[pct-l] Burning TP

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

There's way more Tp-able natural material in So-Cal than in the  
forested areas! The best is sage. White sage works well, rabbit sage  
is great, purple sage and yerba santa work well, coastal sage scrub  
is good, too. Bonus is you smell nicer afterwards. Dry grass works.  
Get long, thin dry grass and just fold it over a few times. Of low- 
elevation evergreens, chamise is ever-present. I've used sticks and  
rocks and evergreen boughs as well. All that stuff just gets any  
"residue" off. The real cleaning takes place when you wash yourself.  
For that I use a small squeeze-bottle of water.

And So Cal is not all beer cans and shotgun shells. Parts of it look  
just like the Southern Sierras. Most is as pristine and lovely as  
anywhere. So Cal is like the whole rest of the PCT in miniature.

I think I was a little more bored through much of Oregon than I was  
with the huge variety of high mountain forest one day and desert sage  
scrub the next. I was also quite disturbed by all the TP on the trail  
in Oregon.

On Oct 3, 2012, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> From: Brick Robbins <brick at brickrobbins.com>
> Subject: Re: [pct-l] Burning TP
>
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Heather <mom_and_alex at yahoo.com>  
> wrote:
>> I don't suppose LNT is required training to get a long- distance  
>> hiking permit.
>> And theres probably someone out there right now with fingertips on  
>> the keyboard
>> to inform me of how controversial LNT is and  of its shortcomings.  
>> thats fine.
>
> It is somewhat hard to be enthusiastic about LNT in much of SoCal,
> while hiking over empty beer cans and discarded shotgun shells, or
> under freeway overpasses. Not that we should mess things up more than
> they already are.
>
> In the pristine areas, of course treat them well. My point is simply
> that one standard can't be applied to the whole trail.
>
>> I just don't pack TP, but choose natural vegetation.
>
> Try that in SoCal too. :-(
>
> HYOH, YMMV