Into the Wild, and the movie that it spawned, are a couple of my favorite things that I, as a consumer of art, have consumed in my lifetime. Coincidentally, I’m a big fan of just about anything involving Jon Krakauer (his book on Pat Tillman is a must-read, in my opinion) and you’d think that he’d be treated like a prince in Alaska, which he has so beautifully paid tribute to in his works, but apparently he’s found a surefire way to piss some of them off: take a dump on the side of one of their mountains.
Reports the Alaska Dispatch:
Clean Mountain Cans were introduced a decade ago as the National Park Service moved to eliminate piles of human feces marking the trail from the Kahiltna base camp to McKinley’s summit. For years now, it has been park policy for climbers to use Clean Mountain Cans or, if they are unavailable, biodegradable bags provided by the Park Service and dispose of feces “in a deep crevasse away from popular trails.”
Krakauer and Anker, however, took off from Kahiltna last week to explore the route to the base of the West Rib carrying neither a Clean Mountain Can nor a plastic bag, supervisory climbing ranger John Leonard says. They were on what might have been considered an innocent day hike until they had what Leonard calls a bit of an “emergency.”
They stopped. They squatted. People in base camp studying the mountain through a spotting scopes saw. The situation promptly got stinky.
“They were taking a sh*t,” Leonard says. “I don’t have much tolerance for people shitting on the mountain.”
Jesus, are all Alaskans that bored and nosy that they sit around looking at mountains through high-powered lenses looking to spot someone taking a dump? I could totally see Sarah Palin doing that (“I saw Krakauer going number two from my house!”) but not so much for the rest of the state’s residents.
I would have thought that Alaskans taking issue with Jon Krakauer would be about as likely as a little kid punching Batman in the nuts before. But, yeah, so much for that.
(Photo of Krakauer via Getty Images)