STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Michael Kimmel got a surprise as he pedaled his mountain bike to the end of the Corral Creek Trail.
There, with the sheep corrals in the background, was a restroom dangling in the air.
“I didn’t expect to see something like this!” he said, watching as a Hy-Lift crane lowered the vault toilet into a hole in the ground.
The Ketchum Ranger District installed three new Sweet Smelling Technology vault toilets this past week.
One replaced a smelly old-style vault toilet that had survived the 2013 Beaver Creek Fire at the popular Greenhorn trailhead.
One was positioned at an area known as Uncle John’s Corral, an area along the road to the Pioneer Cabin trailhead that has been seeing increased dispersed camping and mountain bike use.
And the other was situated at the popular Red Warrior trailhead along Warm Springs Road.
The “comfort stations,” as District Ranger Kurt Nelson calls them, were made possible with matching grants from Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.
They cost $20,000 each so they’re not inexpensive,” said Nelson. “We’ve been putting in for a grant for a couple years—we finally got on their radar and we were able to match the funding.”
The prefabricated vaults with ADA grab bars were made by CXT, the leading manufacturer of concrete restrooms, shower, concessions and storage buildings. They use Sweet Smelling Technology which was developed by the U.S. Forest Service in the early 1990s using passive ventilation to maintain an odor-free facility.
Each of the vault toilets, which weighed 27,000 pounds in entirety, made its way from Spokane to Ketchum in three pieces on three separate semi trucks.
The plan had been to install all on the same day, but that was foiled when one of the trucks broke down in Oregon.
Zach Poff, the recreation program manager for the Ketchum Ranger District, had to work his way through a parking lot full of bicyclists and hikers at 8:30 in the morning at Greenhorn to get enough space to situate the crane and semi to install the first toilet.
Still, he managed to finish the project in time to hotfoot it to Uncle John’s Corralto meet the second semi, only to find it had taken a wrong turn on its route through Arco, making it a little late.
Poff had already had a mini excavator dig a 15-foot-long hole nearly five feet deep near the hillside.
He had to orient the hole just right so that the vent stack on the outhouse would attract the maximum amount of sunlight to cause rising warm air to move unpleasant odors out of the building.
He also had to make sure the restroom would be situated where it could catch an afternoon breeze to further mitigate any unwanted aroma.
“It’s funny how much we in the Forest Service deal with waste, whether it’s human, dog or horse,” he said. “Fortunately, we have a partnership with the Environmental Resource Center to take care of pet waste at the trailheads. We used to do it and it’s a filthy job—especially when it’s 90 degree out and something drips and goes everywhere.
“Horses are probably the easiest to deal with,” he added. “Theirs is the most biodegradable because of what horses eat.”
The 94-foot-tall crane from Bellevue rolled into place and the driver got it ready, putting stabilizers down on heavy wooden rounds.
The crane picked up the 16,000-pound concrete vault, which will be able to accommodate a thousand gallons of waste, and lowered it into the hole as Poff and others helped guide it.
One of the workers jumped into the hole with a leveler and signaled for the crane to raise the vault back up while workers shoveled a little more dirt underneath.
The worker then spread an inch-thick double-sided sticky tape on top of the 3-inch thick walls and the crane lowered the middle section of the building on top.
Poff helped slip the 15-foot chimney through the hole meant for it and the crane lowered the top part of the building matching bolts with bolt holes to complete the trifecta.
The production attracted a number of sightseers ranging from hikers driving down the road to Pioneer Cabin to a group of mountain bikers who were visiting Sun Valley.
“We don’t need a toilet here,” one local mountain biker muttered under his breath as he cruised through.
“I hope this doesn’t attract more people on this trail,” voiced another.
"I've often thought it might be nice to have something like this here," said Kimmel.
The addition of two more toilets brings to 16 the number of vault toilets on the Ketchum Ranger District.
The delivery man handed Poff a can of touchup paint and three rolls of toilet paper to get things started.
But anyone who thought they might be the first to christen the new outhouse was sorely disappointed.
“You’ll have to hold it a little longer,” said Poff, eyeing a foot-wide moat around the toilet. “We’ll have to bring the mini excavator back and fill this in before we can become operational.”
TRAIL WORK UNDERWAY
An Idaho Conservation Corps crew started work this past week spraying weeds and invasive species along the Fox Creek Trail and trails in Adams Gulch.
Another has started rebuilding a trail in Federal Gulch in East Fork that was heavily damaged by the record snows of the 2016-2017 winter season.
And a local contractor will begin work on a 5.5-mile reroute of Alden Gulch off the Baker Creek Road on Wednesday. Hand crews will finish the project.