A good camp shower?

Looking to pick up a solar shower. The one REI sells has horrible reviews. Anyone have any success with another brand? Looking for something in the 5 gallon range.

Thanks
Nick

The shower at the hotel usually works great.

:-P

Wet naps and hand sanitizer.

We use some type of clear bag shower that has a black side to it.

Get some inexpensive bamboo mats for showering on ,and one for drying off on, and your good to go.....

I forget the brand name of the shower, but it worked fine and we took one every day out, sure felt good after a day of playing in the dirt....

Some times we'd hang it in a tree, some times just shower each other off..

Hey Nick, For the first time in many trips to IC we brought a shower for our trip 2 weeks ago....It worked great! Will never go back without one. I ended up buying a cheap one(5 gallon) from Walmart since the Seattle Sports ones were all sold out everywhere. It only cost $8 so I beefed up the handle a little bit(kind of flimsy before the modification) but it worked great.

awesome thanks, great idea with the bamboo too! Did you guys travel with the shower bladder full or did you fill it after you arrived? I'm worried about the quality of a lot of the ones I've looked at and it sounds like most of them leak. I'd rather fill it up in Moab and not waste water and have to head into town to refill at some point. Maybe I'll get another water jug specifically for the shower.

ChrisV wrote:Wet naps and hand sanitizer.

This one works

willeslinger wrote: This one works

awesome, thanks Will. Definitely picking one up before next week.

FIlled up at gearheads...free water....fast. Instead of the bamboo mat, I'd recommend just using flat rocks as a small floor to get you off the dirt....they're plentiful and it's one less thing to bring/buy...

Nick,

I have used the cheap-o one you find at Walmart or Dick's with clear on one side and black on the other, works great. Coglan's I think. In the summer you can even use a camel back bladder.

I think that ALL solar showers are inherently low-tech, so just get a regular old cheap (5 gallon) one since they do have the tendency to get funky after a few seasons. Just beef up the handle and add a length of cord to hang it.
Remember, you do NOT need to fill it with your precious drinking water. Just find a clear enough stream/pond to fill it in the morning before heading out to the crag. At the end of the day, you will have enough hot water for two people to each take a decent shower.
The hardest part about showering in the desert, is finding something that is actually high enough to hang the shower from.
And yes, get a big flat rock for your feet!

Find a 3 gallon or so pump sprayer, like for weeds. A buddy found one made out of black plastic black I think it was for construction. Works great doesn't leak and isn't prone to getting small holes. Much better than the 3 or 4 sun showers I have owned over the years.

Not solar but this would really be all you would ever need. Nemo makes ridiculously nice things.

NEMO Helio

Helio

amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000NVC1…

I took a month road trip and the Walmart one failed on day three.

I picked up the one in the link and it has been amazing and lasts but I got the 2.5 gallon one. Enough water for a shower and wash my bike clothing.

I had a 6 foot section of garden hose in the car so I could fill the shower up at spigots on the road otherwise it is pretty hard to fill.

Also, if you put the shower on your Hood or a rock to catch the sun put a towel under it because the metal or rock sucks the heat back out of the bag.

youtube.com/watch?v=m9Txfhh…

5L dram. Leave it in the sun and open the flip top hung from a tree. Bam. Shower

For longer trips or stays you can also add these shower tents to the equation. In colder or windy areas they work wonders.

https://www.pretravels.com/camping-shower-tents/

Jason Todd wrote: youtube.com/watch?v=m9Txfhh…;feature=related

awesome...:D

Jason Todd wrote: youtube.com/watch?v=m9Txfhh…;feature=related

Camp soap? Not in the backcountry. Not much helpful info, but fun video to watch. :)

chocodove wrote: Not solar but this would really be all you would ever need. Nemo makes ridiculously nice things. NEMO Helio

Took me several trips to REI to break out $100+ for this thing. But going on two years of use I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. It can be solar if you leave it in the sun long enough, I've also gone into a store's bathroom and filled it with hot water from the tap and even boiled a couple of cups on my camp stove and dumped em in with outside temp water for a warm shower. Post surfing this thing rinses the salt of myself and wetsuit and as a dirtbag I even use it to do my dishes. I't built like a sailboat's dingy, good materials, glue and such.

Only negative thing i noticed is if you are around freezing temps the small amount of water in the intake tube of the pump freezes and disables the shower. I can live with it.