My personal record for going without a shower is 11 days. In some groups this statement is met with gasps and wide eyes, in others it just gets the competition started. Feats of filth may be bragging rights in certain circles, but there’s no denying that a hot shower at the end of a fun, dirty day is high on the list of life’s simple pleasures. 

The last time I headed to Utah I took the back way out of Canyonlands National Park to take a nighttime swim in the Colorado River, which took care of my bathing chores for the four days I was in and around Moab. 

This April I headed to Utah again, this time for a week-long walkabout, most of which would include my brother, whom I was meeting in Salt Lake City. Planning to camp on public land exclusively, and not knowing what water access would be like, one of the pieces of kit I wanted to add to my setup was a shower. The “overland” thing to do is to build (or buy) a PVC shower that mounts to your roof rack to make the general public aware that, not only do you  go on sweet adventures, you’re also handy. In my usual pre-trip frenzy of packing and obsessing over things I didn’t need last trip and probably wouldn’t need on this one, I decided some sort of shower was a must-have. 

While taking a quick look at what other people have built and thinking about how I could pressurize the shower with my new 12V air compressor, I stumbled on the Advanced Elements Summer Shower. I’ve had an Advanced Elements inflatable kayak for several years and have been pleased with it’s quality, so I figured I would trust the company once again. And, for $35, it was probably less than half of the price I would have put into a PVC tube shower, not to mention time spent figuring how to mount it to the truck, etc. Soon an Amazon van was pulling up in front of the house, and I unboxed my new treasure.

The concept is pretty simple: a water bag, with a sturdy handle, with one clear side to allow sunlight to pass though the water and be absorbed by the black interior panel on the other side of the bag, heating the water in between. A short hose with a head that is pulled out to turn on the flow completes the moving parts. According to Advanced Elements’ product page there are actually three layers on the black side: an insulator, reflector, and solar panel layer. I’m sure that’s true, but I didn’t cut the bag apart to look. The shower can be had in 2.5, 3, and 5 gallon sizes. I chose the 3 gallon and it seems small enough to take on backpacking trips, while also holding enough water for a decent shower. Stowed in a pocket on the shower is a small mirror, which I suppose some might find useful. The simple directions with the shower recommend hanging it with a sturdy rope. There is limited adjustability in the handle, and I found that a small ratchet strap worked great to throw over a tree branch and adjust to the right height.

The first thing I did after unboxing the shower was fill it up for a production test. Just like filling up a hydration bladder, it takes some finesse to fill the bag and screw the cap back on without also squishing a bunch of water out. After getting the shower as full as I could at my flower bed spigot I hung it on my fence, slid the shower head nozzle open, and set a stopwatch. The water slowed from a shower-head-like stream to a trickle at 5:50. This was plenty of time split between two of us, and would be a luxuriously long outdoor shower for one person. The classic trick of wet down, lather, and rinse will stretch the water even further if your usual shower method has multiple steps. With laboratory testing completed, I rolled the shower up and stowed it in the truck with the rest of my camp gear. 

Even with the option to shower, we only ended up using iit once in the five days of the trip that we were completely away from a shower. After a long day of bicycling into Zion National Park, climbing to the top of Angel’s Landing, and replacing my GX’s rear suspension air bag in an O’Reilly’s parking lot, we decided it was a perfect night to find a great campsite and deploy the shower. Unfortunately, we didn’t remember to toss the shower on the roof until an hour or so before we got to camp late in the day, so the water was only luke-warm. Awesome views, some tailgate Tika Masala on the camp stove, and some cold beers still made for a spa-like experience. 

A few months after getting home to Idaho, I finally tossed it on top of the truck for a test of what kind of water temperatures I could expect. I started the test at 1:06  p.m. on a sunny, hot day, with the bag at full capacity with 62º tap water. With outside temperatures rising from 90 to 95º fahrenheit during the test, my hourly temperature readings, taken with a hardware store laser temperature gun,  were as follows: 

1 hour: 68º F

2 hour: 96º F

4 hour: 110º F

Temperatures were initially high as my laser hit the back panel, so I shook the bag a little to get the water temperature equalized. At the final reading I also stuck in a kitchen probe thermometer to confirm the 110 degree reading, which it did. The temperature indicator on the bag also illuminated the 110 degree number. The chart on the manufacturer’s page indicated 3 hrs in direct sunlight would get you to 110 degrees, so it performed exactly as advertised. 110 degrees is plenty hot, and a quick google reveals that the average preferred shower temperature in America is 105. So, even just a couple of hours will give you a pleasantly warm camp shower. 

The only thing I would change about the shower is the nozzle. The push/pull valve works fine when showering, but it seems more likely to get snagged on other gear and accidentally turned on than perhaps a quarter-turn or other style of valve. No biggie, but could result in some dry stuff getting wet. It’s also simple and unlikely to fail. 

On the list of things I just had to have before a trip, the Summer Shower ranks as one of my favorite purchases. If a hot shower is one of the comforts of home you miss on the road, and you want a simple, cheap solution, this could be your answer. 

-Jared