OK, onto H2O treatments . . .

[Jonathan]

Happened to bump into one esteemed member of this site last night and put a face to a name. Some resemblance to her avatar, although the west wall of the Jolly Roger in Ballard was a poor substitute for a stylized Tuscan landscape. Among other topics, we discussed filters. I don't filter and drink deeply from most sources I encounter. Have done so since I became an outdoor geek as a teenager back in the '70s. If the source appears questionable, I might add some iodine tablets. If I'm feeling particularly genteel, I'll extent my right pinky at a rakish angle and pop in some powdered ascorbic acid to neutralize the iodine taste.

 

So who filters, who dosen't, etc . . . Any good water-born illness stories out there?

 

Jonathan Pryce

[salbrecher]

I Don't filter or iodine and have never been sick.

[fleblebleb]

I hate the iodine taste and think it's silly to have to carry water around for > 30 minutes when there are creeks everywhere, it's heavy and bulky... But I'm not brave enough to not treat. So I'm kind of sold on having one filter in the group.

[erik]

i dont filter either.....filters are a waste of money and weight....

 

you bring pillz as back up, so why double up on stuff??

 

i rend not to treat water at all, unless it is in a heavy use area or i know caveman has been there recently.

 

if you dont like idonie taste then use the netraulizer.....or emergen'c packets....

plus filters clog, they get the inside of your pack wet and use have to replace the filter portion of it and they are not always gauranteed to work

[allthumbs]

I use a MacKenzie squeeze bottle purifier. Fill, immediately drink, pour out excess and bash on.

[Gary_Yngve]

quote:

---

Originally posted by erik:

i dont filter either.....filters are a waste of money and weight....

 

you bring pillz as back up, so why double up on stuff??

 

if you dont like idonie taste then use the netraulizer.....or emergen'c packets....

plus filters clog, they get the inside of your pack wet and use have to replace the filter portion of it and they are not always gauranteed to work

---

Maybe it's more of a psychological thing... if the water from a stream is fast/clear enough not to clog the filter, it's probably safe to drink. But I like the filter because it gives instant feedback. You don't have to wait 30 minutes for the iodine to do its thing. You don't have to carry that water around for 30 minutes. It's nice to pump a liter, chug, and move on, carrying no water with you until the next break.

[erik]

well i try to plan ahead and take care of my water issues before i run out...i bonk and i bonk hard so i attempt to avoid it........and i dont always use the pill(hehe) anyways

[Jonathan]

I know there are some spectacularly nasty bugz lurking out there, but I've never become ill. I wonder if there really is a problem or if we're just more sensitive (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you) to the issue than we were years ago. Obviously some sources are worse than others, say, glacial runoff from the popular, heavily beshitten routes on Mt. Rainier. Most of the Cascades, however, are still gloriously empty. 10% of the places get 90% of the use. You can always find pristine locales if you avoid the canonical destinations, especially if you're just even a little off-season. So what's really changed?

[Greg_W]

It's not necessarily the human impact, it's the animal shit that gets in the water and will make you sick. I pill it all, and use the other pills that take away the iodine taste.

 

Note to Erik: Be consistent with the pill or you will end up just another single mother in Tacoma.

[ScottP]

Having spent the better part of two weeks woofing out of both ends due to amoebic dysentary while visiting the Canadian Rockies in the early 80's, I take this philosophy with me into the hills:

Above tree line and out of the way of major bivy areas, I don't treat. Below tree line and/or near bivy areas, I do. This is not hard and fast; I also consider the time of year, earlier being better than later.

 

I'm curious:

How many of you have ended up with giardia or other protista-related maladies?

[Jonathan]

The animals, true, we all know that bears do take reading material and a cuppa into the woods. Personally, I'd like to blame the marmots with beady eyes and their horrid, yellow, dare I say English, teeth.

 

Factoring out human contamination, I still wonder if more folks are actually getting sick or we just assume nowadays that water is suspect, kinda of a cultural shift in our thinking about water.

 

Jonathan Pryce

[erik]

jonathan it is called tv induced wussiness....

 

[chucK]

Check this out

long scholarly-sounding paper on Giardia

 

 

For meself, I hardly ever filter, though I did this last weekend camping with my 70+ year old Dad and my 6 year old daughter on a decidedly green river that ran through an established car-camping campground upstream of us.

 

I use Iodine more often, with vitamin C tablets to neutralize it.

 

Most of the time I just drink straight from the stream as long as I figure I'm above popular people areas. I don't think I'd drink untreated water from a lake, too many sources of possible contamination.

 

Anyway, I've never had Giardisis. My son did though, when he was about 3 years old, probably picked up in his daycare.

[mtnrgr]

I have always filtered, even though it takes a week or so for the shits to hit. I've also used bleach for purification: 2 drops per qt. It doesn't taste half bad. I used only bleach water for 5 days, no problems.

[Geek_the_Greek]

When I'm worried, I use the Pristine 2-step drops thing (sold in Canada, haven't seen it in the US). It makes a chlorine dioxide solution, as used for decades in a number of European communities. Totally safe (way more than iodine), and tasteless if you do it right (otherwise tastes a bit like pool water). Simpler and more effective than filters (does viruses too), but does take 15 minutes to work.

[allthumbs]

My next trip I'm just bringing beer.

[Off_White]

On a couple of occasions I've been able to pump water out of some little depression I'd never be able to fill a bottle from, but they're heavy and a hassle to work. Its been 30 years since I started backpacking and drinking backcountry water and never had any ill effects. I have used a filter in a somewhat inconsistent manner for the last decade because I've known a couple people who came down with giardia and it was a very ugly picture.

[JayB]

Always filter - knew a kid who got a pretty bad case of Giardia on a backpacking trip after drinking from a clear, remote stream flowing ever so rapidly through the Pasayten and ended up 25lbs lighter after the parasites were through with him three weeks later. It's just one case, but waiting 30 minutes for the iodine to work its magic or packing along a filter doesn't seem like such a big deal in comparison.

[cj001f]

"How many of you have ended up with giardia or other protista-related maladies?"

 

I've never come down with Giardia - I have had Schigella from the woods however. And that was nasty, very nasty. It was not passed on from the water though - I have a trip companion to thank Because of that "experience" I spend much more time washing dishes in camp than worrying about the water (at least deep in the woods)

 

Carl

[freeclimb9]

This seems to be a semi-annual topic.

The water problem comes from shit: human and other. And the viruses, amoebas, protozoa, and bacteria in the turds.

I filter if I've got a filter. I also use Potable Aqua, or similar product (eg. Microdyne, which is available in Mexico), or drink untreated water.

It's not always possible to predict contamination. Turdlettes can even be inadvertently consumed from melting snow.

BTW, one shortcoming of water treatments (as opposed to filtering) is the failure to nail cryptosporidium.

I've had amoebic dysentary, and it's an effective weight-loss program. But very messy. I got sick while traveling in central Africa, and the source was from fruit. I peeled some mangoes with my teeth in african style. I often drank the water there untreated; I asked locals if the water was safe, and they always knew. If you don't have health insurance, or even a doctor around, you're pretty cautious. Springs and wells were typically safe, though sometimes we were warned to boil it first. That's when the handy tablets came out.

[mattp]

I think some people are more susceptible to intestinal problems than others. I pretty much drink from just about any stream I encounter in the mountains, unless it is from an obviously contaminated source such as immediately downstream from a crowded camping area or something. Doing this, I've never gotten sick from drinking from streams in the U.S. and Canada (I have gotten sick in Asia). However, I've had friends who are much more careful about what they drink and who have gotten very sick.

[nolanr]

Iodine tablets most of the time, I'm amune to the taste. 30 minutes? 20 minutes seems like plenty. Sometimes I'll drink it w/out filtering or treating if it seems pretty obvious it will be pure, like straight off a glacier in a remote area.