Pre-Trip CDT: Can a potty trowel be carry on luggage?
West Glacier
For those of you wondering whether ULA Potty Trowels can go on flights as carry-on, the answer is maybe. I spent the night in the Newark, NJ airport, which surprisingly lacks the all-the-time activity you’d expect from an airport that close to NYC. All the check-in counters were closed. Yes, Newark sleeps at night–except for an incessant fire-alarm that went off every 5 minutes between the hours of 2 am and 4 am which made it impossible to sleep on the bumpy chairs! It looked like the only other person sleeping in the airport was a homeless person. I later discovered that “homeless” person was on my same flight to Kalispell—and in fact, was another CDT hiker, Dogwood!
Tired, and with no desire to pay $25 for check-in bags, we were first in line for security (it opens at 4:30 am). Strapped to the back of my pack, I put my pack and trowel on the conveyor belt, willing to take the risk.
I quickly went through the gate, trying to look confident, and to my surprise, the trowel went through the x-ray machine all right. I was free to go to the gate, potty trowel in hand! Yet, when I turned around, the TSA lady discovered my Potty Trowel peaking out from behind my pack.
“Is that one of those rock climbing things?” she asked, horrified that I would bring a sharp weapon onto the plane. “No, it’s a potty trowel! You’re not supposed to use it for that.” It took about 5 TSA guys 15 minutes and multiple trips through the X-ray machine to determine whether indeed it could go through. Finally, a man came up to me and said, “This can’t go on,” and I was escorted back to the entrance–completely unable to touch my ice axe, even to pack it into a backpack so I could check it in.
Frustrated, I spent ten minutes trying to get the potty trowel in my backpack, but it was too long. I imagined the sharp handle piercing my backpack during the flights. Visions of starting the trail with a gaping hole in my pack, items falling out and water and snow creeping in, crossed my mind. I ended up wrapping it in a garbage bag and shipping it off, signing away my right to sue Delta if it was destroyed at all.
Thus began our flight to Kalispell and the 40 hours of sleeplessness that got me to West Glacier, MT.
