UKC

If you're camping on the Mer de Glace, where do you crap? Cheeky dash to the Cosmiques Hut? Dangle your bum over a crevasse? Dig a hole and preserve your doings for the interests of future glacial archaeologists? Bag it and take it home?

In reply to humptydumpty:

No idea, but that's a clever thread title!

In reply to humptydumpty:

dig a shallow hole and cover it up just enough to stop the flies and smell. It should hopefully amusingly melt its way down over time like stones do.

Or more seriously, bag it out if you're a responsible citizen.

In reply to humptydumpty:

Double bag it and take it home.

It should be feasible to dump in a bag, bury it adjacent to the tent and then recover later the bag of now frozen poo and take it out with you - no need to leave it there. Same method should apply on all glaciers, but then of course all poo should be carried out in bags irrespective of where you are when you need to go.

Unless a toilet is available.

In reply to humptydumpty:

It sounds kinda disgusting but from an antibacterial perspective, spreading the shit thinly over rocks is the established practice. The high altitude UV kills the bacteria very quickly rather than it lingering somewhere. Pick your rocks though.

In reply to glaramara:

Great idea, ill try this next time im at holme farm campsite. Cheers

In reply to tingle:

For info crap (and stones) dont sink into the glacier over time they melt out (much like tent pegs) so do it in a cravass or pack it out.

In reply to ebdon:

Well actually.... things that are dark (rocks and shit) will melt into the surface as they're darker (have lower albedo) and hence absorb more shortwave radiation than the lighter coloured ice. This means they will warm and melt into the ice. However, a point is reached where the shading effect, casued by the fact that the dark object is now in a hole, means that this enhanced melt is reduced. Typically this means that the hole reaches an equilibrium depth. However, near-surface ice, being translucent, also melts at depth - up to 2m but typically the top 40-50cm. What happens in this case is that the bulk density of the ice in this layer (the "weathering crust") decreases. This is the layer that debris/cryoconite/your shit will melt in to. During cloudy and rainy periods, the ratio of melt energy shifts, and the turbulent fluxes (very simply, heat conduction from warm air to 0C ice) become more important than radiative fluxes. This promotes degredation of the weathering crust, which means that debris/cryoconite/your shit may melt out.

This is in fact made even more complex by the fact that water flows through the weathering crust and cells are active within it, both degrading your shit chemically and biologically and then exporting the now dissolved nutrients.

In reply to ianstevens:
Thanks for that, very insightful, always nice to get some proper science.
I'd always assumed dark objects had a higher albedo and therefore melted the snow on top which is why you often saw them on the surface but could never quite reconcile this with logically this would make them sink....

In reply to ianstevens:

Any chance of a UKC preprint of your paper!? Sounds interesting!

In reply to humptydumpty:

Leave no turd unstoned

In reply to humptydumpty:

if you need to go, I don't think you have enough time to get to Cosmiques!

In reply to humptydumpty:

Do like my mate Dave E- did, log it on the glacier and bury it, collect when frozen a couple of days later.

Wander around the tourists holding it like a big cigar, asking if any one has a light

In reply to Albert Tatlock:

Genius.

In reply to ianstevens:

Yes, that's all very well, but your point is?

In reply to humptydumpty:

(aberdonian accent) fit a load a shite some o' these responses are by the way. firther it sinks or floats on a glacier is ta dae w fhere on the glacier y fere when y soiled yir pants .

(normal accent) If one was 'up top' anywhere near Ref Cosmiques then you would be high in the accumulation zone, where the glacier is 'made', where the at the end of every year there is more snow than there was at the end of the year before, because it did not all melt. Instead it became ice, and started moving, down. Thus rocks, tent pegs, and frozen shite, and anything else that feels like joining the party, being at ambient temperature and (once) lacking radiative heating, obey gravity and sink.... until they reach the Mer de Glace, unlikely to be bearing much resemblance to how they went in.

If said person was on the Mer de Glace, they would of course be in the ablation zone, that melts out, becoming dry in the summer. This is where all the shit ends up.