Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board more poop on the poop pack-out

All I can say is, don't eat a tamale omelet at the Alabama Hills Cafe that's next to the Lone Pine Laundromat before ANY hike.

Thought I would add some humor to this topic. Wherever I go, my wag bag goes with me... \:\) it only took one omelet.

BagPeak - the water quality is regularly monitored there. I can't quote you numbers but if there were a problem you'd see warning signs. Yes, I have used solar toilets, elsewhere, and will never do it again. The ones on Whitney were so bad I hated to go within 30 yards of them. I did assist the rangers a couple years ago in cleaning up messes around the one at Trail Camp and the one at Outpost so I have a bit more 'hands on' knowledge than you presume. If you want to talk about what an ecological nightmare those were, well that's another topic. FYI, urine will be sprayed around, regardless. The old devices were designed for solids and I suspect the same is true for the newer varieties. In any case, people throw all kinds of stuff into them, clog them, etc. and of course the pampered crybaby public expects that it's perfectly fine for a ranger to go in there and pull all the debris out and get the thing working again. And that's exactly what they had to do. Go back and reread the very first post on this thread.

There was talk at one time about serial numbering the bags so at least the abandoned ones would be accountable to a guilty party. A lot of times people get religion with a simple sign: $10,000 fine if ___. There isn't as much money as you suspect to deal with this problem. The people who have struggled with this for years are not stupid or lazy or unimaginative. This isn't the first place on the planet to use wag bags and it will not be the last.

Karen, you're preaching to the choir on this board. The slackers you describe are not reading your wisdom. They're on Whitney for bragging rights and the only way to stop them from contaminating the place is to provide a decent toilet. Our fees WERE covering the cost but now we just get a bag of kitty litter. We have 21st century technology that will work much better than the old toilets. Let's use it for the high impact summer months when these "slackers" are crapping all over the granite.

I don't doubt that the technology exists. The hard thing to do is to get people to make honest, realistic and complete evaluations of what it costs to provide a particular high tech solution. Trail Camp is at 12,000' on the east side of a 14,000' ridge that blocks the sun during the hottest part of the day. If the system only 'processes' during 3 months, how much storage is required to get through the fall and spring until operation starts again the next summer? Where will the staff live or how do you expect to train the hikers to properly use and maintain the system? The devil is in the details. And then there are the legal hurdles and funding sources. I don't want to discourage the development of options, but I'd like to see the details that justify the cheer.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Thanks for cleaning up after these people. Picking up TP is one thing, but scrapping old crap off a rock is another. I'd like to see the water quality numbers, especially after a few years of impact without the toilets. If the noncompliance rate is anywhere near 20% for the crap bags (as predicted by impact studies) then this is most likely headed for a public health issue in addition to the visual blight and smell. Where are the numbers and who's monitoring them?

Crap bags are sometimes the only solution - including the cold months on Whitney and above Horse Camp on Shasta. The solar toilet solution takes a huge bite out of the problem during the high impact months of warm weather when the worst offenders are hitting this trail. I agree these toilets are not intended for urine, but they do collect a significant amount, and a significant amount of that can be evaporated as distilled water.

I never wrote anything about the work ethic or intelligence of the people involved in this, but I have seen other posts like that. My point is that the old toilets were not the best we can do. We can learn from those mistakes and improve the design. We don't have to go exclusively to crap bags for this high impact area.

Again, thanks to everyone who cleans up after others. It's very noble and I do my part too. But this is not about you or me or most everyone reading this forum. Its about the hundreds of people who don't give a crap about where they crap (thousands over the years). Give them a civilized alternative. Its not good environmental policy to rely on good will.

The old toilets were partially successful. The design can be improved. We were paying enough to maintain the old toilets, why would new more efficient ones cost more to operate? And by the way, where's the money they used to spend on maintenance? Did your permit fees go down when they took out the old toilets and gave you a bag of kitty litter?

Good one. Booty. Thanks for the laugh. I've "hit the target and packed it out" more than I want to recall. I just can't believe the amount of NO CAN DO attitude out there. We're just talking about an upgrade to a system that was partially successful to deal with a mass of people with no regard for the environment. WE CAN HANDLE THIS BETTER.

Gary, you hit the target. I agree with you except that we shouldn't speculate on the motives of everyone involved in trying this experiment without toilets. Many of these people have good intentions and work hard. It's hard to comprehend the number of people on this trail who don't give a crap about where they crap and the impact they can have. Like you wrote, we need to give those people a palatable solution. The old toilets were partially successful and we have much better technology now.

Ken,

You asked for a link to show that its possible to run a solar composting toilet at high elevation. There are examples in the Himalayas at 11,500, in Tasmania, and all over the world on the web. This is not rocket science and we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Here's a link to a Colorado cabin at 12,000 ft with a Phoenix Solar Composting.

http://www.compostingtoilet.com/?p=85

This is company information, but it can't be too far off.

"Will a composting toilet function well in thin mountain air? Yes. There is plenty of oxygen at elevations even higher than 12,000 feet. But mountain nights are cold, and cold composting tanks do not compost well. Therefore, we ensure that Phoenixes in high elevation sites are placed in well insulated rooms and supplied with sufficient heat to keep the ambient temperature at 60-65 degrees F. "

It's all about providing well-insulated solar-heated containment to keep the ambient temperature high enough. The composting process generates heat, but it must be retained and supplemented with solar heat for 12,000 ft conditions. The old toilets on Whitney did not seem to compensate for this critical design requirement.

I'm about done harping on this issue. I hope people understand that modern technology and better design would be a huge improvement over the old Whitney toilets, which were partially successful.

This is not about people on this forum who use wag bags without too much fuss. Its about the thousands of people over the years who will be crapping on the granite. Give them a better solution. At $15 a head for thousands of permits per year, we're already paying enough for this level of environmental protection.

If aiming at a Wag Bag is beyond the skill of some hikers, who then choose to poop on bare rock instead, perhaps the authorities can bring back those potty enclosures that were in use at Trail Camp before the toilets were removed. (I suppose they were intended as transitional devices.)

The idea was to drape the Wag Bag over a holder that was placed under a free-standing toilet seat. You sat inside a squarish structure something like a cabana at the beach. You had sufficient privacy, and aiming at the Wag Bag was easy.

Such facilities might be enough to solve a good part of the problem. Of course, there still would be people leaving their now-full Wag Bags along the trail, but that would be better than having them deposit last night's burritos right on the trail.

the national park service took the brunt of unfavorable public opinion over 10 years ago about a toilet, even though it was congressionally mandated.

an interesting perspective that is as valid - if not more so today - in light of today's shrinking federal budget and current public outrage over ceo and investment house retention pay and bonuses.

it's worth the read here no matter what side of the issue you are on.

Nobody is claiming government waste in this situation, its about human waste being deposited on granite and contaminating lakes and streams downhill potentially making people sick even if they filter their water. I'm talking about replacing the old toilets with proven modern technology. $15 per hiker and thousands of hikers per season, the funding source is there. So what happened to the money they were spending on maintaining the old toilets? Bags of kitty litter are pretty cheap.

Seems like your idea would be helpful, but you have to consider the numbers in this high-impact area and how much environmental damage a small percentage can do. Thousands of people climb this every year. The noncompliance rate was estimated at 20% going into this experiment with poop bags. If that's even close to correct, there is a lot of crap on granite near lakes and streams. Maybe we have enough volunteers to clean it up, but I'd like to see the water quality data over time to see what's really happening.

Big problem: That cabin is a vacation home ...used occasionally ...by family-sized groups.

Trail Camp is a zoo ...probably 100 dumps and many more "pee breaks" per day.

That cabin's toilet would be overloaded in a single day's use at trail camp.

Actually, this is the time to make proposals for Fed funds. Doug has posted numerous times about economic development in the valley. Hopefully there is someone in Owens Valley politics or local development thinking about things like this and all possible related topics. A smart public figure would right now string together a bunch of buzz words, cover as much scope as possible under the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 and get tons of money for a lot of stuff.

Confession: I'm a radical fiscal conservative but am in the process of applying for $20MM for one of my employers, a local university. I hate the idea of people mindlessly spending an incredible amount of taxpayer money as fast as they can but the world is telling me I'm the one who's crazy so bye-bye morals. It's free money and we can turn back what we can't use productively. See how ridiculous life has become?

The key right now is to get the proposals in as fast as you can because they are trying to commit as much of it as they can in the next 60 days.

Let's face it - there are a lot of other far worse uses of the money. I see a lot of it going to hiring a lot of illegal aliens around here, and Harry Reid could always propose high speed rail to the summit shack, and build an adjacent casino to separate the LA welfare folks from their public assistance checks. Even the marmots would be living in McMansions if it got too ridiculous.

But this is another Oklahoma land grab in the offing. Jump on it. Send me a PM if I can be of assistance.

Greg, sorry to say, it will never happen. EVEN if there is a viable technology (which I doubt), EVEN if one could write a grant to fund the technology, there will ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY be lawsuits that will stop this cold. The law is crystal clear....no technology in wilderness, beyond that absolutely neccessary. There are now groups on the eastern sierra that have been energized by their court wins on such things. They have largly paralyzed several National Forests, and are very proud of it.

For this reason alone, there will never be any new toilets built in Ca wilderness.

As for the argument to de-designate wilderness, this won't fly. The "slippery slope" is that all you have to do is have a lot of people access the wilderness that you want, and now you can de-designate it. This sneaky technique by developers is well known in planning circles.

Well, I think the information is revealing.

http://www.compostingtoilet.com/Public/Ap_Guide/Ap_Guide.htm#capacity

reading through this, it states:
"Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that at very low temperatures, significant composting does not occur and the tank essentially functions as a holding vessel."

It appears to define "very low temperatures" as under 55 degrees.

At these temperatures, the capacity of the "201" is 300 uses, and then it would have to be emptied. That would be every couple of days.

This sounds suspiciously identical to the proforma for the toilets that were there. This picture is practically a picture of the toilets that were there!

http://www.compostingtoilet.com/Public/Ap_Guide/fig_3.gif

Ken,

55-65 degrees inside a well-insulated solar-heated room in the summer is quite achievable even at 12,000 ft. A tent in the sun peaks much hotter than that. With insulated masonry and solar pumped heat and composting heat, this can be achieved. If I recall, the old ones were simple wooden walls and they were more like a vault toilet than a compost toilet. And of course it would take more than 1 of these modern toilets to complete a "system" to handle the waste stream on this trail.

I never intended to get so involved in this "crappy" topic. I did my best to provide facts and logic on this basic sanitary problem. If you want poop bags as the only solution, that's your opinion, but please stop the misinformation campaign about other options that are working very well elsewhere. For my part, I admit that wag bags are an important component of the solution for off-peak season. The high tech toilets handle the peak critical load in the warmest weather. Neither is a complete solution by itself.

I'll contact Phoenix and get some engineering data on their models. If anyone can help locate the federal water quality monitoring data for this sensitive area, I would appreciate that. I know where to look for California data because I used to do that for a living. This is a federal area so I'm starting from scratch. It will be interesting to see how much pollution is ocurring and if its increasing.

A very good place to begin is to read the environmental impact report that was written on the whole issue of the toilets, with all of the options considered, and the reasoning for each of it, and what they decided, and why....and where things go from here. There is no real sense in reinventing the wheel, nor to insulting, as some have done, the managers who had been tasked with dealing with the issue, as not having given consideration to what was being done. Can't post the link, as the USFS servers seem to be down, but when they are up, it should be available.

BagPeak - contact Ranger Brian Spitek about water quality. I think he was the one who told me about the regular testing. Thanks for your interest in this and thanks Ken for all the background info. This is truly a complex if not intractable problem.