Arctic Adventures: Volume 27—Outhouse Woes

Last August, when we bought our yurt, we thought about all the time we could spend in the fall and winter getting it set up and ready to go. We had plenty of time before the first snowstorm, right? Then it snowed September 15. And basically didn’t stop snowing until May 12. While we were able to get the inside setup even in the cold, we couldn’t do much outside. 

Particularly, putting the outhouse in its proper spot was high on the list. We managed to move it in front of Particularly, putting the outhouse in its proper spot was high on the list. A local campground was giving away their outhouses, so we picked it up in July and it lived in our cabin driveway until September. We managed to move it to the yurt driveway and get the hole dug in September. The plan was to get it in its spot with help Sept. 18-19, but instead, we went XC skiing. There was just no way we would be carrying a humongous outhouse through the snowy path. Spring might come early, we hoped.

Spoiler alert: spring took a LOOOOONNNGGG time to arrive, and it’s barely upon us. Melting snow created LAKES around the yurt and RIVERS on the outhouse path. Try as he might, every time Justin pumped out the outhouse hole in the ground, it filled back up with water hours later from the melting snow above ground and defrosting ground underneath. You could even see the layer of ice about a foot down in the hole. 

The weather was really good from May 14 on, so things were slowly drying out. But with our first guest arriving May 28, things were getting dire and I kept bugging Justin that it was time to put the outhouse in its proper place. On Sunday, May 22, we solicited our friends to help with the move. It was really only 25 yards from the driveway to the spot in the woods, but that sucker is heavy. And the ground underfoot was still very squishy, which makes footing a little trickier.

Anyway, we got it done! We still needed to bolt down the outhouse and do some other work, but for the most part, we could mark that task off the list!

On Monday, another friend wanted to see how the outhouse turned out, so we walked over and she said, “uh oh. It’s not supposed to look like that, right?”

So apparently there was still so much water in the hole in the ground that the pressure of the water pushed up the 55-gallon drum—which we are using to capture the excrements—and that forced the outhouse to tip. There was one lowly screw holding the outhouse in place in its tilted position. 

Justin & I pumped out the water from the hole for the umpteenth time and we rallied the troops for “Operation Move Outhouse Take 2. This time we bolted down the outhouse to railroad ties. After 48 hours, it hadn’t moved. And as of now, we haven’t heard from our first guests about it, so fingers crossed and hopefully no more outhouse woes for the rest of the season … 

Just another perfect example that Alaska really is 1 step forward, 5 steps back.