Gabrielle (00:00)
You know, if the average poop weighs close to a pound, that’s almost 73 pounds of poop surrounding that backcountry site in one year. And then we’re going to be piling more of that on the next year.
Welcome to this fucking trail, home to brutally honest takes on Texas trails, hiking hilarity, and all things adventury. I’m your MC John, and I’m here to warn you that this podcast is not for young children or anyone with a sensitivity to swears or strong opinions. And now over to the hiking hostess with the mostas and intrepid explorer and affirmed potty mouth, not to mention my wife, Gabrielle. Yep, that’s me.
Today is a shit you should know episode, a type of episode that covers ways to not fuck up in the backcountry, things you should generally know out there and how to have the best, safest experience out on the trail. More specifically today, we’re going to be talking about why there’s so many rules about pooping and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Yeah, there are a lot of rules about pooping in Guadalupe. It is actually quite surprising. I didn’t realize
how strict they really were out there. And it’s a bit unique, There are some rules in most parks. Right, know, leave no trace, go 200 to 300 feet off the trail to do your business, that sort of thing. But yeah, I didn’t realize that there was so many rules either the first time I went out there and actually didn’t realize it truly until I went on my first backpacking trip out there.
Well, that’ll that’s certainly, I guess, a good time to learn. Yeah, my my first experience with how difficult it is to shit in Guadalupe Mountains was my first time out there. I went on the Peak Trail and there’s a bathroom at the Pine Springs Trailhead where everybody can do their business with flushing toilets. There’s running water where you can wash your hands. It’s beautiful and wonderful. And then I hit the trail.
and realized there were no facilities on the trail and there’s nowhere to pop off and squat on that trail. So it made for a bit of a cheek clenching experience on the way down. Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s certainly quite the hike. It’s not a short trip to the peak and back. And I think maybe if you have poorly planned your
free hike meal strategy, shall we say, you could end up living in a world of regret. Absolutely. Yeah, I kind of did that first experience. And you know, I could whine and complain that they should put some composting toilets and strategic places out on the trails, especially on the Peak Trail. But instead of embracing my inborn whiner, we’re going to talk about the rules that are in place and why they’re in place.
Yeah, so that’s a good point, right? I think it’s very easy to get annoyed with rules in the parks, but NPS doesn’t generally go around just making rules in order to make your lives inconvenient. They aren’t trying to keep us from having a good time in the parks. They are trying to preserve the natural beauty for future generations. So we’re not all wading through six inches of shit.
Yeah, and surprisingly, there’s actually a lot of good reasons for this rule. So let’s get into what the rules really are. OK, so per the National Park Service on Guadalupe’s page web page, they say if you are on the trail for a day or an extended trip, be prepared to pack out human waste, toilet paper, diapers and hygiene products. Day hikers and all permitted overnight backpackers are required to pack out human waste using a
landfill safe commercial toilet bag system. They go on to say, in areas more than a quarter mile from restroom facilities and all areas inside the wilderness boundary, all solid human waste, feminine hygiene products and toilet paper must be carried out in landfill safe commercial toilet bag.
and so I think the obvious question here is why? Because that’s pretty hardcore. Most parks, especially if you’re kind of out in the wilderness in the back country, you’re allowed to cat hole, which is where you dig a hole in the ground and you bury your waste or, you know, whatever. You’re still obviously encouraged to use biodegradable products and that kind of thing. But, you know.
You can do your business without having to carry around bags and you certainly don’t have to carry bags of shit out with you. Yeah. And just a note here, what they’re talking about in Guadalupe Mountains is you’re supposed to carry a wag bag is what they’re typically called. And so to use this bag, you open it up. There’s a main outer bag. There’s an inner bag with some gel that
congeals your shit and helps to break it down and not stink. And so that’s what you poop into. And then you put it back in your sturdy outer bag and put it in your pack and move on with your life. So that’s what Guadalupe Mountains is wanting you to do. Those are the rules are.
Yeah, it’s certainly a challenge, I think, if it’s something that you’ve never done before. And. Definitely an awkward experience, no matter how many times you’ve done it. It’s really not so bad. It sounds incredibly gross and yeah, it is gross, but once you do it, it’s not as bad as you might think. OK, anyhow, so when I found out the rules, I’m a blind rule follower, so I was just like, OK, this is what we do.
and I didn’t really question it. But other people in my life questioned that rule when I informed them of it. So I started to look into why this rule was in place. This is actually a newer rule that they put into place on June 21st of 2022 because the park was getting a lot more visitation. From 2018 to 2021, visitation increased by 28 % in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
They saw their highest visitation year in 2021. There was 243,000 visitors to the park, which, you know, if you go to parks like Yellowstone, Smokey Mountains National Park, that’s piddly. They’re seeing tens of millions of visitors. Right. They’re also equipped. They are. They have facilities and their ecosystem is very different.
Yeah, Guadalupe Mountains National Park is actually typically makes the top 10 list of least visited national parks when they come out with those lists every year. Yeah, yeah. And, know, there’s not it’s not like there’s an extensive camping area that’s not being used or anything here, right? I think they they have about the right facilities for the visitation that they have.
Yeah, they’re not going to be able to handle much more unless they change their facilities. Parking is limited. Camp sites are limited. It’s not really meant to be one of those huge parks, which I kind of enjoy. Right. So more people out there means a lot more shit out there, right?
I mean, I would assume. I feel like I feel like you’re going to to drop some knowledge on me here. I sure am. So a lot of people are going to ask, well, why can’t you just cat hole it? Why can’t you just bury it? Yeah. Isn’t carrying it just absolutely disgusting and gross? But National Park Service says due to the rocky nature of the soil and dry environment of the park.
The digging and use of cat holes for human waste is prohibited in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. OK, so, mean, certainly it is pretty rocky out there. can understand people might have a hard time digging a decent hole, especially with the kind of, you know, junky tiny shovels most people take out. But I guess the obvious question here is, you know. Poop is poop. We normally, you know,
Presumably it ends up in sewers and dumps, biodegrades, and you know, I guess the kind of the thing that you have to wonder is what the big deal is here, right? Because animals are pooping in the woods all the time. So there is a lot of wildlife out of Guadalupe. Yes, there is. I don’t know if there’s 243,000 critters, depending on, you know, the human equivalent count, but there’s certainly quite
quite a large population of various animals of decent size out there. So yeah, so what is the problem here? Especially with the visitation numbers for humans being pretty low. Yeah. So I didn’t know any of the stuff that we’re about to talk about until I started to dig and it’s intended. It’s actually really interesting. I honestly kind of expected to not find compelling reasons to follow this rule, but it makes a lot of sense. So
Even though animals do carry disease, they eat a much more simplistic, often plant-based diet and their shit is very different than ours. Shit is not shit, as it turns out. Okay, so it’s not not same shit different day. No, it’s not. So for starters, animal poop, animal scat, whatever you want to call it, is a lot more benign and beneficial to the environment. Whereas our shit is kind of the opposite of both of those things.
I guess that kind of makes sense. They’re eating fruits and berries and stuff and we’re eating potato chips and pop tarts. And what they’re eating comes from their environment, from their specific ecosystem. So the bears in Guadalupe Mountains are consuming those resources in Guadalupe Mountains and then promptly returning those exact same resources and nutrients back to that ecosystem. So their shit is actually beneficial to the environment.
Whereas like you said, we aren’t living in that ecosystem typically. We’re not living off the land. Instead, we are eating things like refined sugar, preservatives, alcohol, prescription medications. All at the same time, ideally. Yes, in a blended up cocktail. Fantastic. So what this means is that, our food can lead to the growth of bad bacteria in our gut, and this bacteria can be harmful to the environment and it’s quite resistant to biodegrading.
So what you’re saying is all those McDonald’s french fries that we eat on the way to the park, when people say they don’t biodegrade, that’s totally true. Even after you drop them in the woods, they just continue and poop form to last forever. I guess so.
We’re exposed to a lot more bacteria and viruses than any animal in the wild. We have lot of biodiversity in our guts, a lot more than animals. And not all that biodiversity is good. The harmful elements of our gut biodiversity, bacteria and viruses, do spread through our poop. There’s over a hundred different protozoans, bacteria and viruses found in our human waste. Isn’t that fun?
Just delightful. I’m so glad that I skipped breakfast before we recorded this. You like this shit talk? man, that was bad. So another consideration here is that, like you pointed out, there’s probably not 243,000 animals that call Guadalupe Mountains National Park home.
Certainly not 243,000 human equivalent animals, right? I think any given human is probably worth like 15, 20 squirrels as far as poop goes. Probably so. So they spend a lot more of their time dispersed throughout a more general area in the park and there’s fewer of them. So, you know, we’re spending our time at the campgrounds, on the trails. We’re not wandering the thousands and thousands of acres that…
is part of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. So that’s another consideration. So what you’re suggesting here is, of course, animals are making a mess all over the place in the woods, but it really is all over the place. And there is a vast area that we’re not hiking in. But if humans were to do the same thing, it would just be lining the trails. Yes, exactly. And we’ll get into a little bit more of the differences of the differences between human shit and animal poop.
a bit later in the episode. Yeah, yeah. mean, that’s definitely a really disgusting thought. So yes. So, lots of human poop in smaller areas means a greater likelihood that pathogens are going to spread because of all the bacteria and viruses in our poop. Those bacteria and viruses do not die quickly.
Good to know. Good to know. Definitely watch for your step in the woods. Yeah, so it’s not, you know, the obvious thing that your mind might go to when you think about pooping in the woods is it’s unsightly if people are shitting in the woods. But and that’s definitely true. But the kind of the bigger issue here is the pathogens that human shit can potentially introduce into an area. Right. So when you take a dump in the woods, you could very well be
killing some of those cute little squirrels. Yes, you could. So here’s a big one that I was really surprised by. Human poop takes longer to biodegrade than animal feces. Depending on the environment that you drop your load in, they can take months to more than a year for human shit to decompose. Damn. Yeah. And guess what? OK, go ahead. Shit takes a lot longer to decompose in
desert environments than in moist forests. so this is yet another thing that is a bigger deal in Texas. Yes, exactly. So it’s going to take that year plus for your poop to biodegrade in Texas versus say out on the Appalachian Trail or up in Washington. OK. And the reason for this is that shit needs moisture.
and organic matter to decompose at a faster rate. And I hate to say the obvious, but the desert doesn’t have either one of those things in a large quantity. Certainly not compared to most environments. In in other hiking areas, yeah, so I mean, I Shitting next to the trail really is a big deal in Texas, even if it is 200 feet, which is the general rule of.
the general leave no trace principles. You’re supposed to go 200 feet from the trail. I definitely don’t believe that most people are doing that. Agreed. All right.
So it’s going to take forever to decompose because we’re in a desert if we poop out there. That’s one problem. But here’s another problem. You’re not going to be able to dig an effective cat hole even if it was allowed. Do you remember hiking in Guadalupe Mountains when you were out there? I do. Yeah, I remember it quite well. And this kind of goes back to what I was thinking about before with, you know, it very, very rocky. Yes.
Yes, it’s very rocky and the dirt that is out there is really hard packed. Now, can you tell me how deep you’re supposed to dig a cat hole? So my gut says six inches. Yes. So in the desert, it’s four to six inches per leaf, no trace. It’s deeper in like forest and moist areas, but we’re talking about the desert here. So do you see kind of where I’m going here?
Yeah, I think, you know, if you’re trying to dig a decent sized hole, you know, depending on how much, how big that breakfast is or how big dinner was the night before. And it’s got to be six inches deep as well.
That’s a lot of digging just to take a dump. Yeah. And I hope you brought a legitimate shovel and not one of the, you know, the, what is it, the deuce that they sell at REI, this little like super flimsy, super light aluminum. Awful. It’s like less than six inches long. It’s terrible. Yeah. You’re basically like, the handle is basically no different than the blade of the shovel. So it’s uncomfortable. Anyways.
Even if you’ve taken out like a proper garden trowel to dig with, that soil out there is so rocky, you’re constantly just like going to be prying smaller rocks out of the ground. Yep, exactly. I could imagine spending like 20 minutes digging to take a dump. Yeah. So even the people who are determined to do the right thing to dig the hole. It might be impossible even for the person who’s dedicated to leave no trace, much less.
the average crowd. And so Guadalupe Mountains National Park acknowledges this when they revise these rules about pooping in the woods. So what they say about this is, this restriction acknowledges the rocky landscape found in the park, which makes cat holes of sufficient depth unlikely, leading to human waste being easily exposed. The dry environment of the desert also slows decomposition of human waste and related products. So basically,
because of the hard rocky soil, you’re not gonna be able to dig a cat hole that’s deep enough. And even if you did, your shit’s not gonna biodegrade anytime soon. And so all this means that human waste is gonna be easily exposed if you were allowed to poop out there. So we add those two factors to the increasing number of shitters, that’s us, that’s hikers, that’s people out there. In the back country. Guilty. Yeah.
Things can get really nasty really fast if we don’t put some regulations on pooping out in the woods. Yeah. Yeah. I really I feel like you know my offhanded comment about shit lining the trails is actually a very real risk. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s kind of spitball some numbers. We’re just going to make up some numbers to illustrate how this could be harmful. So John how much do you think the average shit
ways? wow that’s that’s a question I I’m gonna
say like a pound? don’t know. Yeah, you’re actually really close. Okay. Google says that the average poop is about point seven pounds. Trust the internet to know. Yeah. you don’t want to see my search history right now. I’m a little nervous what ads I’m going to be getting. I also hate to think about how did they come up with this number for the average weight of a human dump? Right? Yeah. How many how many were weighed in labs?
Anyhow, so again, these aren’t real numbers. I’m making these up. But let’s just say that there’s someone at a back country site about 20 percent of the year in Guadalupe at one site. OK, and let’s just say that each day that the campers there, they take a dump. I mean, I feel like it’s important to be regular. You know, it is. Yeah. 20 percent of the year is 73 days. So if you’re pooping out there,
20 % of the year that’s going to be 73 dumps at or around that backcountry campsite That’s a lot, right? 73 dumps and then none of those are going to decompose right that we’ve established. Yeah, They will decompose but it’s gonna take a year or longer and
You know, if the average poop weighs close to a pound, that’s almost 73 pounds of poop surrounding that backcountry site in one year. And then we’re going to be piling more of that on the next year. Yeah. Won’t be won’t be long before we’re at 100, maybe 125 pounds before anything has even started decomposing. Yeah, that’s that’s a lot, especially if you’ve been out in Guadalupe, if you’ve been out to one of the backcountry sites, if you kind of look at the area.
Suddenly, 73 pounds of poop feels like a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Those those sites sound a lot less appealing now. I’m quite concerned that, you know, we’ll go out there and we’ll be trying to go to sleep. And all I’ll be able to think about is the fact that I am surrounded by like 100 pounds of shit. Well, but you shouldn’t be now because this rule has been in effect since 2022. That’s true. So remember.
We’re talking about this because there’s rules about pooping in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. You’re not allowed to. Yeah. Not in the way that we traditionally think about pooping in the back country. So again, when you need to drop a deuce out there, you are required to carry a wag bag, poop in your wag bag and pack your shit out.
All right. Well, let’s hope that most people are actually following these rules and that you’re not surrounded by any more than, 40 to 50 pounds of shit while you’re sleeping out there. That’s that’s a little more bearable. You know, I feel like. It’s less, at least it sounds it sounds less concerning after the massive numbers that we’ve been talking about. OK, well, maybe that floats your boat. I don’t like it. I would like to believe.
that all the poop out there has biodegraded since 2022 and now we are not surrounded by poop anymore. All right. Well, fingers crossed that that’s the case. I’m still going to watch for a step, but we’ll just hope that it’s all animal scat and that it’s good for the environment. Exactly. And so in short, that’s why there’s so many rules about pooping in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. OK, well, I definitely learned some shit today.
And I think maybe we just call it there. Thanks for joining us for another episode and enjoy your next deuce.