Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
If you watch TV, or movies, and you’re over the age of 40, you know the place. Maybe not implicitly. But you’ve seen it. It’s where Tony Stark was captured by Afghan terrorists. It’s where Captain Picard scrambled across an alien world. It’s where Val and Earl discovered and fought Graboids. That’s right. Alabama Hills is everywhere, and nowhere, all at the same time.
We’ve been fans of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada for decades, and Alabama Hills in particular. It’s easy to access, has great camping, climbing and unbelievable views. Or at least it used to have great camping. Unfortunately, it got really popular with the rise of Overlanding and Vanlife over the last 10 years and that popularity has lead to a lot of inexperienced visitors who are sloppy, inconsiderate and criminally complacent with their trash and human waste.
Littering is a crime on federal land. It’s always been that way. Somehow we forgot about that. I guess we need Hooty the Owl and Iron Eyes to come back and remind us of our heritage of stewardship.
Anyway, this post is about how in the spring of 2022, we rented a camper van and left town for 10 days with the goal of seeing new things and going to new places between Reno, Nevada and Death Valley. It was an epic trip that we’ll never forget. And one thing we’ll never forget is how much toilet paper and human poop we found at a campsite, that was hard to find at Alabama Hills.
When we first took Lightning Dragon to Alabama hills back in 2012, camping was unrestricted—aside from standard BLM rules for camping on public land. blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping.
We camped west of Movie road up near all the rocks and boulders that had good rock climbing. But even back then there were other users camping and driving in unimpacted areas, leaving trash and still burning campfires when they left.
In 2018, we went on a trip with both kids to Joshua Tree and camped in the same area, though it was much harder to find an open campsite because of all the other users there. I don’t begrudge others visiting the places I love. They’re there, ostensibly, for the same reason I am, with the same right and entitlement to the shared resources. My familiarity and history doesn’t grant me priority rights or claim to it. But that trip in 2018 was an eye opener as to the greater impact that increased visitation by ignorant and inexperienced visitors was having.
Once we set up camp and started exploring around the rocks and caves and canyons nearby, we soon found toilet paper tucked under rocks, and full plastic bags full of human waste loosely buried in the decomposed granite. The TP is common, and has gotten even more common, but the toilet bags was a new thing. Apparently there products being sold that use a heavy plastic bag to catch and contain human waste for campers, RVers and overlanders and van lifers. Instead of transporting them back to a proper place for disposal, which if the bag doesn’t contain some kind of gelling agent, is only a toilet or pit toilet, they just tie them off and dump them in the desert.
That was 2018, but we had the same experience in 2022.
It isn’t really necessary to say that this is the wrong thing to do. And it isn’t really necessary to go as far as to say that is incredibly irresponsible and inconsiderate to do this. But I guess I just said it. Commiserating with me in the comments, is appreciated, because it helps get this content seen more, but what will actually help?
Awareness. Talk about poop. When you go camping and you share images and posts and thoughts and memories, talk about how you cleanly, comfortably and responsibly contain, and dispose of your waste.
I made a video a while back about how to dig a cat hole. And that had been the standard for human waste disposal for many, many years. Unfortunately traffic in areas like Alabama hills is too high for that to be an acceptable way to deal with poop. We need to pack it out. We cannot leave it there.
DON’T BE A JERK
Now I don’t want to be the guy who tells people what to do.
Or where you should or shouldn’t go.
But whatever you do, and wherever you go, when you get there.
You can not shit on the ground and leave it there. You can not toss your shit bags out on the ground, kick some sand over it and leave it there. You can not treat wild places like your own personal landfill and then go on Instagram and complain about government overreach when it all gets taken away.
This is our fault. We did this. Ourselves. But we can fix it.
If you watch TV, or movies, and you’re over the age of 40, you know the place. Maybe not implicitly. But you’ve seen it. It’s where Tony Stark was captured by Afghan terrorists. It’s where Captain Picard scrambled across an alien world. It’s where Val and Earl discovered and fought Graboids. That’s right. Alabama Hills is everywhere, and nowhere, all at the same time.
We’ve been fans of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada for decades, and Alabama Hills in particular. It’s easy to access, has great camping, climbing and unbelievable views. Or at least it used to have great camping. Unfortunately, it got really popular with the rise of Overlanding and Vanlife over the last 10 years and that popularity has lead to a lot of inexperienced visitors who are sloppy, inconsiderate and criminally complacent with their trash and human waste.
Littering is a crime on federal land. It’s always been that way. Somehow we forgot about that. I guess we need Hooty the Owl and Iron Eyes to come back and remind us of our heritage of stewardship.
Anyway, this post is about how in the spring of 2022, we rented a camper van and left town for 10 days with the goal of seeing new things and going to new places between Reno, Nevada and Death Valley. It was an epic trip that we’ll never forget. And one thing we’ll never forget is how much toilet paper and human poop we found at a campsite, that was hard to find at Alabama Hills.
When we first took Lightning Dragon to Alabama hills back in 2012, camping was unrestricted—aside from standard BLM rules for camping on public land. blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping.
We camped west of Movie road up near all the rocks and boulders that had good rock climbing. But even back then there were other users camping and driving in unimpacted areas, leaving trash and still burning campfires when they left.
In 2018, we went on a trip with both kids to Joshua Tree and camped in the same area, though it was much harder to find an open campsite because of all the other users there. I don’t begrudge others visiting the places I love. They’re there, ostensibly, for the same reason I am, with the same right and entitlement to the shared resources. My familiarity and history doesn’t grant me priority rights or claim to it. But that trip in 2018 was an eye opener as to the greater impact that increased visitation by ignorant and inexperienced visitors was having.
Once we set up camp and started exploring around the rocks and caves and canyons nearby, we soon found toilet paper tucked under rocks, and full plastic bags full of human waste loosely buried in the decomposed granite. The TP is common, and has gotten even more common, but the toilet bags was a new thing. Apparently there products being sold that use a heavy plastic bag to catch and contain human waste for campers, RVers and overlanders and van lifers. Instead of transporting them back to a proper place for disposal, which if the bag doesn’t contain some kind of gelling agent, is only a toilet or pit toilet, they just tie them off and dump them in the desert.
That was 2018, but we had the same experience in 2022.
It isn’t really necessary to say that this is the wrong thing to do. And it isn’t really necessary to go as far as to say that is incredibly irresponsible and inconsiderate to do this. But I guess I just said it. Commiserating with me in the comments, is appreciated, because it helps get this content seen more, but what will actually help?
Awareness. Talk about poop. When you go camping and you share images and posts and thoughts and memories, talk about how you cleanly, comfortably and responsibly contain, and dispose of your waste.
I made a video a while back about how to dig a cat hole. And that had been the standard for human waste disposal for many, many years. Unfortunately traffic in areas like Alabama hills is too high for that to be an acceptable way to deal with poop. We need to pack it out. We cannot leave it there.
DON’T BE A JERK
Now I don’t want to be the guy who tells people what to do.
Or where you should or shouldn’t go.
But whatever you do, and wherever you go, when you get there.
You can not shit on the ground and leave it there. You can not toss your shit bags out on the ground, kick some sand over it and leave it there. You can not treat wild places like your own personal landfill and then go on Instagram and complain about government overreach when it all gets taken away.
This is our fault. We did this. Ourselves. But we can fix it.
