Portable Toilet Required! Sign found in Castle Valley, Utah, outside Moab. It's coming to a trail near you!

When a trail like the Rubicon has no sanitation facilities (yet), the answer is pack it out! To give you an example of the magnitude of this problem, we counted the users and the use of the Rubicon during the summer of 2001. 35,000 users ventured over the trail during one three month period in 2001. They generated 70,000 pounds of human waste!

This was calculated by a back country sanitation engineer. It's an average figure for the Rubicon during peak season. It's hard to imagine. Think of it as pile of 18 jeeps stacked on top of each other. That's a lot.

Because the Rubicon has no installed toilets, this waste is either left behind or hauled out by us, the users. But you ask, why can't we just bury it along the trail? Well, if you've been out there during busy summer seasons, you know a couple things; 1) we can't always find ground soft enough to dig a hole (where there's no granite); and 2) not everyone carries a shovel even if they could dig; and 3) most importantly, the Rubicon resides in a very sensitive area (with drainages that flow to Lake Tahoe), and waste products can make their way to water tables through rain and runoff.

We cannot afford to let this close our trail. The anti-access crowd would be happy to include this as a reason to close our trail someday. We can prevent this. WE can pack it out. More ideas on TRAIL SANITATION.

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