Warning to male readers: this might sound more like a girl talk but if you don’t get easily spooked and you want to understand better your female friends, keep reading.
While being in the backcountry, especially in the winter, I couldn't help noticing a simple thing: while men pee almost every hour and anywhere, women rarely pee every four - five hours at most, and somehow never if it blizzard or if there are no trees around. Hmm, we all hydrate and our bodies are pretty much the same, right? So what’s really happening? Is the thought of squatting and exposing your intimate parts at minus 20 Fahrenheit something so unpleasant that anything else is better? Yes, it seems so.
As I want to get to the top of Everest and I need hydration, there is no other way than learning again from scratch how to…pee. It never crossed my mind I’ll be wearing dull men long underwear instead of my pinkish leggings, but never say never. Armed with a pee funnel, I am rewiring my brain to pee standing. Even if it sounds easy, somehow it requires more concentration than the toughest workout and I am wondering how will this work when wind is blowing with over fifty miles per hour. This very simple learning how to pee exercise makes me understand even better why only 7% of the people who made it to the top of Everest are women.
All is well in the end. It seems that the long men underwear are super comfortable and I am thinking about the day when the women version for standing peeing will exist as all the extra material in front is of no use to me. But this is the least of my problems compared with down suites with a belly and extra heavy crampons.
