Hi, Just wondering what brands are safe for bathing in the waters?I know about the basic camp soap sold in sporting goods stores but im not crazy about it...Thanks ::)

The best way to bathe is to fill your largest pot, and do it away from the lake. Any biodegradable soap & shampoo will do. I use Ivory soap and a generic shampoo.

Welcome aboard!  Glad to have you here!

To answer your question:

In my opinion, none.

I don't bathe, wash dishes or wash clothes in the lake water.  I take water FROM the lake and go "in-land" to perform those duties.  When finished, even rinse water is dumped far away from the lake.  

If the lake water is cool (e.g. May), I take a solar shower and do a head-to-toe wash (as long as you don't waste the water, it is sufficient for a descent bath).   In warmer periods, I use my dish-washing buckets to load up with an ample water supply (for either bathing or washing dishes/clothes).  I use color-coded buckets ... red for soapy water, blue for rinse water.  

Alternately, I do a non-soap rinse in the lake (e.g., swim) to feel refreshed.  I chose this method during a recent trip to Woodland Caribou PP and was pleasantly surprised by the water temp (warmth).

In any case, I use any of the many brands of biodegradable soaps that are available from a variety of retail outlets for all of my clean-up functions.  Remember that a "low suds" product will rinse more quickly than a large volume of bubbles.

dd

Hi, and welcome aboard, too!

I'll echo dd about all bathing activity taking place well away from the water. Biodegradable doesn't mean you can use it in the water.

But don't mess with the solar shower. Just dump that ice cold bucket of fresh lake water right on your head  :o :o It...ummmm...takes the breath away  ;D

Sleep in your own tent and you won't have to bath until you exit.  On some Oct trips I've ripened for a week.  It's all good, you stop smelling yourself after a week. ;D

Thanks for the welcome and all the replies.Yup a"safe soap"is just too good to be true!Im good just jumping in there just to get the bug repllent off!Oh do beleive me you can hear my screams when that ice cold water is dumped on my head to rince off the shampoo!!!!I dont think I could even sleep with myself after a week of rippening! ;D I'll just do my same old LOL!!!

Just a word on solar showers.  If the sun isn't strong enough, you can always heat some water on a stove and top off the solar shower to make it warm enough.

Westwood

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I'm not fond of soap made/marketed for/to campers either. Doc Bonner's, Camp Suds and the like disappoint and interestingly enough, I can't find any reference to soap in either the 2009 QP regs or in the following PDF for the BW:
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I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that LNT principles often have more to do with simple aesthetics and perception than anything else. We're not talking phosphates here. It's just soap. Right? The water is soft, you don't need much. See how little you can use since the less you use, the less rinse water you need to warm and lug around too.

Use what works for you ... well inland ... just don't leave a ring. If you want to be extra kind, you could avoid deodorant soap as it is designed to kill bacteria which could help the stuff break down??? Then again, something that has a better chance of allowing you to skip a day or three or seven might be a good compromise. Go easy on the conditioner if you are so inclined too.

I expect rinsing off deet is wishful thinking as it's absorbed rather quickly. Try thinking of it as a base layer. Never met a woman who didn't prefer a sun shower over a lake rinse.

db wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2010 at 5:40am:

Use what works for you ....

Over the years I've found a soap that works great for just about everything and is especially nice when traveling light. Dawn dishwashing liquid concentrate is all I use for washing greasy dishes, clothes and even what little hair I have left. During the Exxon Valdez oil spill Dawn was found to be the preferred product for washing the oil out of contaminated wildlife. It's gentle, mild and yet very efficient at loosening dirt, oils and grease. use only a couple of drops per gallon of water and dump well away from camp or the shoreline. It works fantastic and leaves no residual odor or film. A 10 day trip for four people requires only about 6-8ozs for bathing, dishwashing and clothes washing. USE SPARINGLY!

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I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that LNT principles often have more to do with simple aesthetics and perception than anything else. We're not talking phosphates here.

I agree.


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Alternately, I do a non-soap rinse in the lake (e.g., swim) to feel refreshed.

To go along with DB's comment above, I suspect the non-soap rinse contributed almost as many contaminants as a rinse with soap would produce.  Which in neither case is a problem.  But I realize most do not share my opinion.

azalea wrote on Jun 25^th, 2010 at 3:53am:

To go along with DB's comment above, I suspect the non-soap rinse contributed almost as many contaminants as a rinse with soap would produce.  Which in neither case is a problem.  But I realize most do not share my opinion.

How do you figure?  Sweat & grime vs. sweat & grime & soap.  Are sweat & grime contaminants?

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Are sweat & grime contaminants?

While wikipedia is a mediocore source of info, it states sweat contains the following.

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It also contains minerals, as well as lactate and urea. Mineral composition will vary with the individual, the acclimatisation to heat, exercise and sweating, the particular stress source (exercise, sauna, etc.), the duration of sweating, and the composition of minerals in the body. An indication of the minerals content is: sodium 0.9 gram/liter, potassium 0.2 gram/liter, calcium 0.015 gram/liter, magnesium 0.0013 gram/liter[10]. Also many other trace elements are excreted in sweat, again an indication of their concentration is (although measurements can vary fifteenfold): zinc (0.4 mg/l), copper  (0.3 - 0.8 mg/l), iron (1 mg/l), chromium  (0.1 mg/l), nickel (0.05 mg/l), lead (0.05 mg/l).

But we are not just talking sweat.  Depending on the person, there may also be things like sun-screen and bug repellent.  There may be chemicals transfered to the skin from clothing, packs, fuel canisters, paddles, etc. Not to mention, the residue left over in the bodily function areas (yuck).

Again I am not saying this is a problem, because we are talking such small quantitites in a big watershed.  But the same applies to the impact of soap, which although maybe amounts to higher mass than those things washed off our bodies, may only contain "natural vegetable-derived ingredients" (camp soap). Even something like ivory soap has pretty benign ingredients.

I live right next to our town beach, and it's always surprizing to me how long it takes for soap or shampoo to dilute with the water. It's not that often someone baths like that, but when they do they usually leave a scum that lasts a couple days sometimes. I don't see the problem with rinsing inland any soaps whether body or dishes. It takes over a year for bio soaps to break down, I wonder how long it takes for other soaps. The BW is used a lot, and if everyone bathed in the lakes and put thier dish soap in the lakes I think it would have an impact.

Here's another vote for bathing well away from the lakeshore.

"Biodegradable" just means there's something out there which will eat it to some degree. It doesn't mean that the chemical compound in question will magically disappear, either quickly, or before it gets ingested by something which cannot metabolize it.

Intuition isn't much help in determining what constitutes "insignificant" either. Here's a link to a study done a couple of years ago on endocrine-disrupting compounds in Minnesota lakes:

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They found significant (typically 0.01-0.1 ppb) levels of DEET in ALL of the lakes and rivers sampled, including the supposedly-pristine (no surrounding development) lakes they had hoped to use as a reference.

It's a long report, and mostly about compounds other than DEET. But at least now you will know where pollyhumpers come from.

For the record, I am a chemical engineer, and no more of a tree-hugger than you would expect to find on these boards.

boiling water cleans the dishes..

these clean the integrated nav/propulsion unit...

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use one a day right before bed (body parts in proper sequence  :P)...  they pack in and out easy.. two packages will last longer than me on a trip...

I've got my wilderness bath down to 4 baby wipes myself.