Clean Water, Good Food, and Leaving No Trace
I learned a lot on this backpacking trip to Utah. First, if someone invites you to hike a desert canyon in the springtime, you should immediately say YES. Second, water is the key to enjoying desert hikes—finding it, purifying it, and even slogging through it. And finally, leave no trace camping involves more than carting out your energy bar wrappers.
We started out with full nalgenes and hydration bladders — enough water to get through the first night, when the trickling springs would became a full-on creek. The fine sandy sediment in the water clogged the filter, so refilling was a slow process, pumping it through the filter squirt by squirt like milking a cow. The clean water still tasted of mineral and chalk, desert terroir left over from when ancient seas and swamps covered this land.
Camp coffee in the morning, black and gritty. My old WhisperLite campstove has gathered dust in the bottom of the camp kitchen tub since I became a Jet Boil convert. (FYI no affiliate or brand marketing here, just an opinion!) Jet Boils ratchet the WhisperLite concept up to a new level; easy to light, sturdy, super efficient and fast. All of which is necessary when I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet.
All our food depended on filtered water, from morning coffee to dessert under the stars. Except for beef jerky and power bars, we brought dehydrated cook-in-the-bag meals. Of all the meals we tried, I’d only avoid the scrambled eggs. They reconstitute with a weird foamy texture that is both soggy and dry. Best breakfast award went to Backpacker’s Pantry Mango Sticky Rice; best dinner (low on beans but high on spices) went to Good to Go Thai Curry)
All of that brings us to the leave-no-trace, pack-it-out part of this post! Yep, you know what I’m talking about. Bears do poop in the woods, and so do humans, but desert river canyons require special attention. When camping in an area that floods regularly, it’s not okay to dig a hole and bury your poop — you have to take it out with you. And it’s not nearly as gross as it sounds.
Why can’t you bury it off-trail? Late summer flash floods and spring melts power-wash the canyon floor, rinsing all those pathogens into the river water. It’s far grosser to think of human waste washing into the river than to think of pooping in a bag. WAG bags are self-contained porta-potties, with two layers of plastic bags, hand cleaner, TP, and an odor-killing salt already in the interior bag.
Buy them at any outdoor gear shop or at the Escalante visitor center. Two tips — don’t let them talk you into the two-day bag. Trust me on this, and buy a new bag for each day. It’s also a good idea to BYO extra hand cleanser. Check out this Leave No Trace video for the full scoop on bagging your poop — from positioning to pack-out!