Dwight brings up an excellent
point: gone are the days when our ancestors defecated in the woods,
wiped their bums with a rock, and had never heard of bacteria.
Indeed, our modern society now presents our anuses with all the
conveniences of a day at the spa. Toilet paper is pleasant and soft,
hand soap is thick and gooey, and toilets are plentiful throughout
the land.
This brings me to my point
–while I have no desire to revert to the middle ages on a permanent
basis, I have found, throughout my adventures in the great outdoors,
that some of the most horrifyingly funny situations arise precisely
when our modern anuses stop being coddled.
Accordingly, my endeavor today
is simple: to tell one of these hilarious stories.
In June 2016, I embarked on an
ascent of Mount Rainier, a 14,411-foot dormant volcano in Washington
State.
Being a novice mountaineer, I had
secured the services of a guiding outfit to manage the many dangers:
weather, glacier crossing, crevasses, logistics, food, shelter,
technical gear, etc. In the end, it was the first of these that
toppled my attempt on the big mountain: weather.
The day preceding the start of our climb had been unbelievably
clear. A mere tourist in Seattle, I had followed the throngs to the
famous Space Needle, getting my first glimpse of the colossus from
the observation deck –its contour sharply delineated and its lower
slopes shimmering in the afternoon light, the mountain rose
inexorably above the city. There was not a cloud in sight. That
night, I went to sleep filled with dreams of an easy summit.
The following day was a different
story. As the bus carried my fellow climbers and I to Paradise, the
5,400-foot start to the climb, gray clouds settled into the valleys
and obscured the entire mass of the mountain (no small feat!) I stole
peeks at the four guides to see if their expressions betrayed
concern, but they only shone by their placidity. Still, I remained
doubtful as to our chances of summiting in this weather. My hopes
were further dashed when I overheard the senior guide, a gruff,
mustachioed gentleman named Greg, grumbling about “June-uary.”
It was a small, barren plateau
carved into the side of the mountain, swept by snow-charged wind, its
austere whiteness only punctuated by a few stone structures perched
on its outer edges. We filed into a concrete hut, frozen to our core.
It was a bleak sight –about ten square feet of common space, one
low shelf to hang our packs, and three levels of concrete bunks. I
spread my pad and sleeping bag into a corner and lay down, fatigue
quickly sweeping over me.
The morning greeted us with more
wind and snow, zero visibility, and, of course, grinding altitude
headaches. Two of my teammates immediately announced that they were
going no further –they would wait at Camp Muir for the team’s
return in the company of one of our guides.
Down to six climbers and three
guides, we roped up in teams of three and started across the Cowlitz
Glacier, our crampons and ice axes creaking into the ice. We ascended
a steep, rocky slope, then climbed across the Ingraham Glacier,
reaching high camp in just a little over an hour. The views around us
should have been magnificent, but we were climbing in almost whiteout
conditions, and even the row of four bright yellow mountaineering
tents were only visible from fifty feet away.
That night, as we huddled over our
meal in the cook tent, our guides informed us that the conditions had
created avalanche-prone slopes on the upper mountains, and that we
would be going no further. We would spend the night at high camp and
descend all the way down to Paradise in the morning.
Though I was bitterly
disappointed, I quickly found myself preoccupied by other problems.
For the past two days, I had been urinating into a large plastic
bottle clearly labeled “urine,” and had not given much thought
to what would be required should a bowel movement present itself.
Based on the guides’ talk about “leave no trace” wilderness
ethic, I knew I was in for much more than just digging a hole in the
snow.
“So, uh,” I stammered. “What
do we do if we have to, you know…poop?
Smirks blossomed across the cook
tent.
“Ah,” said Greg with a grin,
“we have a protocol for that, mandated by the National Park
Service.”
He turned around and produced a
thick, blue plastic bag, and a larger, white plastic bag.
“There are two ways to do this:
the National Park way, and the smart way,” he said with relish as
everyone (except me) chuckled. “First we’ll show you the National
Park way, just so you can’t say we didn’t show it to you.
Basically, you go in the snow, and then you scoop it up with the blue
bag like with a doggie bag. Then you tie it off, and seal it into the
white bag.”
Greg mimed all of these motions
expertly as he went through them, like a steward aboard an airplane
giving pre-flight safety instructions.
“Now, for the smart way. None of
that scooping nonsense –the blue bag is pretty wide. You’re gonna
want to spread that bad boy right over your butt cheeks and around
your anus, and make a direct deposit. It’ll save you a lot of
grief. Then same thing, you tie it off and seal it in the white bag.”
The entire tent exploded into
laughter as Greg handed me the bags. Two of my fellow climbers
slapped each other on the back, guffawing and repeating “direct
deposit.”
“And, um, where do I, you know,
go?” I asked, pulling on my snow goggles and face mask to hide the
deep shade of red I was doubtlessly turning.
“Well, that’s why I built
this,” said Greg with theater, throwing the tent flap open.
Fifty feet from camp, a chaste
little snow wall faced away from the tents. Resigned to my
humiliation, I climbed out of the tent and made my way over.
“Remember!” Greg yelled after
me. “Direct deposit!”
Behind the wall, I squatted over
the blue bag, exposing my lower half to the winds and the cold air.
Great, I thought, now I’m definitely going to get
frostbite on my ass. As I went about my business, I realized that
the clouds had momentarily shifted, finally affording me a sweeping
view of the landscape. Across the way stood Little Tahoma Peak, at
11,138 feet, a jagged pyramid of black, volcanic rock. Large piles of
blue seracs, fissured by yawning crevasses, basked in golden evening
light. I looked at the altimeter on my watch: 11,230 feet. It was not
only the highest place (save for airplanes) in which I had ever gone
number two, I decided, but also the most wildly beautiful.
Having made my “direct deposit”
and trudged back to camp, I was met by Greg’s impish grin, as if he
knew what I was preparing to ask him.
“So, what do I do with this?”
“Well,” he replied, “we have
a strict ‘leave no trace’ wilderness ethic on this mountain.
Anything that comes up with you has to come back down with you. In
the morning, you can pack that up. For now, just put it somewhere
where it won’t blow away.”
“You mean –I have to carry my
crap back down to camp?”
“You got it.”
Finding no end to my humiliation,
I slipped the blue bag under the tent and retired to my sleeping bag.
We slept a fitful sleep, troubled
by cold, altitude, and fatigue. In the morning, we packed up camp
under Greg’s attentive supervision. I am not sure if I was
imagining it, but it seemed that he was keeping an eye on me. Perhaps
he suspected that I was all too eager to “forget” my blue bag
where I had put it. It was not a crazed notion after all –the tent
I had hidden it under was staying for the next expedition, and with a
pack, crampons, avalanche beacon, ice axe, helmet, harness, and a
flurry of other pieces of gear to manage, who would have blamed me
for forgetting my dump up at high camp?
“Hey,” Greg interrupted my
silent scheming, “don’t forget your blue bag!”
More laughter rang across the
camp.
“You remembered, huh?” I
grumbled, reaching beneath the yellow tent.
“Oh it was easy. You’re the
only one who actually went!”
I examined the bag. While the
double bag kept the odor safely sealed, the whole package was frankly
less than appealing. Though thick, both bags were exceedingly
transparent, and my turd was plainly visible. It could not have been
mistaken for a bag containing something else –this was clearly a
bag containing, specifically, poop.
“Can I at least pack it in one
of my side pockets?” I asked, hoping Greg would take mercy on me.
“Nope. You don't want it to fall
out and into a crevasse now, do you? It’s gotta go in your pack.”
Resigned to embarrassment once
more, I opened the main compartment of my rucksack and, right over my
food bag, my spare clothes, and my toiletries, I packed my fresh
brown trout.
The descent to Camp Muir was
fairly straightforward. The weather had somewhat cleared, and we took
in more sights of Little Tahoma and of the Ingraham and Cowlitz
Glaciers. Once at camp, we reunited with our three companions who had
sat out the storm in the shelter. We ate some food and prepared to go
back down to Paradise.
Just as we were about to leave,
Greg pulled me aside and showed me to a barrel.
“You can put your blue bag in
there,” he said.
I opened the barrel, which
contained what seemed like hundreds of thick blue bags, each
enclosing its own unique monstrosity. I added my own and closed the
lid, and then turned to Greg.
“So, what do they do with all
the poop?”
“It gets taken down by
helicopter every few days.”
Finally, this was too much for me.
I exploded.
“You mean my shit is going to
get helivaced from the mountain after I carried it,” I screamed,
“while I gotta walk down the mountain on my blistered feet!?”
“Yup,” said Greg impassibly.
“Boy, you don’t skip a beat!”
He turned around and started down
after the group. I looked back at the upper mountain. Still wreathed
in clouds, it betrayed nothing of its lordly secrets. I realized that
I had not even seen its summit since standing on the observation deck
of the Space Needle.
“Come on!” Greg called after
me. “It's only three hours down to Paradise!”
Staunchly vanquished, I started
down the mountain.
