Mountain Loo With A View For Aussies

Australia's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, is about to get its own camouflaged toilet facilities.

The 2,108 metre peak is climbed by an estimated 30,000 people every year with the trip to the summit taking around four hours and the call of nature was creating nasal and ecological pollution with rare plant species and native animals under threat.

The solution is a proposed toilet facility with three urinals and three unisex stalls high on the mountain. In order to reduce visual pollution and withstand 120 mph plus winds, the facilities will be cunningly built some 20 feet into the side of the mountain and camouflaged with trees and plants.

Sewage from the toilets will be transported down the mountain and removed to treatment facilities outside the Nattional Park.

The whole thing got us thinking about where the highest flushable toilet in the world is. The OM editorial record is around 5,000 metres in the refugio below Huayana Potosi in Bolivia, though to be fair, it wouldn't flush during the night as the cistern had frozen solid.

We've used higher dunnies in the Nepal Himalaya with some astonishing views, but none of them have been flushable... Apparently the Chinese have buit a concrete toilet facility at Everest Base Camp on the northern side of the mountain, but whether it's flushable or not, we don't know...

Anyway, here's a nice view from a non-flushable toilet on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal :-)