From: Dr. Bob Klein (drbob@troop111.org)
Date: Tue Jan 07 2003 - 19:03:18 CST
From the FWIW Category:
- Although not reliable, it is easily possible to collect rainwater off
your Crew tarp for "bandanna baths". This past summer, we were a 717
Crew, and had rain on more than half our days (Drought? - What
Drought?). Though I don't recommend it, I also stood out unprotected in
3 rainstorms for free (and QUITE invigorating) "mountain showers". I
note that none of my fellow trekkers followed my example, however....
- Laying dirty clothes out on rocks, or pinning them to your packs if
hiking, when it's about to rain also gets you a free rinsing (always
keep at least one dry set, however, in case Mother Nature has more than
a brief "rinse" cycle in mind).
- If you arrive at a camp where the staff invites you to dump your
iodized or filtered canteen water in favor of their purified well water,
DON'T DUMP IT, use it to clean yourself or your clothes. And no,
Polar-Pure'd water will not hurt either you or your clothes - in fact,
the anti-bacterial action of the iodine can only help.
- Note that if you're in an environmentally sensitive area, there is no
real need to use soap to rinse either yourself or your clothes. The
main purpose for rinsing clothes is to get the salt and food dust out of
them - not to make them sparkling clean. And as has been pointed out
innumerable times here and elsewhere, if you do use Campsuds, a very
little goes a very long way. Something to train your Scouts in,
definitely - they'll use it like it's Johnson's baby shampoo. And if
you do use soap, wash by the sump, and not after whatever time cutoff is
in vogue that year (usually 3, 4, or 5 pm).
- When I realized (from this list-server) that we had little chance for
showers on our trek, we added a couple of cannisters of anti-bacterial
wet-ones to our Crew gear, and used them for dinner cooks and
occasionally for wipe-downs of our - ahem - more private parts (what
Coop refers to as "PTA's"). The antibacterial coating on the wipes does
a pretty fair job of keeping the body-odor causing bacteria (somewhat)
at bay. Finally, as those of you who have perused my Philmont gear list
also know, we bring flushable wipes and Desitin cream for our latrine
kits - and I suspect that keeping your crotch clean is THE most
important aspect of personal cleanliness - and those who do not keep
themselves and their underwear clean generally end up with a moderate to
severe case of hiker's rash. As you can probably guess, hiking with a
teenage or adult version of diaper rash isn't a whole heck of a lot of
fun (for a refresher, check with the parents of any 2 year old), and in
fact people have dropped off the trail for this exact problem.
Note that wet-ones, flushable wipes, Desitin, and any similar product
are smellables and cannot be discarded in latrines - they have to be
packed out. And yes, to pre-empt the usual comment about extra trash,
this is extra trash, no doubt (and extra weight too), but special
circumstances call for special measures. As John and others are
pointing out, you certainly don't HAVE to do this, and the old methods
also work just fine - but it's a nice safety net.
- Dr. Bob
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