View Full Version : What is the longest anyone has ever gone w/out a shower...
snuffleupagus
02-09-2004, 22:34
I once went two and a half month's without taking a shower.:eek: Just for sh#t's and giggles. (Nothing else to do). When I finally did clean my body off my skin stung for three days. Kind of like prickly heat. I think my pours were clogged w/dry skin and dirt. I've also found that being un-clean affects your vision. The oil from you head gets into your eyes and make your vision blurry.
I was just curious if (on a thru-hike) anyone has ever gone serious long distances or for that matter, the entire distance without showering?
smokymtnsteve
02-09-2004, 22:47
if we are talking about how long someone has went without a SHOWER then I can say that I have went some months before without one...we didn't have a shower in the house where I grew up and to go somewhere for the night that did have a indoor shower was a treat. we did take baths growing up though but you didn't get to take one everynight.
snuffleupagus
02-09-2004, 23:01
if we are talking about how long someone has went without a SHOWER then I can say that I have went some months before without one...we didn't have a shower in the house where I grew up and to go somewhere for the night that did have a indoor shower was a treat. we did take baths growing up though but you didn't get to take one everynight.
Smokymtnsteve: Maybe my post should have excluded Georgia locals. A lot of people looked into this post real fast. LOL.....
On maneuvers with combat troops, I once went 1 month without doing more than wiping my face and washing my hands due to water supply in desert.
Nobody had friends :confused:
WOW! and i thought my 2 weeks without a shower provided a good funk!
hehehehehehehehehe ;)
see ya'll up the trail
hungryhowie
02-10-2004, 09:59
17 days. A day before traildays in 2001 until after I finished a section hike from Fontana to Amicalola. I must have spent a lot of time at traildaze cuz I averaged ~20mpd on the AT (had to get back to work). Funny, GA didn't seem so difficult the second time :banana
I've also gone ~10-14 days several times in the backcountry without one.
-Howie
I managed about 40 days when was in the Himalaya a couple of winters ago. I was far nastier after 5 days on the PCT, though.
In my picture gallery, you can see what 7 days on the PCT made me and a friend look like.
Kerosene
02-10-2004, 16:12
This certainly puts a different spin on *distinguished company*!
My longest was only 11 days on the Long Trail in the cool, wet August of 1979. However, this is not a personal best that I'm keen on trying to exceed.
jojo0425
02-10-2004, 16:24
Maybe yall should wear cowbells and warn everyone when you're coming, ;) I can't stand myself after four days...lol.
It only took 5 days in a July, in the Smokies, to achieve my trail name-RANCID :eek:
Kozmic Zian
02-10-2004, 20:03
Yuck Subject.....But, in VietNam one operation, I was out for 33 days, with three sets o' fatigues and no shower....would swab off the face every day, but that was it....when it was over I was really glad, 'cause the last pair of fatigues had rotted out the legs up to the crotch and the underware was long gone. In that tropical climate, everything rotted quickly. Pretty funky, I was, too. Phewww..............KZ@
if we are talking about how long someone has went without a SHOWER then I can say that I have went some months before without one...we didn't have a shower in the house where I grew up and to go somewhere for the night that did have a indoor shower was a treat. we did take baths growing up though but you didn't get to take one everynight.
I grew up during the depression in the 1930s. Though my Dad worked for the Post Office -- thanks to service in the Navy in WWI (he only had a 10th grade education) -- so we weren't poor, poor, our big rambling 1850s farm house had no central heating, nor even a bath tub until my Mom installed one by herself when I was about the age of 12. A couple of years later she became a machinist in a shipyard to help the war effort (World War two for you kids who haven't had history.)
Unfortunately, we never did get heat in that Bath room, nor a shower for that matter. We used to bathe every week or so in a tub set up in the dining room, next to the wood stove.
I forget when I had my first shower. But it must have been about age 19, when my parents shipped me off to Chicago, despairing about me ever doing anything except read books. No. I wasn't abandoned in the big city. I had a brother who was going to drafting school there. (He never actually drafted. But he did work as an auto mechanic, policeman, and postal worker, at times, simultaneously.)
I do remember being puzzled about the nature of showers when drafted into the Korean War during Dwight Eisenhower's administration. (What is it about these Republicans and their goddam wars?).
Well, to make a long story shorter, I drifted about for a decade or so, Eventually graduatingfrom the University of Illinois, and moved back to my showerless parent's house, while working for a newspaper in the town where I grew up.
Well, maybe for some Freudian reasons, I married a few years later and moved my bride -- a decade younger than me -- into an even more ancient farmhouse with even less plumbing than even my Mom had managed to install.
We lived there for more than a year without a bathroom, shower, bathtub or even running water. Finally, when my legitimate daughter, (a detail I mention only so you can figure the time line) was 15 months old we installed plumbing -- and even a shower!!!) I had my priorities straight, however, I climbed Katahdin for the first time 4 months before installing running water.
REgardless, for years afterwards, every morning presented that special pleasure that most are never privileged to experience because they never have not experienced it -- that incredibly marvelous experience as an adult of first experiencing water running over one's body, soap lathering one's body, more running water washing that soap off. Civilization at last! Thank God, civilization at last!
Of course, some years later I hiked the trail. My trail experience was truly unique. No one else in 1993 had ever gone longer without a shower than I had for most of my life.
Weary
snuffleupagus
02-10-2004, 23:45
Great post KZ, Weary, I'd love to hear about your hiking experiences some time. I can imagine you have some great stories to go along with your hikes. Anyways some of the post's in here can really be druthersome at time's so I just thought I'd mix it up a little. Thankyou all for sharing your stories w/me I hope to meet some of you on the trail. Happy hiking
My longest time without a shower (on the trail) was about a week.
On thing I haven't seen anyone write about is a warm summer rain. Although it may not knock down the funk, you sure feel cleaner after one of them. Of course, you can always swim along the AT. The first place I took a dip was at a small waterfall in Virginia (a few hours south of Waipiti Shelter) whose name I forget. It's a favorite of locals, and just a short distance from a road and a market. Anyway, I felt so unbelievably refreshed after taking a dip there. Sheer joy!