Bag of Excrement
Continued from prior post…
As is my practice whenever I go camping, I had done some of the prep work of organizing and packing before heading to bed on the last night of the trip. Therefore, once I was up and moving in the morning, it did not take long to get camp broken down and loaded into my backpack. As I had wanted, it looked like I was going to get about a half hour head start on the rest of my group. Hopefully, my bad knee would behave itself on the way down the mountain, but that half hour of buffer would help make sure I was not slowing anyone down. ed from prior post…
The last thing I packed was a plastic trash bag that contained all the waste from the trip. I lashed it horizontally to the lower outside portion of my pack. On one end was a sealed Ziploc bag with the packaging and other waste from all my meals. On the other end was the sealed WAG Bag containing the portions of my meals my body was unable to use. This arrangement would make it easy upon reaching the trailhead later in the day. I could quickly unlash the outer bag and then place the two inner bags into the proper receptacles for the different kinds of waste. I also felt better about having these bags on the outside of my pack in case there was a leak during the journey to the bottom.
The trip back down the mountain to the trailhead that morning was relatively uneventful. The day-hikers were already coming through the camp when I left shortly after sunrise and many more were right behind them on the trail. In addition, there were a number of other backpackers heading down the trail at the same time as me at varying rates of speed. Toward the bottom of the trail, I also started meeting up with the backpackers who were hoping to reach our campsite that afternoon.
The problem was, by this point on the trail, the weaknesses in my horizontal lashing job became quite apparent. While the outer trash bag was still secured well, the inner bags had each escaped the lashings and were now dangling out opposite sides of the lashing job and were hitting the back of my legs as I took strides down the trail. Although this was not a huge issue in and of itself, the psychology of knowing one of the things striking the back of my leg every few seconds was a bag of my own excrement was a bit disturbing. I just hoped the sealed bag was holding tight.
To be continued…
