Poop pictures? "Waste" of time...
I have to agree.
Last September as we were filtering water at the trail camp pond just before sunrise a camper came out of a tent and walked down to the egde of the pond and pi$$ed in the wet sand at the edge. I could have photogaraphed him but I just shot the sunrise.
I wasn't out "looking" out for these...they were in my line of sight. Beauty ruined by a F****** bag or a smell that could gag a maggot.
My usual practise for Whitney dayhikes is to start at 2am. Even when there were functioning toilets along the trail it was not rare to find fresh solid human deposits on the trail itself before sunrise. (Apparantly people were self-conscious about TP or they weren't using any.) I have to admit I never moved others' deposits at least 100 feet from the trail either.
On July 18 this year, I hiked up to Cottonwood Lakes, stopping to fish at the first two stream crossings. On that trail, the rules are to deposit and bury at least 100 feet from water and trail and carry out TP. It is the nature of some parts of the eastern Sierra (including MMWT) that the best personal cover is provided by the riparian growth along streams. As I skulked through the willows from little pool to little pool I found a number of TP accompanied deposits. The willows are not more than 15 feet from the stream there and the deposits were often within 100 feet of the trail. (How far upstream do you go to get your water?) If you want to consider the effects of wag bags, it is only fair to compare to a similar situation without.
Again, hideous, but sad at the same time.
My how time changes things...
Time and place seem to change little. Except, there are plasic wrappers on the MMWT now!
Edit: Please don't let this fool you into believing that all abandoned deposits are now in plastic wrappers (just as they never all made it into toilets).
Dale B. Dalrymple
