Everybody who spends real time in the backcountry eventually has to do this, and almost nobody gets taught how. You read "dig a cathole" on a permit, nod, and then find yourself out there with a stick that snaps on the first root, improvising. It is worth getting right, and it is not complicated once you understand the why behind the numbers. So here is the whole thing: how deep, how far, what to dig with, and the handful of places where a hole in the ground is not the answer at all.
If you want the bigger argument for why what you leave behind matters more than most people think, we made the full case, with the decomposition data, in the case for leaving toilet paper at home. This post is the practical companion: the actual technique.
The numbers, and why they are the numbers
Leave No Trace Principle 3 gives you three figures to remember. A cathole should be 6 to 8 inches deep, 4 to 6 inches wide, and at least 200 ft from water, camp, and trails. (Leave No Trace, Principle 3)
The depth is the part people get wrong in both directions. Too shallow and animals dig it up or rain washes it out. But here is the thing nobody mentions: deeper is not better. The reason 6 to 8 inches works is biological, not just about burial. The decomposer community that actually breaks down waste, the bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates, lives in the topsoil. That dark, organic upper layer (soil scientists call it the O and A horizons) holds the highest concentration of these organisms. Go much below 8 inches and you are past the biologically active zone, down into subsoil that is cooler, lower in oxygen, and far less alive. You have essentially put your waste in cold storage. So the target is a real range, not a "dig as deep as you can" instruction. Get into the dark soil, stay in it, and stop.
The 200 ft is roughly 70 adult steps. Pace it out honestly the first few times until your eye calibrates, because most people badly underestimate it. It applies to water, to camp, and to the trail, all three. The point of the distance from water is obvious. The distance from camp and trail is about not having the next person stumble onto your site.
The width matters less but it is worth doing right: 4 to 6 inches across gives you room to work and room to stir, which we will get to.
Picking the spot
Site selection does more for decomposition than depth does, and it costs you nothing but a minute of looking. What you want:
- Deep, dark organic soil. The richer and more alive the topsoil, the faster everything breaks down. A spot under forest duff with soft, dark earth underneath is ideal. A gravel bar or a patch of mineral hardpan is close to the worst case.
- Sun, if you can get it. A site that catches sunlight warms up, and warmth speeds microbial activity. Not always available, not worth obsessing over, but a slight preference when you have options.
- Well away from drainages. Not just the 200 ft from standing or flowing water, but away from the low channels and gullies where water runs during a storm even when they are dry now. If you can see it is a drainage, it is the wrong spot.
- Off the flat spots people camp on. Think about where a tired hiker would pitch a tent, and go somewhere else. Spread your sites out too. Do not create a latrine zone by using the same convenient patch every morning.
How fast the site actually processes what you leave comes down to rain, temperature, and soil chemistry, and those vary enormously by where you hike. We built an interactive decomposition calculator into the hygiene pillar so you can check your own home range. The short version: warm, damp, near-neutral forest soil is fast; cold, dry, or acidic ground is slow to the point of barely working at all.
What to dig with
You can dig a cathole with almost anything, but the difference between the right tool and improvisation is the difference between a clean 30-second job and kneeling in the dirt swearing at a root. Here is the honest comparison by weight.
| Tool | Weight | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Deuce of Spades #1 (Tent Lab) | ~13 g | The extreme-ultralight pick. Small blade, works, less leverage in hard ground. |
| Deuce of Spades #2 (Tent Lab) | ~17 g | The one most people carry. 7075-T6 aluminum, dig handle-down for real leverage. |
| Deuce of Spades #3 (Tent Lab) | ~28 g | Bigger blade for rooty or packed soil. Worth the extra grams in hard ground. |
| Tent stake | ~10-15 g | Free if you already carry one. Slow, and it doubles the job the stake was holding down. Fine as backup, poor as a plan. |
| A stick | 0 g | Snaps on the first root, every time. Do not build your plan around this. |
An aluminum trowel like the Deuce is 7075-T6, the same aircraft-grade alloy used in structural parts, which is why a 17 g blade can pry through packed dirt without folding. The design trick is that you dig with the handle down, blade toward you, which turns the whole tool into a lever and gets you far more digging force than the size suggests.
On the tent-stake option, I will be honest: it works in a pinch, and plenty of ultralighters have done it for years to save carrying a dedicated tool. But it is genuinely slow in anything but soft soil, and you are asking one skinny piece of metal to both anchor your shelter and dig your holes. If you go that route, carry a stake stout enough for the job and accept that mornings take longer. For most people, a purpose-built trowel at 13 to 28 g is the easiest 20-odd grams you will ever justify.
The technique, step by step
- Find your spot and pace off the distance. Organic soil, off the drainages and camp flats, 200 ft (about 70 steps) from water, camp, and trail. Do the pacing before you commit, not after.
- Cut and set aside the plug. Slice a lid of the top layer, duff and living surface soil, and set it aside intact. You will drop this back on top at the end and it will look almost untouched.
- Dig to 6 to 8 inches. Into the dark organic layer, not past it. Pile the loose dirt on one side where you can reach it.
- Do your business, aiming for the hole. Squat with a stable base, feet flat, weight back on your heels. Bracing a hand on a trekking pole or a tree helps if your knees object.
- Stir. This is the step almost nobody knows and it matters a lot. Find a stick and mix the waste into the loose soil in the hole. Mixing it with dirt puts it in direct contact with the decomposer organisms and speeds breakdown dramatically compared to a sealed lump. Ten seconds of stirring is worth more than an extra two inches of depth.
- Backfill, replace the plug, and disguise it. Push the dirt back in, tamp it lightly, set your soil lid back on top, and scatter a little natural litter over it. Done right, you cannot tell it is there, and neither can the next hiker.
For cleanup, this is where the water you are already carrying does the work. A Bottle Cap Bidet threads onto a standard narrow-mouth bottle and gives you a directed rinse with nothing to bury or pack out. If you have not used one, the full technique (positioning, water budgeting, the hand question) is in our companion guide on how to use a backpacking bidet.
The places a cathole is the wrong answer
The cathole works in most of the country, but not everywhere, and pretending otherwise is how fragile places get wrecked. Two categories change the rules.
Deserts and dry country. Arid soil is biologically slow. Without moisture, the decomposer community that breaks waste down is mostly dormant, so a buried deposit can persist a long time. Some heavily used desert and canyon areas now require you to pack waste out for exactly this reason, and even where it is not required, catholes in the desert need extra care about siting and spacing.
Alpine and high-use zones. Above treeline you often have no real soil to dig into, and the cold shuts down decomposition even where you do. A number of iconic areas now require pack-out with a wag bag. The clearest example is Mount Whitney: waste bags are required above 12,000 ft in the Whitney Zone of California's Inyo National Forest, and the forest hands them out with permits. (Inyo National Forest, wilderness permits) Parts of the desert canyon country carry similar rules. The list changes, so the habit to build is simple: check the land manager's current regulations before your trip, and when a permit says pack it out, pack it out. It is not a suggestion and it is not optional.
Snow and true alpine without soil. Never bury waste in snow. It does not decompose, and when the snow melts you have left an exposed deposit on the surface, often right where the next season's meltwater runs. On snow, or above treeline where there is no diggable ground, the answer is a wag bag, not a hole. If you are winter camping, plan to carry waste out from the start rather than discovering the problem at 11,000 ft.
The full kit
This is the whole thing, and it weighs almost nothing.
- A trowel. A 13 to 28 g aluminum trowel, sized to how hard the ground is where you hike.
- A bidet for cleanup. A Bottle Cap Bidet on the bottle you already carry, so there is no paper to bury or pack out.
- Wag bags where required. Carry them into any zone that mandates pack-out, and into snow and alpine terrain by default.
- Hand hygiene. A small bottle of soap and a bit of sanitizer. This is the part that actually keeps you from getting sick. The CDC is clear that soap and water physically remove the germs that matter most here, including norovirus, which alcohol sanitizer does not reliably kill because it cannot penetrate the virus shell. Wash with soap and water when you can, use 60 percent-plus sanitizer as a backup, and do it at least 200 ft from any water source. (CDC, Hand Sanitizer Guidelines)
That is the entire skill. Dark soil, 6 to 8 inches, 200 ft out, stir it in, disguise the top, rinse with water, and wash your hands like you mean it. Where the ground cannot do the job, carry it out instead. None of it is hard, and doing it well is most of what separates a place that stays good to be in from one that slowly stops being worth visiting.
