Ice is cold. So is snow. So, if you need to take a dump on a glacier in a National Park, you are required to bag it, lest it be found 20,000 years later and used as evidence of pre-existent life forms on Earth. Or prevent contamination of the primary drinking water source (snowmelt) of climbers on the mountain. This policy goes for the wonderful & oft over visited Mendenhall Glacier here in Juneau, as well as one of my more personally significant future plans: Rainier. I’ve been reading up on the mountain to do some background research into typical weather trends during late winter (we’re thinking March, which is prime winter mountaineering throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere), potential routes, how bad the currently washed out road-system is (which is going to add about 10mi to the journey), and whether or not people use pulk sleds (example). Among all these neat little tidbits I realized that we were really going to have to pack out what we pack in, except for water, which will consist mostly of melted snow from the mountain anyways. This is of some concern, as recently, many of my trips have involved some serious cooking action via attempts at intense mountain gourmet. Due to a consistently experimental nature, this can occasionally have significant gastro-intestinal consequences. More to the point, we’re going to have to be particularly careful about what foods we pack, and how much to bring. No prob, right? Well, I also have a pesky habit of over-packing for food. Time for some serious threat mitigation.

Within the bounds of Mt. Rainier NP, unless there is a toilette (a silly French word) available, you have to poo in a bag and carry it out. These bags are appropriately named WAG bags. This is unfortunately not due to the fact that -at least in my experience- no one ever wants to put them inside their pack, so they are most often seen wagging along in the wind outside someone’s pack. Usually when you pack a bunch of gourmet in, among the things you have to look forward to other than consumption, is leaving the weight behind. While the policy is not new, it is an inconvenience when you are dealing with such a potentially dangerous situation, which for better or worse, is where ethics tend to go out the window for the average climber. Lets just hope that’s the only inappropriate thing to attain an airborne status. In fact, I’l bank on it.

Gross.

-P to the F