Expert bikepacking tips: Sleeping in a pit toilet

“Pit toilet sleeps: 3.”

That phrase concluded Ashleigh Myles’s Strava post on Day 7 of her ride from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina. At seven days into a 22,412-km journey, she’d already slept in three outhouses.

On the latest episode of the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast, Myles recounts how she set a world record for the fastest time by an unsupported female cyclist, riding from the north end of the Pan-American Highway to the south. It took her 118 days, two days and 30 minutes. Along the way, she faced numerous challenges: illness, food poisoning, aggressive dogs and all kinds of foul weather. Below is not only a link to the episode, but also Myles’s reasons for sleeping in a pit toilet and some tips for overnighting in an outhouse.

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“On the Dalton Highway, there are some camps that you can stay at, but mostly there’s nothing,” Myles says, referring to the highway that runs from the community of Deadhorse, Alaska, at Prudhoe Bay, to Fairbanks. “The pit toilets there are steel and cement. Inside, they’re usually really spacious. They get you out of the wet and cold, which is what it was at the time. They lock, so you’re safe from bears.”

With all those features, including the proximity of a toilet, Myles thought the pit toilet was fantastic accommodation. Usually, she could bring her bike in the outhouse and hang up some of her wet gear to dry. “You can lay a tarp on the ground, and then put your bivy over top of it,” Myles says of her sleeping arrangement.

When a bikepacker commandeers a pit toilet for the night, they should follow a few points of etiquette. “Like wild camping, you have to get there relatively late and you have to leave early,” Myles said. “If there are two pit toilets, that’s good, because you can go into one, lock it, and somebody has the use of another one if they need it. That’s being considerate.”

Myles found the “good” outhouses ranged along the Dalton Highway and even as far south as Tok. But, as she continued down the Alaska-Canadian Highway, she found the privies diminished in quality. They were smaller, less bunker-like and, well, more popular. “Clearly, there were more people who were using them,” Myles says. “I…