Sometimes a long drop is just the beginning of a turd’s journey.

When you’re sitting on a loo with a view, with slow mosquitoes bumbling around your cheeks and someone outside testing the integrity of the door’s latch and hinges, it may not occur to you that this particular hole is probably not your poo’s final destination. Perhaps the question might only enter your mind when you accidentally glimpse beyond the plastic seat. Gross, yes. But full? Not really. Suddenly previous assumptions that toilets without water are just really long holes slowly being filled don’t add up. So, if it’s not down there, where does all the poo go?

The Department of Conservation holds the unenviable position of being in charge of a network of more than 2,000 toilets in scenic and remote locations, and most of them are long drops (pit latrines) or their cousins, vault and septic tank toilets. From Spirits Bay to Rakiura, they’ve got us covered. DOC has spent years asking us to please, please, please poo in the loo. But they’ve spared us the details on what happens next. 

Like any waste, poo must be managed, and dealing with it is one of DOC’s biggest operational expenses. Not every toilet that looks like a giant hole is a long drop – there are differences beyond the dark abyss. True long drops – pits that are eventually covered over and left to decompose – are usually only found at low-use remote locations. Other systems DOC uses are vault toilets, where beyond the not-quite-dark-enough drops are holding tanks which must be emptied, and septic tanks, which break down waste with bacteria, let liquid waste drain into a field and only have to be pumped every few years. Only the very flashest of toilets, found on Great Walks like the Heaphy, flush and have on-site wastewater treatment.

In Aoraki Mount Cook Village, senior ranger Dave Dittmer holds his cell phone to his ear in one hand, and opens a tab on his computer with the other. He checks a series of dials. “I’ve got to go to the head of the Murchison Valley to a place called Kelman Hut,” he says. “One tank is at 94% and the other ones at 89%.” Remote monitoring of the park’s vault toilets was installed last year, after a slight emergency in February. The 5,000-litre tank at the popular Mueller Hut filled up faster than anticipated, and after DOC had to bar entry to some day walkers, there was an “emergency pumping operation”.

In Aoraki Mount Cook National Park, the huts are “reasonably remote”. Kelman Hut, where the tanks are nearing capacity, is perched on a rocky, snowy ledge by the upper reach of the Tasman Glacier. It’s around 2,460 metres above sea level, and there’s no path, let alone road. To get the poo outta there, a helicopter is needed. “The flight there and back is great, you know, scenic and all that,” says Dittmer. “That’s probably the best part.”

Fully equipped with protective suits (“it can be like wearing a sauna suit”) and masks, trained rangers disconnect and seal the tanks, hook them onto the helicopter as sling loads and fly them down to an oxidation pond treatment system at Aoraki Mount Cook Village. Dittmer estimates that last year they flew 38,600 litres of waste by helicopter across the national park, and it cost $47,000.

At the road-adjacent campsites, the park has flushable toilets. But don’t let this luxury fool you – much like the more remote toilets, everything heads down into a holding tank. The difference is that these tanks are pumped out on location by a truck before the contents are driven down the road to the same treatment system.

Pumping is no pleasant task. “There is a smell, especially if it’s stirred up,” says Dittmer. “You sort of get used to it and at the end, you clean up and go home and have a big shower.” He also swears by health and safety procedures, planning, training and hepatitis vaccines.

Blockages are a downside. “We get a few visitors to our sites that will tend to use the toilet tanks as a bit of a rubbish dump,” says Dittmer. Each time tanks are emptied, there are one or two blockages – drink bottles, rubbish bags and even phones (yes, your anxieties about that are founded) that get sucked up into the hose. If the ranger or contractor is lucky, reversing the pump will flush them out, but if that doesn’t work, it’s a matter of manually fishing around and dragging the blockage out with a wire. 

Why not leave the poo where it was pooped? 

To start with, on Aoraki the conditions aren’t right – temperatures are often below zero and the ground is rocky, glacial or snowy. Apart from the fact it would be disgusting to leave a hole filled with frozen untreated sewage, it would break tapu. For members of the principal marae in the region, Arowhenua, Aoraki plays an important role in the creation of the South Island. “Essentially that means that Aoraki is our ancestor,” says Toni Torepe, director of The Māori Research Laboratory at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha. Their ancestor is a popular destination for national and international tourists, so in 2022 she set out on a research project to gain insight into how mana whenua perceived mountaineering activities on Aoraki. 

When she interviewed 10 representatives, Torepe found there were concerns over desecration, particularly around para (human waste). The idea that mountaineers were leaving waste up on the mountain, even when it was contained and regularly flown out, was disturbing to many. 

“We would really like human waste off Aoraki,” she says. Because of his status as an ancestor, Aoraki is tapu – a state that can be framed not only through sacredness, but through tikanga and restrictions. For those not accustomed to these concepts, Torepe puts it simply: “We wouldn’t toilet in an urban cemetery or a rural cemetery on other people’s ancestors.”

“As a people, we’ve not said you’re not to climb Aoraki, and so it’s not as if we want that to stop,” she says. But there is an expectation that visitors “treat him the way in which we treat any other ancestor”. The further up the mountain people get, the fewer toilet facilities there are, and Arowhenua really, really don’t want people to be leaving wild poo. DOC heritage and visitors director Catherine Wilson says that people pooing outdoors is a growing problem on some popular tracks and it’s not feasible or desirable to try to solve this by putting a toilet on every corner.

The ideal solution would be for visitors to carry their para off the mountain with them, as is the expectation with all other waste. Torepe is working with a team of product developers to create something “that’s going to meet the needs of all of the views and people concerned”. It would be lightweight, hygienic, easy to use, leak-proof and eco-friendly.  Before thinking “Yuck, I’m not going to carry poo,” consider firstly the ranger with their arm up the hose fishing around for blockages, secondly the fact we’ve all bagged up dog shit, and thirdly those slow-moving mosquitoes that live in the long drop and want your blood.

This week, about ​​1,600 vehicles – buses, campervans, cars and people movers – will visit Aoraki Mount Cook National Park each day. Invariably, they will leave behind poo. On a clear windless morning, a team of rangers will zip up the Tasman Valley in a helicopter. They’ll stop at the little red Ball Hut, the snow-surrounded Plateau Hut and Kelman Hut at the head of the Haupapa Tasman Glacier. From each beautiful location, they’ll pick up a tank of sewage or two.