Many of us were schooled in such matters at a fairly young age by our parents and we've tried to deviate as little as possible over the years from the old family traditions.

At Base Camp and ABC (Advanced Base Camp), we've found that a good way of keeping things neat is to build a single latrine (perhaps a ditch for the waste and a set of rock walls for privacy and wind protection) with a plywood cover and seat arrangement. Within easy reach, we often place a substantial cardboard box with a slot in it for paper deposits. This is an effort toward keeping down the "white man's prayer flags" as the Sherpas call TP fluttering around in the windy Base Camp. At the trip's end, we will burn the latrine with kerosene for a day or two and then bury it. The box of paper, if it has not been stolen by some misguided Tibetan box collector, is burned as well.

At ABC, some teams are now working to figure a system whereby barrels of waste can be yakked down to Base Camp as the burning at ABC is not always very practical. In any case, concentrating the waste is the important thing.

In the higher camps... it isn't really much fun to think about. Urination is usually straightforward... ponder that. The other is a bit more complex. The best thing is to just go about once a day. In a perfect world, that would be a little after breakfast, after the boots are on and before the climbing harness gets threaded, on a nice calm sunny morning. In the Third World, however, the reality might well be an overpowering need to go just before you are fully awake, or perhaps when you are working a dicey bit of cliff face without a rope... or let's suppose that you are profoundly moved during a raging snowstorm at 27,000 feet. How do you go then? In the words of a famous sporting ad campaign, you... just do it. With a little experience, you will have learned to wait until the last possible moment... you will have on gear with compatible openings for such maneuvers (only a rank... so to speak... beginner would combine a horseshoe zipper on his down suit with a crotch zipper on his pile suit with a drop seat on his one-piece long underwear. Things need to match up.)

You will remember that tidy elimination is not worth dying for and so you won't hop urgently from your tent onto a steep and snowy slope without proper footwear and possibly a rope to hold onto. You will not give a rat's ass who is watching your progress (nobody), and you will do your best to get the waste down a steep uninhabited slope (flat rock... toss it carefully) or into a crevasse (direct deposit... you are a good sport, or shoveled in for the faint of heart). Above all... you will keep your sense of humor when things go awry in this department.

When you try to pee in a 50 mile an hour swirling wind and you find that nearly every drop has found its way back onto your high-tech outerwear, your goggles and your coolest looking hat, you will smile, brush off what you can, thank your lucky stars that you didn't freeze anything that might be useful in courting rituals or matrimony in the unimaginably distant future, then get back in your tent and start laughing at your partner. You've gotten it over with, he or she is nursing a full pee-bottle, a full bladder and a foolish belief that the storm will end soon.

People that don't climb invariably think that this bathroom thing is a big deal. Particularly for women climbers, they figure it must be some embarrassing and horribly uncomfortable exercise. For some it might be, but those people don't climb very long after they experience such humiliation and tribulation (on a cheap mountain close to home if they are smart.) They can take up bowling or billiards or some such extreme sport with access to his and hers, modern, well lit and private commodes. For the rest of us, men and women alike, elimination is just one of a number of discomforts and chores that don't come anywhere near to compromising or defining our love of the mountains.

—Dave Hahn, Climber

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