my fellow hiker. Forget about meeting anyone on the trail smelling like a sewer hole, even if you double bag it.

You can limit the numbers of people with quotas, but you can't screen them for intelligence. Even a small percent of ignorant and/or lazy people can have a tremendous impact on a fragile area. After a while it really accumlates as trash begets more trash, which justifies the next idiot to pile on (pun intended). The poor marmots can only handle so much sh*t.

Were talking about a process of elimination, and these Wagbags got to go. This is a bad decision they will regret someday. Another example of forest disservice. If I'm proven wrong over time, that means human nature is better than I expect, and that's okay too.