"Better yet, acquire a taste for natural mtn water. It's generally way cleaner than city tap water anyway."
Sounds risky to me. That beaver dam or decaying deer carcass up stream can do you in.
"Better yet, acquire a taste for natural mtn water. It's generally way cleaner than city tap water anyway."
Sounds risky to me. That beaver dam or decaying deer carcass up stream can do you in.
Good grief man! Isn't giving up the corks enough?Originally Posted by paulr
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
The last trip I made at 80 with my small format (4x5 Norma) was uphill on the way in and uphill on the way out. So there is hope, Drew.
It's risky, but it seems the risks have been overstated over the last couple of decades. It was right when I started getting serious about mountain stuff as a teenager when the APB on giardia went out; I was suddenly told by people like guides and NOLS instructors that all surface water in the U.S. should be considered tainted. The culprits were alternately high mountain voles, livestock, and other humans.
A few years ago a study showed that giardia, campylobacter, and cryptosporidium were actually quite rare, and that much of the intestinal woes of backpackers could be blamed on good old fashioned bad sanitation. They found that a typical campsite replicated the conditions of 3rd world squalor quite convincingly, with predictable results (e.coli and norovirus outbreaks, lots of puking and diarrhea). The solution is getting people to wash their hands and dishes.
But the risks of giardia and and some other microbes still exist. And it's sometimes hard to predict the risk factors for a given area, unless you've studied the watershed and know what goes on upstream. Considering the stakes (a dramatically wrecked vacation, for one) and how small and easy and effective the filters are today, there's little reason not to use one.
Totally agree with what you say, Paul. There are variety of nasty microbes in them hills, particularly when you have sheep up in the higher plateaus. About 2-3 weeks ago I actually witnessed people filling up bottles of "fresh" water in AK...with Dall Sheep up above. I'll take my chances with bottled water, thank you.
Les
Citation please? This smacks of rumor to me but would happily be proved wrong.
Wayne, here's a link to a study to help address your question:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10737847
The title of the study:
"Risk of giardiasis from consumption of wilderness water in North America: a systematic review of epidemiologic data."
And the main take-away:
CONCLUSIONS:
Published reports of confirmed giardiasis among outdoor recreationalists clearly demonstrate a high incidence among this population. However, the evidence for an association between drinking backcountry water and acquiring giardiasis is minimal. Education efforts aimed at outdoor recreationalists should place more emphasis on handwashing than on water purification. Further studies should attempt to separate the specific risk factor of drinking water from backcountry sources from other behaviors among this group that may contribute to the risk.
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I've heard the "gloom and doom" sales pitch for water filters at the flagship REI here in Seattle, and one should take it with a wry smile & grain of salt. However, I still think the negligible weight of a good, compact water filter (e.g., by PUR) makes it worth carrying for the extra protection it offers. One should erase it from their "not necessary" list, and consider adding it to the "essentials."
Giardia is fairly predictable. Drink snowmelt. Never drink from streams subject to car camping or crowds. When in doubt, filter. Be above any beaver ponds. My
success rate after hundreds of backpack trips, most of them without even bothering to carry a filter, has been 100%. This includes desert canyon trips - drink from seeps naturally filtered through sandstone rather than streams (where pesticides from farms above might be the bigger risk). In the high Sierra itself a lot of studies have been done. Except for a few predictable touristy spots, esp in Yosemite, the risk of giardia has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, at the tent camp along the High Sierra Trail in Sequoia, they discovered the creek water running into the filtered cistern had far less bacteria in general than the cistern itself. And gosh, if people really knew where their bottle drinking water came from!!!! Dead cattle and coyote poop are in every source of urban drinking water. That's why these have treatment facilities and chlorine. But that doesn't efficiently get rid of things like pesticides. Mtn water is generally far safer. But what the
hell do I know - I grew up drinking from cattle troughs (the inlet pipe, obviously, not the trough itself). Better than dying of thirst. Never got sick. Not even once.
I always carry my MSR salination device which they recently discontinued for some reason (I think it's only because they lost the government contract which helped lower the price to acceptable levels for the retail market) which is the size of a small flashlight, it does require batteries but they last forever and just needs some sea salt and a cap full of the taking from stream water to operate.
Works great.
However I've also drank from many streams without it, just don't drink stagnant water, drink from where the stream is heavily flowing and you're fine 98% of the time.
I'm not saying be stupid, I'm saying if you're without a purifier and it's that or severe dehydration, drink only fast flowing water not the side pool areas of a river where the bad stuff thrives.
One way to get sick in the desert is simply due to a mineral content you're not accustomed to. Drink small amounts frequently without chugging it; and it also helps
to take water with food. The people I know who seem to keep getting giardia are Yosemite climber types, who come off some dome up around Tuolumne and drink
from a trailside stream. Given the fact that about a thousand times more people hike in that vicinity than in the high Sierra in general, that might not be the best
idea.
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