The downward flow from Alaska’s Mount Denali/NPS photo
If mountain climbers crap in the Alaska wilderness, does anyone notice?
Only if the news leaks out. Then in the brave, new world of super-hyped jour-no-lism, look out.
“Thawing river of human waste is sliding down Alaska mountain,” Yahoo News reported last week.
The mountain in question, for those who haven’t already guessed, is 20,310-foot Mount Denali, the tallest peak in North America.
“The warming of the Arctic over the past decades have (sic) begun to thaw the frozen latrines, which now have the potential to form a massive river of human waste and glacial melt” that will soon flow down the slopes of the mountain, Yahoo News reported.
Embedded in the story is a video with a woman explaining how this Arctic warming is also affecting Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on the planet.
“Now this is where they’re finding, get this, dead bodies turning up,” she reveals. “Could this be blamed on climate change with melting glaciers. Absolutely could be.”
It might also have something to do with thin air and cold contributing to the deaths of so many climbers on Everest, but oh well.
As an Alaska glaciologist explained, it’s all basically nuts, but Yahoo News wasn’t the only news organization taking a ride on the Denali river of shit.
Some mountain climbers do tend to be a little full of shit, but who would have guessed this:
Fake news?
This might look a lot like fake news, but it’s simply news done like shit.
The icy surface of Mount Denali isn’t melting much more than it normally does, and none of this has much of anything to do with Arctic warming. But there are tons of crap buried in the Kahiltna Glacier, just as there are tons of crap from Alaska’s largest city constantly flowing into the waters of Cook Inlet.
Anchorage’s sewage treatment facility is capable of daily pumping 58 million gallons of ground up crap into the Inlet. Given that a gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds, that’s about 484 million pounds of crap per day, but it’s liquified so figure the actual amount of crap in the stream is a fraction of that.
Say maybe a 10 million pounds per day or 5,000 tons or more than three orders of magnitude more crap per day than has accumulated in Kahiltna Glacier in the last 60-plus years.
None of which is meant to suggest that it’s a great thing that the residents of Alaska’s biggest city are full of shit and dump it largely untreated into the Inlet, a fact which has angered the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It has called on Anchorage to clean up its crap.
Anchorage, the organization noted, “provides only primary wastewater treatment procedures, including screening, grit removal, sedimentation, skimming, and chlorination. Secondary treatment procedures – which the Asplund Sewage Plant does not provide – include more sophisticated biological procedures such as attached growth processes or suspended growth processes, which remove a higher amount of the organic matter in wastewater.”
The EPA concluded Anchorage was doing enough in a world where all animals crap. It’s natural. The average person dumps 14 to 17 ounces of it per day, according to Live Science. Climbers a little less, according to the Park Service,, which pegs their deposition at about three-tenths of a pound per day.
So the math would put the estimated 66 ton accumulation on Denali at about what a community of 425 to 1,200 people would produce in a year. Whether this is a mountain of shit, you can decide.
That said, it is unlikely to become either an avalanche or flood because of the way in which it is deposited in the glacier and expected to emerge from the glacier. Scientists once thought it would all end up being ground to nothing over time.
Former Alaska Pacific University professor Michael Loso and colleagues altered that thinking after completing a 2012 study that modeled what happens to the crap dropped into the latrine at Kahiltna base camp or bagged and thrown into crevasses at higher elevations.
“The majority of waste generated on Kahiltna Glacier ends up encased within accumulating snow and ice and poses no immediate threat to West Buttress climbers,” they wrote.
Once encased, however, it is subject to little stress within the glacier and basically moves downhill as a block of crap within the flow of snow and ice. The scientists projected the first of it will emerge “approximately 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) downstream of the burial site in less than 15 years for the case of waste buried at Camp 1 in 1954.”
Whether anyone will be able to find that 1954 crap only time will tell. In the expected area of emergence, the glacier is about a mile wide and heavily creased, and in 1954, only 13 people were reported to be on the mountain making deposits.
Trying to find what little fecal matter they deposited could be sort of like looking for a turd in an icefall.
The great flood
Given the projections in the study, a successful hunt for remnant crap might have to wait another 20 years or so. By 1974, 282 climbers were reported on the mountain and by 1976, the number had risen to 508, making for lots more turdets to track.
The glaciologists studying this stinky issue in 2102 didn’t think this volume of crap a major problem.
“Whether NPS should change its existing waste management policy is not immediately obvious,” they wrote. “The likely alternative—some sort of pack-out policy—could have significant costs. These might include higher rates of climber noncompliance, the need for increased education and enforcement programs, and the possibly substantial expense, carbon footprint, and safety hazard associated with increased air traffic hauling collected waste off the mountain. A new management policy requires careful consideration of those costs.”
It is apparently a decision the Park Service made last year to begin collecting all crap to haul it off the mountain, rather than telling climbers to throw it in crevasses, that triggered the news interest in the supposed flood of shit that the federal agency has been doing a good job of controlling for more than a decade.
By 2012, climbers were already used to crapping in buckets and hauling their waste up and down the mountain to Park Service designated deposition sites.
“Beginning in 2007, removal of human waste via Clean Mountain Cans (CMCs) became mandatory above the 14,200-foot Camp , as well as near the airstrip at Base Camp (7,200 feet),” the agency notes in a report on Tracking Human Waste on Denali. “Use of these CMCs, with biodegradable bag liners, has radically improved sanitation at the 17,200-foot High Camp. However, most bags of human waste collected in CMCs at all elevations—including at 14,200-foot Camp, where climbers spend the majority of their time acclimatizing and waiting for good weather—are thrown into crevasses between Base Camp and 14,200-foot Camp.”
Health issues drove the original move to CMCs. With the water only available by melting snow and with more than 1,000 climbers per year using the West Buttress of the mountain, making sure to avoid the brown snow when making water became an issue.
The human waste always disappeared over winter, however.
“Because the West Buttress climbing route is located in the accumulation zone of the Kahiltna Glacier,”the Park report notes, “crevassed waste will be buried the next winter and ever more deeply each successive year. However, each year the glacier flows and slowly carries the waste downhill towards the ablation zone, where it will eventually, inevitably, melt out at the glacier surface.”
Loso expects the eventual melt out to look a lot like what Anchorage sees every spring when the winters accumulation of dog crap begins to emerge from the winter snows. The then exposed crap will naturally degrade.
While Americans think of human waste as pollution, the Chinese have long used it as manure to fertilize their crop lands. There are, however, health risks associated with that practice, the greatest coming from fecal coliform bacteria. The bacteria are found in the intestines of most warm-blooded animals.
Park scientists have reported finding “trace levels of fecal contamination…in the waters of the Kahiltna River—but at levels that are still within Alaska state water quality standards.”
“E. coli and other fecal bacteria were able to survive exposure to the cold and ultraviolet radiation in the four microenvironments tested,” the added. “These findings strongly suggest that despite the massive size of the Kahiltna Glacier, human waste encased in the ice on the climbing route remains biologically active, interacts with glacial meltwater, and is already making its way into the downstream watershed.”
That downstream watershed is, however, a long way from anywhere. The Kahiltna river drains into the much bigger Yentna River downstream from the small community of Skwnetna. The Yentna drains into the much bigger Susitna River west of Wasilla.
The Yentna River corridor is littered with remote cabins with outhouses and people crapping who knows where, which would likely overwhelm any E. coli contribution from the Kahiltna.
But who cares about that? Reporting a “thawing river of human waste” invading Alaska has a whole lot more lot click appeal on the internet than the mundane reality.
Correction: An early version of this story miscalculated the poundage of crap coming out of the Anchorage wastewater plant.
Categories: Commentary, News, Outdoors
My husband and I camped out in the Talkeetnas once, when the snow had just retreated. The camping spot was covered with excrement; one could barely take a step without encountering it. I really don’t think that it is that difficult to carry a few zip-lock bags and clean up after yourself!
Ann Chandonnet
“An early version of this story miscalculated the poundage of crap coming out of the Anchorage wastewater plant,” is the best correction notice ever.
The Swiss have supposedly banned the use of bio solids aka sewage sludge on agricultural land for years now .(so I’m told) Supposedly they incinerate it and use the ash in concrete . A novel idea . I bet they are careful with the fumes emited during incineration . I wonder what methods they use . Bone char might help filter it . I wonder how functional putting it in concrete is?
I think the NPS should hire a team of archeologists to excavate, catalogue, and study all the climber’s poop left in the Kahiltna Glacier over the last 70 years. The poop provides a record of the diet and culture of these now vanished people, and may even offer clues as to what the climate was like in the past.
What the world needs now is love…sweet love….It is the only thing that there is just too little of.
Thanks Burt Bacharach and Hal David for writing that song.
Seek refuge in Organic and wild . Unless you like sewage sludge. Though even organics can use a field 3 years after violating their certification on that piece of land . USDA has a website that explains what’s allowable for organic farming and animal products. Watch out for false labels/ claiming organic fertilizers that have bioproduct . I bet Mexico and China have big issues. I doubt Mexico follows organic rules I know their rice is toxic – lots of arsenic ect . Be interesting to know though. U.k farm land aprx 76% uses treated sewage sludge . They have very specific rules but still inadequate. We might as well use lead goblets . It’s almost Rome 2.0 . I spent a lot of time in mountains. Though msm blows poop slide out of proportion I still dislike idea of melting snow / ice contaminated by human feces . Yuck! I think it’s retarded anchorage dumps sewage in inlet . Is this 2019 or 1930? Cris has a few good points.
I would never use sewage sludge for growing human foods. Maybe it would be OK for growing grass for the cows and goats.
If you buy any meat or inorganic foods the likelihood of it being grown in part with sewage sludge is fairly high. Uk was pretty clear on their stats . 76 % of farmland utilizes sewage sludge in one form or another. America makes it less clear. Hard to find guaranteed stats .
Sounds like much ado about number two.
To elucidate a bit more on Anchorage’s wastewater discharge: By the time the effluent is treated, chlorinated (and then de-chlorinated) , the poop is almost completely removed from the water.
Of greater concern are the remaining dissolved heavy metals and, more recently, prescription drug residues. Secondary treatment may not be much of an improvement for those constituents.
I understand as a result of the Xanax and Ritalin residue that Beluga Whales are exposed to, they are relatively stress-free.
Couple of years ago, I read a article in the NYT, showed a Chinese city, that had purchased a US steel mill (lock, stock & barrel) and shipped it over. The story was about this adult man, who would go to work at the steel mill, each day with a bright white shirt on.
At the end of the day he would come home and his shirt would be black as night. Evidently the company removed all of the filters on the smoke stacks. His wife would dutifully wash his clothes, that night, so they would be ready for work next day. The article showed photos of city, steel mill, worker at am and at pm.
I wonder what the inside of his lungs look like.
My oldest sister, may she Rest In Peace, smoked cigs for over 40 years. Needless to say she passed due to emphysema, hardening of the arteries and other medical issues associated with inhaling toxic smoke.
Well, if we want to look at “crappy” issues in AK affecting our watershed let’s think about dog lot excrement and how much poop is added to our environment every year…
The average Husky can poop 1 lb of excrement per day.
Take a champion Irod lot with 100 Huskies on chains.
That lot will produce 36,500 lbs of poop in 365 days…
Over a “career” of 30 years like a few mushers have had that is 1,095,000 pounds of dog shit from ONE commercial kennel in Alaska…
Since there are literally thousands of sled dogs in captivity…you can see this amounts to millions and millions of pounds added to the environment year after year.
Remember that “We all live downstream” at some point.
Tens of thousands of years ago, giant land animals roamed the Earth. And these animals—woolly mammoths, giant deer, sloths the size of elephants—would often take breaks from their roaming to deposit vast piles of nutrients on the ground.
In other words, they pooped.
And, considering that some of these massive beasts could consume hundreds of pounds of plants each day, they likely pooped a lot. Everybody does it, to paraphrase the children’s book, but a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that these animals in particular played a vital role in maintaining the planet’s nutrient cycle, indirectly helping to fertilize places far beyond their reach. Think of phosphorus Steve. Now scoop some poop, does a garden good.
Dog waste is an environmental pollutant.
“In 1991, it was labeled a non-point source pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), placing it in the same category as herbicides and insecticides; oil, grease and toxic chemicals; and acid drainage from abandoned mines.”
“EPA even estimates that two or three days’ worth of droppings from a population of about 100 dogs would contribute enough bacteria to temporarily close a bay, and all watershed areas within 20 miles of it, to swimming and shell fishing.”
Think about that when in Alaska we have thousands of dogs running on frozen salmon streams and depositing shit from Willow to Nome year after year.
“Well, EPA explains that the decay of your pet’s waste actually creates nutrients for weeds and algae that grow in the waterways. As these organisms thrive on your dog’s droppings, they overtake the water in a “Little Shop of Horrors-esque” manner, and limit the amount of light that can penetrate the water’s surface. As a result, oxygen levels in the water decrease, and the fish and seafood we eat can be asphyxiated, EPA says”
http://www.doodycalls.com/resources-toxic-dog-waste/
I don’t have a problem with dog poop – it can be easily composted.
But most people don’t handle it responsibly so it is them I don’t like.
Particularly the ones who let their dog crap by my garbage cans in the alley or the light pole on the street. Country dogs are cool but PETA needs to attack City dog owners instead of the Iditarod. THAT is inhumane….
In my experience the vast majority of the time it is the dog owner who is the problem.
My guess would be that city dogs create, or more accurately defecate, more of a problem than all of the sled dogs combined. I believe there are even studies that show how bad city dogs are for the environment…of course if they had responsible people taking care of them it wouldn’t be an issue.
National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)… its the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Well, since Everest begins at 18,000 feet, Id veture to say not jack “shit” is melting there.
Well Craig all your “Haters” now can say with a certain degree of certainty that your stories are full of “Shit”……lol
The “Baby Boomers”, born in US, between ‘46-1963, got stoned in the ‘60s, free love in the ‘70s and finally got serious in the ‘80s. We finally grew up, and most have done their best in America, to reduce our carbon footprint, while majority of the rest of the industrial countries are still spewing tons and tons of toxic emissions into the air.
Whether or not we are in the middle of global warming or just plain climate change, I do not know.
On the West Coast (CA, OR & WA), and up to the North Coast Gulf of AK, our weather is definitely getter warmer.
It is a reality we face. So, break out the sunglasses and enjoy!
James, since Co2 levels are the same as they were 3 million years ago, I am curious what you mean by “carbon footprint”?
Bryan,
Data from NOAA shows CO2 levels in 2013 surpassed 400 ppm. During the last ice age it was around 200 ppm. My definition of “Carbon Footprint” is the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels. Does that help?
James, the last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere, modern humans didn’t exist. Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world’s seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now. Since the NW Passage has closed up again and Antartica’s Ice Sheets remain what they generally always have been, I’d say we are good, no? The problem with these phony Climate “Scientists” is they always use words like “may, should, could, might, etc..” which in scientific terms stands for bullshit. One thing I like about the Russians and Chinese is they wake-up every day and say “look at all those fools over there”. Sadly, I agree with them.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=77
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.