When venturing into the backcountry, maintaining personal hygiene can be a challenge. Luckily there are a number of products designed to make outdoor adventures more comfortable. It’s important for people who menstruate to keep a good level of hygiene when out in the woods because they have a higher possibility of developing an issue such a yeast infection or UTI. To avoid these you’ll need to be diligent to keep up the typical precautions- keep yourself clean and make sure to bring extra underwear. Here are a few products that can be helpful and convenient:

The Kula Cloth

A Kula Cloth is a reusable, antimicrobial cloth designed for people who squat to urinate. It’s intended to improve hygiene and cleanliness while being environmentally friendly. The cloth has an absorbent, black wiping side and a waterproof side that can feature patterns or art. Some Kula Cloths even have reflective thread so they can be found at night with a headlamp. The cloth can be folded up to hide the wiping side and clipped to a backpack or seat post for easy access. They advise that it should be washed daily but can be used multiple times between washes. Hats off to Anastasia Allison, a former park ranger and backpacking instructor who invented it in 2016 after a backpacking trip in Wyoming.

The Shewee

Das Shewee is a female urination device that allows people to urinate while standing or sitting without removing their clothing. The Shewee can be helpful when there’s no bathroom around or no private place to pee. Want to pee standing up? Done. Don’t want to have to open both car doors to block you? Done. Overthinking your stance? Done.

Pee-break Friendly Bib Shorts

Cycling clothing isn’t always the easiest when it comes to going to the bathroom. Traditional bib shorts, with their overall-style shoulder straps, can be annoying and you basically have to undress to poop/pee. Some argue that regular cycling shorts (rather than bibs) are better for these types of scenarios because they’re easier to get off. You only have to slide your shorts down instead of taking your jersey or shirt off to pull the bib straps down your body like a banana and then going from there.

More brands have recently integrated better women’s strap designs to create easy-to-pee feature bib shorts, allowing you to pair the comfort of bibs with the ease of use of regular cycling shorts. Some bibs that are bathroom break friendly include: PedalEd Odyssey Women’s bib shorts, RAB Women’s Cinder Cargo bib shorts, Rapha Women’s Detachable bib shorts, and the Albion ABR1 Women’s Pocket bib shorts.

When relieving yourself in the woods there are a few plants to be keenly aware of. There are some plants that don’t play nice and you’ll want to know what they look like before venturing out.

First up are nettles, also known as stinging nettles. They have thin, dark green leaves with serrated edges, tapered tips, and distinct veins. The leaves are usually 2–4 inches long and grow in opposite pairs along the stem. Nettles also have square stems that grow up to 8 feet tall. In the summer, nettles produce small, greenish-white flowers in clusters at the base of each pair of leaves. The stems and the underside of the leaves are covered in fine, hollow hairs, that are filled with formic acid and histamine!
Stinging Nettle reactions are swelling, burning, itching, and you guessed it, stinging.

Next up is something a lot of us might be familiar with: the notorious poison oak plant. It has three leaflets on each leaf, with rounded tips and grows like a shrub or a vine. The undersides of the leaves are fuzzy and lighter in color than the top. Poison ivy is very similar to poison oak but the leaflets are not rounded. Poison ivy leaves turn reddish in the spring, green in the summer and yellow, orange or red in the fall. A popular saying about these plants is “leaves of three, leave them be.”

Contact with poison oak will cause an irritated and itchy rash of fluid-filled blisters that typically burst and crust over. The reaction will usually last a week to sometimes three weeks! The reaction to these plants is caused by an oil they secrete called urushiol. While it is possible that you could be one of the 15-30% of people that do not have a reaction to urushiol, I would not recommend finding out.

Unlike Stinging Nettles, you can get a poison oak or ivy reaction from secondary contact. This means that if you wear long sleeves and rub against poison oak you will want to be careful removing those clothes because the oils are still on them and will need to be washed away without touching your skin.

If your skin is exposed to any of these plants you’ll want to wash thoroughly with soap, rinse and repeat to fully clear away the oils. For stinging nettles, a mixture of baking soda and water is also recommended to neutralize the symptoms.

There are a few other items that can be very helpful during your bikepacking adventures. Hand sanitizer is important after you’ve finished doing your cathole business. Wet wipes are often a must on longer trips. A pack towel can be convenient for washing your face, hands, or even dishes. And biodegradable soap is key when washing in the backcountry.

It is important to take thoughtful measures with these items. While you can easily collect and dispose of trash when car camping, bikepacking requires you to pack it out as a part of your Leave No Trace efforts. Even though wet wipes are good to keep you clean, wet wipes aren’t good for the environment. Sea to Summit makes biodegradable ones, but they still recommended that you pack them out. Biodegradable wipes do get broken down naturally by microorganisms, but the time they take to decompose is very long. When in doubt, pack it out!

The same goes with soap and shampoo. Normal household variants contain synthetic ingredients that can be harmful to nature. Biodegradable soap is made from things that are more benign like animal or plant fat. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap is a great choice that can be used for multiple cleaning tasks around camp. Even eco-friendly soap is still harmful if disposed of directly into a creek or river though. Soap’s job is to break down the oils and grime on your skin and when introduced to a water source it can break down the protective oils of creatures in the water.

Remember to always do your cleaning and washing at least 200 feet from a water source.

Now that we’ve become a master in outdoor bathroom techniques we’re ready to tackle the backcountry and get out there! Knowing how to go to the bathroom in nature provides a lot of confidence. We’re free to pick any route on the map! If we minimize our impact with the Leave No Trace principles we can help maintain that natural, undiscovered feel that likely drew us to bikepacking adventures in the first place. After all, don’t you want the next person to be able to have just as wonderful an experience as yours?