Thru-hiking gear talk has a new obsession: the backpacking bidet. These small squeeze-and-spray kits promise a cleaner backside and dramatically less toilet paper on long trails, and their devotees are famously evangelical about them. One gear writer for outdoor outlet The Trek finally caved to peer pressure and put one through a proper test — and the results were, well, mixed at best.
The setup was impressively rigorous, at least on paper. The reviewer ran two one-week backpacking trips under matched conditions: identical diet, identical starting toilet paper ration, no gut medication on either trip. One week was bidet-free; the other featured the spray bottle in question, which came with a trigger and a two-step safety mechanism so it couldn't discharge in your pack.
The promised benefits held up. Cleaning performance was genuinely strong — the writer admitted being surprised by how effective the high-pressure jet was. Toilet paper usage dropped dramatically too; after the bidet week there was barely any paper left unused... er, almost untouched. For long-distance hikers, that's a real win: less TP to carry means less weight and less waste to pack out.
Then the cons kicked in, hard. The chief complaint: an intense, lingering burning sensation the reviewer claims nobody warned them about — so severe that sensitivity kept building over the week, and the effects reportedly persisted days after the trip ended. That same high pressure praised as a pro became a liability as the trip wore on. Weight was another gripe: the unit reportedly tipped the scales at 8.1 ounces, far heavier than the few grams listed in the product specs, meaning the toilet paper savings may have been cancelled out in the pack-weight column.
Final verdict: two out of five stars. The concept earns genuine credit — less paper, better cleaning — but the reviewer's advice to manufacturers is to try plain water instead of whatever supposedly fiery liquid this thing ships with.
A word of context for readers: this review is satire, a tongue-in-cheek send-up of both hyper-passionate bidet users and over-serious gear testing. The publication even appended an editorial note reminding everyone that bear spray is a wildlife deterrent and not approved for use on humans — which should give you a hint about the punchline. The headline, the quotes and the Scoville-scale jokes are all part of the gag.
Still, there's real signal in the noise. Backpacking bidets are a genuine, growing trend on long trails in the United States, and the legitimate takeaways survive the comedy: they do reduce toilet paper weight, they are heavier than marketing copy suggests, and testing gear on a short trip before committing to a months-long thru-hike is excellent advice. Anyone considering one should check the actual weighed weight, practise the trigger before needing it, and maybe start with a gentler pressure setting than their enthusiasm suggests. Your trail companions, who will inevitably hear about your bidet whether they want to or not, will thank you.
Read the full (satirical) review at The Trek.
