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Remember to close the lid when you're through, it helps keep flies and mountain goats out.
Remember to close the lid when you're through, it helps keep flies and mountain goats out.
Indefinitely Wild

The Best Toilet in America

In Washington鈥檚 Enchantment Basin, you can have an epic poo with a view

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In our extensive experience testing outdoor toilets, we鈥檝e never had a more satisfying poop than the one achieved on this wooden throne in the Cascade Mountains. The view, as you can see, is stunning, but the toilet鈥檚 location also shelters it from the wind, basks it in the warm rays of the sun, and offers near complete privacy,聽thanks to its perch聽well off the main hiking trail. The combination, we feel,聽makes it the single greatest toilet in the country.聽

Why Visit?聽

While many equally-scenic wild pooping opportunities exist for those prepared to , nowhere else offers聽the comfort of a wooden seat聽or the ability to carry only toilet paper and reading material with you. While most wild pooping is conducted in a rushed fashion, this toilet offers the pooper the ability to relax聽and enjoy the experience. If you so desire, an entire issue of the New Yorker can be finished while perched in front of this view.聽

What Makes Your Poop Possible

Located above 6,000 feet on the east-facing slopes of聽McClellan聽Peak, this particular聽toilet is made possible by the hard work of the Leavenworth Climbing Rangers and the United States Forest Service. Each year, they use helicopters to ferry full tanks down the mountains, where they鈥檙e pumped into a sewage processing facility. The network of 40-plus vault toilets located through the Enchantment Basin is one of the main reasons the area remains so pristine.聽

Each vault can contain 230 pounds聽or more of human waste. Given that an average-size adult produces, on average, just under a pound of waste each day, you can see why there鈥檚 a need for regular vault rotation within the mountain range. Assuming each overnight visitor poops at least once (in our experience, bowel movements were more frequent), that poop is of average, just-under-a-pound weight, and that it's聽distributed evenly among the available toilets, then the total capacity of the聽vaults in the basin can be exceeded in a single hiking season. During our three-day hike, we observed helicopters delivering fresh vaults聽and removing old ones聽several times.聽

Approximate toilet location.
Approximate toilet location. (USFS)

How to Poop Here

This is a hard toilet to visit. Overnight camping in the 鈥渃ore鈥 zone of the Enchantment Basin is restricted to just 60 people at any given time, with permits handed out through . A small number of these permits may be available on the morning of a visit, if you feel like testing your luck. Otherwise, you鈥檇 need to make the toilet stop part of a day hike.聽

Day hiker or trail runners hoping to make the toilet a part of the 18-mile, horseshoe-shaped trail may find it difficult timing their bowel movements with the location of the toilet. It鈥檚 roughly halfway through the route, requiring visitors to tackle at least 4,500-feet of elevation in order to reach it. That route is full of challenging, dangerous scrambles through fields of granite boulders, and even in mid-July was still largely covered in in snow and ice. In order to poo here, you鈥檒l need good physical fitness, adequate outdoors gear for the often extreme weather, and the route probably shouldn鈥檛 be attempted solo鈥攖he risk聽of injury is simply that high.聽

Fortunately, the vault toilets聽limit聽the amount of dedicated poop gear required. The only thing you鈥檒l need to bring is toilet paper聽and possibly hand sanitizer. Non-biodegradable wipes and other trash should not be thrown into the vaults, as they can clog the pumps rangers use to remove human waste.聽

We鈥檇 recommend supplementing with fiber for several days before any desired wild poop. Doing so will make the experience not only more predictable, but also easier to clean up.聽

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RNZDQoTONtU

How to Find It聽

There are a number of scenically-situated vault toilets in the core zone, but none rival this one when it comes to聽view, shelter from the wind, or warmth from the sun. Due to that final merit, we do recommend you limit your visits to early morning, before flies become an issue.聽

The toilet is located about 25聽yards off the main trail, just east of Lake Viviane. If you鈥檙e hiking downhill from Aasgard Pass (the direction of travel through the Enchantment that聽we鈥檇 recommend), then you鈥檒l want to turn right, off the main trail, just past聽the rebar-reinforced boulder descent. While the main trail continues up the next set of boulders聽and across the lake鈥檚 outlet, the toilet path goes downhill, to the right, and into a stand of pine trees.聽

There, you鈥檒l find the toilet perched on a ledge,聽facing a view of the Snow Lakes basin聽and its surrounding peaks. A morning visit could even be timed with the sunrise. A more epic poop we cannot imagine.聽

10/10: Would poop here again.聽

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