Camp Sanitation & Health · 7 min
Human waste and greywater
Why this matters
This is the topic every guide is embarrassed to brief and every guide must brief. Poor waste practice is how a group gives itself giardia, and how a favourite site becomes unusable. It is also explicitly required: 190.3 makes keeping the site sanitary a regulation, not a courtesy.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Site and dig a cathole to standard, and know when to pack it out
- Manage greywater and dishwashing without contaminating water
- Brief a mixed group on all of this without losing them
The cathole
- At least 150 feet, about 70 adult paces, from water, camp and trails. The same 150 feet as the camping rule, which makes it easy to remember
- Six to eight inches deep, in organic topsoil where the biology is, not down in mineral sand
- Choose a spot with sun and good drainage, and spread sites out rather than reusing one
- Fill it in and disguise it. Leave no sign
- Toilet paper is packed out in a doubled bag. Burying it is the standard that has failed everywhere: animals dig it up and it lasts far longer than people think. Burning it starts fires
- Hygiene products, wipes and nappies always pack out. None of it breaks down
Where there is a privy at a lean-to or designated site, use it, and put nothing in it but human waste and toilet paper.
When burying is not good enough
Pack it out, in a commercial waste bag, when you are:
- On snow or frozen ground, where nothing decomposes and the melt takes it straight into a stream
- Above treeline or on thin alpine soils, where there is nowhere to dig and the vegetation cannot take the traffic
- On rock, on a river corridor with sandbar camping, or anywhere heavily used
- Anywhere the land manager requires it
Greywater and washing
- Wash 150 feet from water, never in it, even with biodegradable soap. "Biodegradable" describes what happens in soil, not in a pond
- Use as little soap as possible, and for most trips none at all: hot water and a scrubber does the job
- Strain food solids out of dishwater, pack them out with the rubbish, and scatter the strained water widely over soil well away from camp
- Brush teeth away from water and spray the rinse out in a wide arc
- Personal washing: a bandana and a pot of water 150 feet from the shore, rather than swimming with soap
Hand hygiene, which is the one that prevents illness
Most gastrointestinal illness on group trips is transmitted person to person by hands, not by the water everyone blames. Set up a handwashing point at camp, insist on it before every meal and after every cathole, and carry alcohol sanitiser as a supplement rather than a substitute where hands are visibly dirty. On a trip with a shared cook pot, one careless person makes everyone ill.
Briefing it
Do it at the trailhead, matter of factly, with a trowel in your hand and the bags visible. Two minutes, no jokes, no apology. Clients follow a system that was explained confidently and ignore one that was mumbled.
From the field
Snow on the ground in April and a party of six for two nights. Catholes are not an option: everything you bury reappears in the melt, straight into the brook the party is drinking from. You brought waste bags, you briefed it in the booking email, and it is a non-issue.
This lesson is part of the NYS Licensed Guide Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.