Initial Report

Initial Report
All-Terrain Wonder Wash All Purpose Soap

October 10, 2005

Manufacturer: All-Terrain
Manufacturer URL: http://www.allterrainco.com/
MSRP: $3.49 US
Listed Weight: N/A
Tested Weight: 5 oz/142 g

Tester Name: Colleen Porter
Gender: female
Age: 30
Height: 5'8"/1.73 m
Weight: 140 lb/64 kg
Email address: tarbubble at yahoo dot com
Location: Orange County, CA

Backpacking History: I’ve been backpacking for 10 years, usually with my husband. We used to be heavyweights, but having children forced us to go ultralight, and now on my own my 3-season base weight hovers around 13 lb/6 kg. On family trips the weight usually doubles. I just had my second child in June of this year and he has already been on his first backpacking trip. Our 3-season backpacking haunts are the San Gabriels, The Santa Anas, the Sierra Nevada, and the Grand Canyon, and winters find me in the Mojave and Colorado deserts.

Product Description: An all-natural, peppermint-scented liquid soap. I am testing it in a 4 oz/118 ml plastic squeeze bottle with a "press to open" style lid. Ingredients are purified water, sodium coco sulphate, coco betaine, coco amide, peppermint oil, vegetable glycerine, sodium chloride (sea salt), olive oil, citric acid, tea tree oil and food-grade caramel colorant. It is slightly amber-tinted.

Field Conditions: Over the next four months I am very likely to visit both the low and high deserts of the southwestern region of the United States, possibly the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, plus the Santa Ana and San Gabriel mountains. Terrain will include sand, mud, and a wide variety of rock. Maybe even snow. Trails will range from wide, well-maintained thoroughfares to water-damaged and neglected, level to steep, forest-clad to exposed. We are planning four or more nights of camping this month in a local park and in Joshua Tree National Park, will pack into the waterless Mecca Hills in November, and possibly into the Orocopia or Whipple Mountains in December. Once the snow falls, we will head to the high mountains to try snow-camping. Temperatures will likely range from 95 F/35 C to at or just below freezing. Weather should mostly be dry, unless we are blessed with snow & rain within the next four months.

Initial Impressions: It smells nice. Not an overpoweringly minty scent, but a nice and vaguely sweet smell. Since I luckily happened to have a dirty child on hand, I immediately put the Wonder Wash to work. It's a very liquid soap, not at all thick or viscous. It flows well and squeezes out of the bottle quite easily. It does not seem to be a very concentrated soap. It did not form a thick lather, but I was able to wash that dirty child quite satisfactorily with only a few squirts of soap. Since the bottle claims that Wonder Wash is mild enough for use as a shampoo, I used it for that as well. As a shampoo, it was very nice to work with - the lather was just right. After rinsing and drying my newly clean child, I could not detect any lingering peppermint scent, even in his hair. It does indeed seem to be a very mild and gentle soap.

Next I used it on myself, as both a body soap and a shampoo. As a soap, it did just what it was supposed to. Although it did tingle a bit on some of the more sensitive and delicate body parts (the peppermint oil, to be sure), it was very mild and did not irritate any of the number of small nicks and abrasions on my skin. Then I shampooed. I have much more hair than my previously mentioned child, plus my hair is, ahem, "chemically treated," so I was afraid that the Wonder Wash would strip out too much of the natural oils and leave my hair dry and stiff. I used only the Wonder Wash and did not apply any conditioner or styling products to my hair while it dried. I was very happy to discover that the Wonder Wash is a fine shampoo and left my hair feeling very nice, quite a different experience than I have had washing my hair with other backcountry-marketed liquid soaps.

Test Plan

Many of the questions I had about the Wonder Wash have already been answered, but I will present them here and then expand on my only remaining concerns.

Does it smell pleasant, or will it be overwhelmingly pepperminty? It smells very nice, not too strong at all.

Does it clean effectively? So far it cleans normal, at-home grubbiness quite well. Since it is not a highly concentrated soap, I look forward to seeing if it will be an effective wash before putting our dirty, nasty feet back inside the car. Washing one's feet after a hike is such a pleasure.

How much water will I need to wash well and rinse well? This will be better determined by field testing. Sometimes water in the wilds is a precious commodity, especially in the desert, so easily soluble soaps are a bonus.

If I use it as a shampoo, will my hair feel nasty, dried out and stiff (like it usually does when I wash it with soap)? No, it's very nice as a shampoo.

The sea salt preservative makes me wonder if it will sting like crazy if I have any abrasions or cuts on my body. So far, on my scabbed-over and very small skin injuries, I've noticed no stinging from the Wonder Wash. We'll see if it's the same for any larger scrapes I may get during the field testing.

Will it strip off my skin’s natural protective oil layer, leaving my skin too dry and vulnerable to chapping? Will the peppermint and tea tree oils help me keep “hiker’s funk” at bay? So far it seems to be a very mild and non-drying soap, but once again field testing will have to determine the answers to these questions. My softer city water may produce very different results than the water I find in my wilderness travels.

My thanks to both All Terrain and BGT for the privilege of testing this product.

Read more reviews of All Terrain gear
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