Soap in the water

[AK Granola]

I’ve recently been reading up on the 100 mile wilderness in Maine, considering it as a backup plan for our summer 2023 Sierra PCT section hike, which looks potentially doomed by the snowpack. I am seeing over and over in blogs and videos, that Mainers use soap in the ponds, creeks, and lakes, to bathe. These are recent posts, and I’m just surprised that anyone anywhere doesn’t know about LNT and why soap is a bad idea in the water we’ll all be drinking (not to mention all the other reasons not to put soap in freshwater). Is it a northeast thing? A Maine thing? I can easily imagine old-time Alaskans doing this, but not younger folks who should be in the know. Maybe it’s an AT thing. If we go, I’ll be pretty picky about my water sources.

I did find a spaghetti dinner dumped into Arrowhead lake in the Sierra, right at the best place to get drinking water. We have a long way to go to promote LNT.

[HkNewman]

Maine

Inconsiderate types all over as I remember getting a soapy taste a bit south of Crater Lake (OR) from a nice looking trailside creek.   Made my break kind of sucky.  Hiked up a bit and where the trail completed an “S”, there were the suds from cleaning whatever.

[DWR D]

Actually, ‘suds’ don’t necessarily mean soap. There are roots that leach and make suds naturally…

 

[Dan]

I spent most of my formative summers in Maine, and there does seem to be a weird belief that certain “natural” soaps are ok to use in lakes and rivers. It’s a hippie thing, not a backpacker LNT thing.

[R L]

Real hippies know better.  But there was a time way back when that the general populace thought it was an ok thing to do.  Even today, washing the car on the driveway is done but not cool.

[Chris R]

Packaging that states the soap is biodegradable may not be helping the situation.

[Jeffrey H]

Feels like this is partly an issue of worldview and partly lack of education.

I live in an area that is quite conservative. I don’t just mean politically; I mean in general people are looking to the wisdom of the past to get them through the problems of the present and the future. Sometimes that wisdom is the best thing going and sometimes it’s not. In the past, no one worried about washing their hands in a creek. That old way of thinking is just inaccurate in this case I’m guessing.

To be totally frank, I clicked this specific post (I don’t read nearly all of them) to educate myself on why I shouldn’t use soap in a river. Generally where I backpack I don’t see other people or other people’s messes. Occasionally I find very old trash on a flat spot off the trail where I set up camp – an unestablished campsite – and it’s kind of neat to me to try and guess how old it is. My point here is that the local backcountry areas I use are so infrequently used that not enough people are leaving traces for me to be annoyed by it…although I can totally see how that could get annoying real quick if it was recent trash – I do find it at trailheads and it is annoying).

The reason I’m bringing all of this up is that I suspect it has a lot to do with the answer to your question. LNT matters but many people are not convinced and are not being won over by the tone of what they are presented with. Or perhaps it’s just foolishness or stubbornness but there’s no question in my mind most folks have heard about LNT or similar concepts and remain unconvinced.

Personally, I was quite unconvinced about how much impact people could have in the wilderness until I started reading the stuff here on BPL and backpacking a little further out than I usually go in the last few years. As I started to research trip planning and began realizing how few and far between these sacred places are (National parks, wilderness areas, etc.) and how much effort goes into keeping them “wild” I’ve  become convinced that we humans in our billions can have a hugely negative impact on wild places surprisingly quickly. But I will say I was never presented with good arguments for this stuff until I started reading BPL or digging into guide books (which I never thought of using before BPL). Also I think getting out there and enjoying the ‘wild’ builds up the argument for a person. Until you’ve experienced it it’s just hard to care as much. The information I was presented with before I started perusing this site was often not explained but rather told or preached at me and not convincingly but with what felt like condemnation. Also, because I hadn’t seen evidence of it personally, I choose not to worry about it.

So I’m thankful for the tone of this community – not condemning but informing. But that is not the tone of most public discourse (or even the discourse in pamphlets you find at trailheads) and I wonder how we could help make it so. That seems to be one of the biggest reason ‘old timers’ don’t take LNT seriously; the tone they are presented it with and maybe also not having the concepts explained evidentially.

As I’m wrapping this up I’m questioning that condemning tone I mentioned. And I begin to ask myself if that tone I felt in the past was real or merely perceived. Not sure; but as a feeling at least it was there and it was palpable and I do hear it as a point of contention when I talk with local people who are annoyed and turned off by being told they are going to ruin the woods they grew up with if they don’t get with the program. A delicate subject for sure.

[AK Granola]

The videos and blogs I’ve been perusing are about the Appalachian Trail. The creators are describing their use of soap to wash up in ponds, creeks and lakes directly adjacent to the trail, where everyone will also need to dip into to get their drinking water for hiking. I don’t know anyone who does this, so I was surprised by posts in 2021-22 advising washing with soap in public waterways. I figured it might be a regional, Maine thing, since I haven’t seen it in any blogs or vlogs about through hikes, northwest regional trips, etc. Here is one example; I saw several. Nothing like a mouthful of Ivory soap, 99.4% pure.

https://hikinginmaine.blog/tag/100-mile-wilderness/

It seems intuitively obvious to me that this is a bad idea but I think you’re right – the tone of some commenters or LNT literature might be scathing or condemning, or does it just feel that way when you’re asked to change your behavior? Soap in the lake doesn’t ruin the woods, just ruins the experience for the next guy.

I read a post on one of our local Alaska hiking FB groups once that said there was no reason not to just scatter TP to the winds, because our local trails were “empty” anyway. I imagine it feels that way when you come from trails with hundreds or thousands on them all the time and you see our vastness and think it’s all yours.  The trails here in fact are not empty and someone will be coming along after you. A colleague who flies into remote corners of Alaska has found major trash piles from float and hunting trips left behind on river bars, including food and containers, piles of human poop and paper, feminine products, broken equipment, gas cans dumped by other pilots, all kinds of stuff. I imagine the people leaving their traces everywhere think that no one else could possibly go out there because it’s so remote. Maybe Mainers feel that way too? But the AT – that’s hardly remote.

I think a different worldview is certainly part of it. Hard to change that.

[Jerry Adams]

“I’m questioning that condemning tone I mentioned. And I begin to ask myself if that tone I felt in the past was real or merely perceived. Not sure;”

yeah!

or shaming people

or holier than thou attitude

and real or perceived – many people think others are shaming them when that was not what was intended at all

sometimes people will accuse others of being holier than thou just as a personal attack

etc…

[Nick Gatel]

These are recent posts, and I’m just surprised that anyone anywhere doesn’t know about LNT and why soap is a bad idea in the water we’ll all be drinking (not to mention all the other reasons not to put soap in freshwater). Is it a northeast thing? A Maine thing?

It’s probably an Internet thing. So many people with blogs and posting on social media these days. Couple that with a tendency for folks to just accept what they read assuming the author has some sort of expertise/knowledge on the subject.

[Roger Caffin]

I now have a blog!
Trust me, I am an expert!

Cheers

[MJ H]

Is anyone else hearing Deep Purple in their head because of the title?

[AK Granola]

Oh yeah, I thought that when I wrote it! Wondered if someone would catch it.

[BlackHatGuy]

nm

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