Oh the sh*t stories I could tell. After over 20 years as an outdoor professional, mtn guide, and ranger, I've finally managed to transition to a job where I don't have to play an active part in supervising strangers pooping in the woods. I have a strict "family and friends poop only" policy now.
There is one rule for making fudge in the forest in my book.
1) Your sh*t should never impact anyone's else's experience.
In other words, no one else should see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, get sick from it, or wonder what is buried under the funny looking rock or stick etc. Ground squirrels excepted. Pre-dug holes are great. Fill'er up.
A number of groups have put together fairly well executed studies about best methods for getting rid of and/or dealing with turds in the backcountry. NOLS, Leave No Trace, several National Parks, etc.
As it turns out, burying caca is a pretty darn good way of preserving the harmful stuff in it. Even better for preservation is throwing it into deep dark crevasses, which is still common practice and often recommend method of disposal while in glaciated terrain such as on Denali. I worked alongside some college folks for a few years who took a look at that practice, crevassing human waste, and the end result was essentially that the poo is perfectly preserved, bad bugs and all, until it pops out on the surface of the glacier and enters the water supply some distance downhill. Bummer.
Denali Human Waste Study
With regard to killing the harmful things in human waste, leaving it on the surface and spreading it out is actually the best thing you can do. Exposure to the elements, UV, wind, water etc. breaks down the bugs faster than any other method. Surface shitting and alpine smearing obviously make it hard to abide by the rule described above.
Having spent a lot of time traveling through places where people have buried their mud eagles in the past, I can say without a doubt, that it is not uncommon, in fact I think it is more common that not, that some sort of animal digs buried waste up for others to enjoy. In one of the moose camps I hunt out of, bears dig up every hershey squirted squirrel hole, flip over every rock, and fling away every stick that has feces buried under it from one year to the next. Turd burglars...
So, in my opinion, it is hard to say what is the "best" way to deal with the dung because that answer can and should vary based on where you are at and what you have to work with. More often than not, I am burying it these days, as deep as I reasonably can, then burning the TP and packing out what doesn't burn.
It is much easier to say what is
not the best way, or even acceptable, and that is surface shitting where others are likely to pass by. 100 demerits for visible toilet paper. Too bad these don't seem to be a commonly held beliefs amongst most of our fellow outdoor enthusiasts.
Leave No Trace Waste Management Guidelines
In closing, I'll share one negative mountain mud pie experience from the anal archives.
I was about halfway up an alpine rock climbing route on Bugaboos Spire, a world famous rock climb in the Purcell Mountains of eastern British Columbia. I was attached to an anchor in a wide chimney and belaying my partner up from below so he could take over the lead for the next pitch. While hanging out, I started to notice that unmistakable smell that we all know so well. I started looking around and much to my diarrheal dismay, I discovered that someone had emptied their bowels at the belay station and loosely stacked a few rocks on top, apparently hoping that would prevent future discovery. Well, it didn't, and now the rock shoes that I was to use on the rest of my two-week trip were now covered in vile smelling crap. Sticky rubber rock shoes do not clean off easily and the need to stuff them in my pack at the top of the climb was less than ideal.
It gets better. Weeks later I was giving a slideshow to some friends who worked at the same guide service, knowing that two of them, my roommate and another co-worker, had been in the same range and had climbed the same route two weeks before we were there. When I got to the description of climbing this route, we'd done a few on the trip, I started telling the shit story, notably angry, and it turns out my roommate was the responsible party. It took all I had not to strangle him and I still resent him for it.
Abide by the rule!
