Backcountry Potty Trowel —The Deuce of Spades™ (a successful Kickstarter project)
Dealer inquiries welcome (Liberty Mountain distributes us too)
Latest NEWS:
• New color "Lime" green is finally here!
• In a flash of the obvious, the color "Bright Blue" has been renamed "Ice" to better describe this frosty blue color. Bonus: Now we have both Fire! and Ice colors.
• US shipping on the Deuce is just a buck (with no minimum purchase)!
• The Deuce has a lifetime warranty (and it's retroactive)!
.6 ounces (17 grams)----- IN STOCK! GET ONE NOW!
With apologies to John Muir.
This trowel is a “simple” little thing I came up with a couple of years ago. It looks as self-explanatory as one can imagine. How much could there be to a backpacking trowel after all? This one is delightfully deceptive - you really have to use it for yourself to see how surprisingly light, effective and tough this trowel really is. Added to that is a mind-bending stealth feature: you can use it handle-down for FOUR TIMES the digging power in hard ground. Use the handle end for breaking up tough dirt and wheedling out rocks; then use the scoop end to pull the dirt out quickly and easily. The combination makes the Deuce out-dig every other trowel, stick, or stake hands down. Anyone who poops in the woods should have this baby in their pack!
• revolutionary new design: it can be used handle UP or handle DOWN!!
– QUADRUPLES the edge pressure for hard ground!
• weighs just under .6 ounces, 17 grams, the weight of 3 1/2 teaspoons of water
• digs down and carves unusually well because of its thinness
• large scoop makes mockery of tent stakes or trekking poles for digging
• cuts right through small roots
• elegant, minimalist design
• strong, tough and a little flexible because they're made of aerospace grade 7075-T6 aluminum (100% US BTW)
• Lifetime Warranty — guaranteed durability or we'll replace it
• good sand stake but even better for burying other things as sand anchors
• NOT DORKY
• a great gift - bet they haven't got this yet
• designed to need no packaging
• nice colors: Fire!, Ice, Lime, Orange, Rose, Light Green, Gold, Black, Blue, Red, and Forest Green
• pretty funny: it makes a very good boot- or shoe-horn
• 100% recyclable - drop into any aluminum recycle bin
• handy for bear canister screws and the like
• yup, you can open a bottle of beer with it
• seriously perfect sandcastle sculpting tool
• you can fly with it in your carry-on
• at least one woman has used it as a standing-pee device - you go girl!
• MSRP: $19.95 for most, even lighter ones cost a little more
• Some made in the US
• formed in Denver, Colorado by Arrow Sheet Metal (ISO 9001 certified)
• anodized by Saporito Finishing in Cicero, Illinois
• engraved in Denver, Colorado by Sterling Edge
• Some made in Korea by our good friends at DAC (our fantastic tent pole supplier)
TWO WAY DIGGING! Use it Upside Down in hard dirt - Yes, really
Technique & Introduction Video
Point six ounces – .6 ounces - that’s crazy light! What else weighs about that?
OK, it's crazy-light. What's the tradeoff?
Very simple: some handle comfort. Even taking advantage of the upside-down feature and even after you’ve worn the edges to a just-so textured roundness, it is fair to say it’s impressive, but to call it actually comfortable would be an "Alternate fact." The Deuce is light because it's thin. When designing it, it was clear that the thinner it was, the less comfortable the edges became. Playing with different thicknesses and digging holes in many different soils, I came to the place that I believe most backpackers would if they were the ones designing it for themselves. The fact that they're carried for hours and hours and are used for just a few minutes a day pushes the weight/comfort tradeoff squarely down on the side of lighter weight. If they were much thinner, they would be indefensibly painful to use in hard ground. Much thicker, they would weigh more but not feel much different. With thousands of Deuces sold, I can honestly say that I've gotten the balance right. The vast majority of users are blown away by how light and effective they are.
A Confession:
I, like my father and his father before him, was one of those “turn over a rock” types in the backcountry. My defense: I ONLY pooped in remote sites nowhere near trails or camps and NEVER left any outward trace of my activity. That might have been good enough in my early years but things are getting really crowded out there. Then I saw a study that shows pretty well that putting a rock over buried poop is exactly the wrong thing to do because decomposition needs water percolating down to it from the surface. So pooping under a rock is right out - even for remote locations.
Then there's the sad state of affairs of heavily used trails - AT, PCT, CDT, John Muir Trail. Man those trails are getting hammered with poop. And the maintenance crews are literally getting the shitty end of the, um, rock, time and time again. I mean, YUK! What a horrible thing for volunteers to have to deal with.
So how about this: I'll make an incredibly lightweight trowel, THE coolest, THE most designy, and THE most effective potty trowel in the world — one that you can be proud to whip out in mixed company — so carrying and using it will be easy, fast and even a little fun, deal?
To Be Clear
I’m not claiming that the Deuce is the absolute lightest trowel in the world (though it is by far the lightest trowel available in stores). To my knowledge there is one lighter, the smallest of these. If you prefer it over the Deuce, please buy it from QiWiz. I don’t know him but I hear he’s a good guy. That said, in addition to the slightly lighter Deuces at the bottom of the order page, we also just released a Limited Edition, 20% thinner version, 13.1g (.46 oz) — woot!
Dimensions
I feel like there needs to be a “Two Headed Deuce” dance video in here but darned if it doesn’t continue to elude me.