Celebrating “the World’s Nastiest Outhouse”

Okay, perhaps “celebrating” isn’t quite the right word. In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, John Flinn recalls his visit to the spartan outhouse used and abused by climbers working their way up icy Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains near Chechnya. In 1993, Outside magazine named the outhouse the nastiest in the world. “I haven’t heard of any upstarts staking a new claim to the title,” Flinn writes. “I checked. Really.” In fact, in addition to visiting the remote outhouse himself, Flinn did a surprising amount of research. In his column, he invokes both the World Toilet Organization and a group called Hikers Against Doo-Doo.

Explains Flinn:

For all its vileness, the outhouse on Mount Elbrus got a lot of use. Climbers hunkered down in the hut to prepare for their summit bid, and there are two things they commonly do to cope with the oxygen-thin air. The first is to drink water—lots and lots of water. Liter upon liter of water. Bladder-bursting quantities of water. Dehydration, it’s widely believed, is one of the triggers of altitude sickness. The other thing they do is take a prescription drug called Diamox. It’s very effective in warding off altitude sickness, but it has a number of side effects, one of which being that it’s a very efficient diuretic.

©2026 World Hum, All Rights Reserved