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Trail hygene

Flashes of blinding white dotted the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range during a hike I took there over Labor Day last year.
It wasn't lightning though.

A hard truth of the trail is that 99.9 percent of the time, the normal conveniences of civilization are, well, back in civilization. Sure, you could clean up with a quick dip in the near freezing waters of a glacially-cold lake at 12,0000 feet.
But some important part of your anatomy, a toe, a nose, what have you, might freeze and fall off in the water. Therefore, bathing is reduced to quickie splashes by a lake or stream -- the same place you'll get your drinking water from.
By day 3, I noticed a strange, sweetish smell rising from my body. I kept waiting for my trailmates to comment on it, but they were apparently, too wrapped up in their own odiferousness.
I ended up wearing the same T-shirt, long johns and khaki shorts for all five days of the hike. I simply couldn't waste energy changing clothes. It took everything just to get through the 10 miles or so of the day.
The T-shirt became stiff enough to fend off the strongest wind. It also acquired an odd brown spot on the front, but I was past caring by then. The only thing I changed was my socks because foot hygiene -- that's a different matter.
Books have been written about taking care of feet on the trail, and I at least did the minimum.
Perhaps the hardest to get used to part of trail hygiene was the outdoor toilet situation.
There was no actual toilet. It was wherever you could find a secluded place, hopefully by a rock that would be good for holding onto for balance.
My friend Christina brought a neon orange children's play spade with her. Last year, she tried to use her trekking poles to shovel dirt over the more obvious signs of outdoor toilet usage. The poles didn't work too well -- thus the spade.
At key moments, Christina quietly slipped the spade into her high-tech hiking jacket. She also loaned it to me to slip into my $1.90 Value Village pullover.
Before a trip to the outdoor toilet, a hiker might say something like, "Well, I'm going over here for a minute" or, "I'm going to change clothes."
Trailmates would then respect their fellow hiker's privacy for however long necessary. It got tricky if everyone started changing clothes at once, of course.
And it got even trickier if other groups of hikers were around.
At first, the whole business, whether for a quick trip or for a longer session, seemed like an ordeal. First, came the awkward escape from the campsight. Next, the desperate search for a good place. Then finally, the almost guilty answer of nature's call, conducted crouched down, wobbling on unsure haunches and praying nobody ventured by.
Good hearty double-servings of instant oatmeal apparently kept us all in running order, so the outdoor toilet expedition wasn't optional.
By day 2.5, my attitude had undergone a seismic shift.
The outdoor toilet became another routine task on the trail -- with one exception. I still strove to be secluded at those moments.
Just before undertaking the last leg of the trail to Mount Whitney, we camped amid a pine grove. A few other hikers were scattered around.
On trail-tired legs I hunted and hunted for a good spot. I finally decided that a boulder, plus the vacant bank of a river would serve well for my purposes.
I squatted gratefully, did my business, stood up, stretched and pulled up my shorts. That's when I noticed a hiker standing among trees on a rise about 20 feet away behind me. Too late, I also noticed his tent.
And so the final vestiges of my modesty floated up into the clear brightness of the alpine sky.
I decided that if he'd seen anything, and his unbroken gaze seemed to indicate that he had, then it was his fault.
He shouldn't stare. That's ungentlemanly.
That incident prepared me for the veritable crowd camped on the other side of Whitney. Privacy was basically impossible.
The best policy was to simply look away, back away and continue a conversation with a trailmate, and, if someone discovered me during an inopportune time, the best policy then was also to look away while the person or persons in question backed away.
Heck, it wasn't even worth mentioning by the fourth of fifth white flash -- mine or anyone else's.

Posted by at 03:15 PM | Permalink