(water sloshing) - It's just so quiet and peaceful in the morning.

It's the best time of day to be on the water.

(water sloshing) Everything's quiet.

Things are just waking up.

The birds are waking up.

(birds chirping) The critters are waking up.

(birds chirping) (oar scraping) Some days the bathrooms are easy.

Some days they're not.

- [Narrator] Jerry Christensen has a job perhaps few folks would want.

(bucket scraping) Every week of the spring and summer, he cleans 13 outhouses along the Deschutes River.

- [Jerry] Some are pit toilets, some are composters, and we just need to get down here, and the only way to do it is with a boat.

(water sloshing) - [Narrator] The Deschutes is perhaps Oregon's most popular river for recreation, loved by rafters and anglers alike.

Jerry deliberately picks quiet midweek Wednesdays to run this 40-mile section of the Lower Deschutes.

But come on a typical summer weekend, and it's a different story.

The Deschutes popularity creates the need for Jerry's job the weekly river trip he calls the Poo Patrol.

- It's a unique place to have the bathrooms down here on a river, 'cause any other river, it's pack it in, pack it out.

And it's the only river in the state that regularly maintains bathrooms along the way.

(bag rustling) - [Narrator] Jerry's reputation has grown along the river, and it has a lot to do with his signature choice of toilet paper.

(toilet paper crunches) - I was a heavy user of the river down here, and I never really appreciated one-ply paper.

Sensitive, you know?

So as soon as I got the contract, that was the first thing I did.

And people picked up on it right away.

(water sloshing) Within the first couple months, I pulled into a campsite and the guy hauling gear sees me come around, and he just stands up in his boat, looks at me, and goes, "2-Ply!"

And I just started laughing, the people in my boat started laughing, and it stuck.

(water sloshes) All the guides know me.

There's a hundred of them.

There's one of me.

and they're always happy to see me.

(water sloshes) - There's nobody more known down here than 2-Ply, than Jerry, 'cause he, you know...

Some people make people upset and some don't, but he makes everybody happy.

He kind of keeps the world going round and round down here.

And because of him, it's a a better cleaner place.

(spray bottle hisses) - [Narrator] Cleaning out houses every week can be monotonous and even lonely work.

And Jerry has two front seats in his boat.

He likes to build those with old friends and new.

On this trip, Jerry's guests are Jan and Jon.

(water sloshing) While Jerry goes to scrub the outhouses, John gets to do some fishing.

- As the guest of 2-Ply, You know, we make 13 stops.

There's good fishing water at all 13 of 'em.

- It's pretty sweet to just chill out in the boat while Jerry's up there cleaning.

- [Jerry] We just make a day of it, and I spend three or four hours cleaning bathrooms, six or seven hours having fun on the river.

(rapids sloshing) - [Narrator] Jerry's guests get to ride in the handcrafted wooden drift boat that he built through the high desert scenery and fun rapids that have made that Deschutes River so popular.

(rapids sloshing) And Jerry gets to use the Poop Patrol as a way to share his passion for the river that has been part of his life for more than 20 years.

(water sloshing) - I mean, this year I'll probably take, over 30 trips, I'll take 40 or 50 people.

- For Jerry, it's just every week with a new guest has just gotta be so entertaining, and, you know, people don't understand how awesome this canyon is until they get down, you know?

It's like, "Oh, the Deschutes," yeah, but, I mean, we're not in the Grand Canyon obviously, but this is pretty grand for Oregon, you know?

So it's pretty awesome.

(water sloshing) - [Narrator] His skills at the oars and his intimate knowledge of the rapids, have proven a Poo Patrol job requirement.

(rapids sloshing) - We're gonna get real close to this rock on the right.

When I got this contract from the BLM, I'd already spent 15 years on the water and 10 years of that was in that boat.

(water sloshing) When we roll into upper part of Whitehorse, there was always a couple of really deep breaths, because it's tight in there.

and that's where people have problems.

And if they have a problem, that's not a place to swim.

(water sloshing) The old BLM contract that had this before me, they had a rough season.

And when I came down on a steelhead trip in October, happened to see a boat upside down in the middle of Whitehorse and the BLM contract sign was on the side of it.

And that's when I decided that I could give them a call, 'cause I have a feeling that contract might be open.

Sure enough, it was (laughs).

- [Narrator] The traditional pit toilets along the Poo Patrol route can be emptied every year or two, but parts of the river are so inaccessible, that human waste cannot be removed, and must be treated on site.

- Oh boy.

- [Narrator] Newer composting toilets solve this problem, but they require more routine labor to make them work.

- This is the first of the composters that we're coming to.

This one gets loved to death (laughs).

It's gonna be good.

Well, when I left it, there were 16 rolls of toilet paper here, of which now there are none.

And I bet the poo's just right up in there.

Only one way to find out.

Oh, yeah, that's super.

500 people is what they allow on this river per day between Warm Springs and Harpham Flats.

That's a lot of people.

That's a lot of use.

I came down here one time, and it was full to the top.

- [Narrator] Speaking of volume, the average person would visit one of Jerry's outhouses once a day to do their business, and deposit less than a pound of poo.

But with as many as 500 visitors to the river in a single day, that can add up to more than 400 pounds.

And that adds up to more than a ton of week.

And that's a lot of poo that otherwise might pollute camp areas and the river itself.

(Jerry panting) - Now's when I really earn the money.

Here we go.

(Jerry exhales) Oh, yeah.

That's awesome.

Oh, man.

- This is the composter.

It's got three different stages down below, the upper one, the middle one, and then they drop it to the bottom one.

I asked them what that stuff looks like, and he says, "Well, it looks like that black gold you get at Home Depot."

So they work, it's just this one is taxed.

(Jerry grunts) (Jerry sighs) (Jerry panting) Voila.

(water sloshing) You see the river change over years.

People change.

The seasons change.

Beginning of the season, everything down here is green.

By the end of the season, everything's brown.

(water sloshing) It's a magical place.

This river runs through the middle of the desert and it's just a green stripe running through it.

(water sloshing) It just feeds the soul.

You can't really go faster, can't really go slower.

The river sets the pace.

(water sloshing) I care about this river.

I want it to keep going.

And my goal is to keep doing it.

As long as the contract is there and it doesn't get much worse than it is now, I'm all in until I can't do it anymore.

And that'll be a sad day (water sloshing) for everybody else (laughs).

(no audio) (no audio) - Great people just doing their thing in their own Northwesty way.

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