Camping With Dogs: How to Pack Out Waste on the Trail

Scheduled September 2026 · Pet N Pet Editorial

Your dog produces about a quarter pound of waste a day. On a three-day trip that's most of a pound you have to do something with, and the something matters more than most owners realise. The rules that govern human waste in the backcountry were written for human diets and human gut flora. Dog waste is a different problem, and the default answer is not the one most people reach for.

Why can't you just bury dog waste like human waste?

In 2024 the National Park Service published its Leave No Trace guidance on waste disposal, and it names pets directly: "our human waste (and our pet's waste) can contaminate water, spread disease" when it isn't dealt with properly (National Park Service, December 2024). The cathole method it describes was designed around the assumption that soil biology can process what you bury.

That assumption gets weaker with dogs. A dog eating commercial food carries a different bacterial load and a different nitrogen load than the wildlife whose waste that soil already handles. Burying is permitted in the guidance, but it's a fallback, not the recommended first move.

There's also a practical failure mode nobody warns you about. Digging a compliant cathole takes a trowel, soft ground and 200 feet of walking. At a busy lakeside campsite in September, with the ground packed hard and every flat spot already taken, you will not find that. So you end up either burying it too shallow and too close to water, or carrying it anyway without having planned to.

UNIQUE INSIGHT

Plan to carry it. Treat the cathole as the thing you do when carrying genuinely isn't possible, which on a weekend trip is almost never.

What does the cathole standard actually require?

The National Park Service tells you to "use your trowel to dig a six to eight inch hole" and to "walk 200 feet or 70 large steps away from trails, campsites, and any water source" (National Park Service, December 2024). The hole gets filled in afterwards, and toilet paper gets packed out rather than buried.

Those three numbers do a lot of work, and each one fails differently if you get it wrong.

Depth is about keeping the waste below the layer where animals dig and rain scours. Distance is about the water table and runoff. And the 70-steps translation is there because nobody carries a tape measure, which tells you the standard was written by people who expected it to be approximated.

Where catholes aren't appropriate at all, the guidance points to WAG bags, which it describes as "basically a toilet in a bag." That's the same principle as a poop bag, engineered for volume and odour over several days.

According to the National Park Service's 2024 Leave No Trace guidance, a compliant cathole is 6 to 8 inches deep and 200 feet from any trail, campsite or water source, with toilet paper packed out rather than buried. The same guidance names pet waste alongside human waste as a contamination and disease risk, which is why packing out is the more reliable choice on short trips.

How much bag capacity does a multi-day trip need?

Work from a quarter pound per dog per day. Washington State's Department of Ecology used exactly that figure, noting that "the average dog generates a mere quarter pound of feces a day." It then scaled the number up across a population. A watershed of 100,000 people accumulates "over two and a half tons of feces deposited in it each day" (Washington State Department of Ecology, Publication 03-10-053, June 2003).

For one dog on a three-day trip, that's roughly three quarters of a pound. In practice you want more bags than that arithmetic suggests, for two reasons. Bags fail. And double-bagging is the only realistic odour strategy once waste has been in your pack for more than a few hours.

For a weekend with one medium dog, eight to ten bags is a sane load. That covers normal use, one bag failure and double-bagging on the way home. Bags weigh almost nothing, so there's no reason to be precise about it.

What actually goes wrong on the trail?

Odour, and it goes wrong on day two. This is the part trail guides skip, because a single-day hike never surfaces it.

A bag that's fine for a twenty-minute walk home behaves differently after eight hours strapped to a warm pack in the sun. The waste is still there, still producing gas, and the bag is now the only thing between it and your sleeping kit. Thin film compounds this: it stretches under load, and a stretched bag is a thinner bag.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

The fix is boring. Carry a dedicated outer container, a dry bag or a wide-mouth screw-top jar, and put tied bags inside it rather than loose in a pocket. Store it on the outside of the pack. Never in the same compartment as food or a sleeping bag.

Scented bags help with the immediate handling moment and do nothing for a sealed pack over two days. Don't buy them expecting otherwise.

What should be in the kit?

Six things, and only one of them is bags.

Bags, sized for the dog rather than the average dog. A tie-off method you can operate with cold hands. An outer container that seals. A trowel, because the cathole is still your fallback. Paw check gear, since burrs and cracked pads are the injury you'll actually deal with, and our guide to cleaning dog paws without a full bath covers what to do at camp. And a plan for where the waste goes at the trailhead, because a bag left at a trailhead sign is worse than no bag at all.

That last one matters more than it sounds. A tied bag on the ground is not waste disposal. It's litter with extra steps, and it's the single most common failure at popular trailheads. Nor does leaving it unbagged help: waste from a dog on commercial food isn't the free fertiliser people assume, as we cover in whether dog poop is good for soil.

Pet N Pet's poop bags are USDA Certified Biobased at 41% and 92% biobased content depending on the SKU, which describes what the film is made from. It does not describe how the bag breaks down, and no bag in a landfill or a trailhead bin breaks down quickly. If a brand tells you otherwise, check whether they name a certification or just a feeling.

Browse the poop bag range if you need to restock before a trip, and the dog wipes for paw and coat cleanup at camp. A treat pouch keeps recall rewards reachable on a leashed trail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I bury dog waste while camping?

The National Park Service describes digging "a six to eight inch hole" at least "200 feet or 70 large steps" from trails, campsites and any water source (National Park Service, 2024). It also names pet waste as a contamination and disease risk. Packing out is the safer default; treat burying as the fallback when carrying isn't possible.

How many poop bags should I bring camping?

Plan on a quarter pound of waste per dog per day (Washington State Department of Ecology, 2003) and carry eight to ten bags for a weekend with one dog. The surplus covers a bag failure and double-bagging for the trip home. Bags add negligible weight, so over-packing costs nothing.

Do biodegradable poop bags break down on the trail?

No. Nothing in a tied bag breaks down at a useful rate, on a trail or in a landfill. USDA Certified Biobased content describes what the film is made from, not how fast it degrades. Treat any bag as something you carry out, not something that disappears.

Is it worse to leave a bagged pile at the trailhead than to bury it?

Yes, if the bag is left on the ground rather than in a bin. A bagged pile beside a trailhead sign stays intact and stays visible, and it is the most common disposal failure at busy trailheads. Carry it to an actual receptacle.

SOURCES & CITATIONS

National Park Service "I Didn't Know That! Leave No Trace Principle #3: Dispose of Waste Properly," 23 December 2024, retrieved 2026-08-19 https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/idkt_lnt_3.htm

Washington State Department of Ecology, Water Quality Program "Focus on Pet Waste Management," Publication 03-10-053, June 2003, retrieved 2026-08-19 https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/publications/documents/0310053.pdf

USDA BioPreferred Program USDA Certified Biobased Product catalog, retrieved 2026-07-22