Lightest water treatment/filtration

Jessie, your statement of having drunk from clear looking sources for ten years and never having gotten sick is what is called "anecdotal evidence"; it is basically irrelevant and meaningless. It has about the same value as testimonials for weight loss programs in tabloid "newspapers". Further, I suspect that if you were to pick up a case of amoebic dysentery, for example, you would radically change your views.

Now, if you had participated in an experiment with many others, you would have been one datum in a meaningful data base. A valid experiment might have been as follows: you might have been chosen as one member of a randomly selected group matched with another similarly selected group. One of the groups would have drunk treated water as part of their normal hiking activities, the other untreated. The incidence of water borne illness in the two groups would have been quantified. If the group drinking untreated water got more disease than the treated water group, ACCORDING TO RIGOROUS STATISTICAL TESTS, then we have a reportable fact. So far as I am aware, this sort of experiment has never been done.

Basically, all you can say is that you have never been sick, insofar as you know, from drinking the water you have drunk. But, that is not an observation that can be extrapolated to the entire backpacking population.

For those chest-thumpers out there who are claiming to be able to go vast distances on a liter of water, you are probably actually saying that you survived, say, 20 miles on a liter of water maybe once in the past. At least in this part of the world, anyone planning a multi-day hike on such a water regime would save themselves and the SAR folks a lot of trouble by just shooting themselves in the parking lot.

This has gotten way off topic. At this point anyone reading the post is going to have to wade through a bunch of argumentative replies. Water management will vary by location and user, period. Just because you need to carry 5 liters in a dry area like the Southwest doesn't mean you need to carry 5 liters on the AT.

Mmm, the thread *was* more interesting when people were discussing treatment options or techniques rather than arguing about whether people who choose not to treat water are nuts.

Yep. Back on topic, the lightest option is always going to be no treatment. You can't argue that fact. Whether or not you feel it's safe to do or not is a personal decision and irrelevant to the weight discussion. The next lightest option is likely chemicals or tablets if you don't account for carrying extra water that's undrinkable for a period of time. IMHO, if it's undrinkable, it should be accounted for as pack weight and not a consumable. That makes items like a Steripen lighter. Things such as group size and sharing can also affect your options.

"A steripen takes ~ 90 secs for 1 liter. How is that not faster than 30 mins?"

That's true, the Steripen is faster, I wasn't aware it's that fast.

I will point out that I rarely ever carry more than 1 to 1.5 Liters either, and I have never waited at the water source while treating my water, so I don't see how you can claim to be carrying less water weight than me.

You pointed out that it is possible to survive 20+ stretches on a Liter of water, and I agree. So in that scenario, the only way I would be carrying more water than you is if you drink your 1 Liter within the first 30 minutes after treatment, and then have no more water to ration for the rest of the 20 mile stretch. In which case, I would have carried more water than you for only 30 minutes.
Basically, whether you ration your water to last you 30 minutes or less, or I wait 30 minutes for my treatment and then immediately chug the whole Liter, we both end up carrying about the same amount of water.

In looking for something that is light, don't forget that water weighs more than what the filtration will. With this in mind, I think a Sawyer water bottle filter seems to be a good choice. http://sawyerproducts.com/SP149.htm With this, one can camel up at a stream and drink as much as they like. Then, they can pack how ever much 'dirty' water they need in a platy 2L for the haul to the next source, filling the Sawyer filter bottle up with 'dirty' water from the platy as needed. I have not tried this setup but I would certainly like to since waiting for other methods has become a pain to me and an extra ounce or so (don't forget you would carry the container anyway) seems justified. I think I would also be more inclined to stop at smaller sources that I may not have used before, simply because I already had water on me. Has anyone else tried this setup?

-jim

Note: By 'dirty', I simply mean untreated.

First of all not treating water is not a treatment at all. The OP wants to know what is the lightest water treatment. So you are just posting that terrible advice to someone who didn't want to hear it in the first place.

Second of all:

What is it about being careful about treating water that makes you think I am scared? I would call it cautious and prepared.

Bragging about drinking untreated water and how easily you could deal with a sickness caused by it sounds like nothing but bravado to me.

And finally:

The problem with some, not all but some of you on this forum is you think about nothing but having the lightest pack. Safety means nothing to many of you. The other problem is I doubt many of you actually know how to take care of yourselves in a emergency. One fellow stated on here that he had to use his stove to light a fire. You have no survival skills and I know you have no basic survival gear with you. Your just hoping nothing bad happens.

This is my last post on this thread but I will leave you with a little quote I like:

"If you fail to prepare you are preparing to fail"

Benjamin Franklin

Here is an excellent article on drinking untreated water in the mountains.

(link)
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/sipping_water_drinking_untreated_backcountry_water.html

I feel strongly that the skill and decision making about how to drink un-treated water is something that can be learned. I teach it.

The act of drinking water in the mountains can be a richly rewarding experience, and I worry that too many people feel that it is impossible to drink water without a tool or a chemical.

The person drinking does need to take on some personal responsability about his (or her) choices.

(another link)
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/decision_making_lightweight_pack.html

Also – I did add that iodine treatment is, by far the lightest treatment. It is a tried and true form of water treatment, used by NOLS for over 40 years.

Personally – – I treat water sometimes, when I feel that there may be a chance of water-born illness. I usually use Aqua-Mira, because of the lack of taste. I have not used a filter in 15 years.

Iodine or chlorine dioxide would be the lightest IF you choose to treat your water. Not treating my water is not bravado, but a reflection of the places I go backpacking which are, by and large, unaffected by big blooms of bad things. I have never carries water treatment in over 30 years, including in the bad old days before I discovered UL, so it's nothing to do with weight. The water I drink *does not need treatment*.

For instance about 15 years ago Giardia finally arrived in this country, and was quickly spread by possums and livestock. But even when there is a countable number of Giardia, it tends to run in the parts per billion. It takes a minimum of 10 parasites in one drink to cause Giardia infection, so statistically I would need to drink 10,000 litres of water before I *might* get an infection. The benefits of treatment simply do not outweigh the negatives.

Now, if I were gonna hike the AT, I am pretty certain I would choose treat or boil all my water. I would use Aqua-Mira for the preferred taste, not because it's the lightest, and I would have two water bottles…one with treated water and one in the process of being treated. But if weight were my biggest priority then I would choke down the idodine treated stuff (or potassium permanganate works well too).

Mike,
Why do you use iodine tablets instead of chlorine tablets? I can't imagine they would be lighter. Do iodine tablets treat the water more effectively? I use chlorine tablets because of lack of taste but also because I don't know if iodine tablets have any advantages over chlorine tablets.

> Do iodine tablets treat the water more effectively?
Ordinary iodine, not really, but pentavalent iodine as in Coghlans iodine tablets, yes, significantly more effective.

> I use chlorine tablets because of lack of taste
Iodine tablets have no discernable taste either. I am sure some people will challenge this statement, but it is true. What confuses everyone is the distinctive smell from iodine: it confuses the taste buds into thinking they can taste something. You can test this for yourself by blocking your nose completely and doing a taste test. BTDT.

Cheers

Roger,
That's interesting. I've read that using iodine over long periods of time is supposed to have health concerns. Is there any truth to this?

I have never treated my water and I have never been sick from drink untreated water my trips but I normally walk in remote pristine areas in Australia.

I have been wondering how many people on BPL have actually been ill from drinking water on the trail and if they have what proof do they have that it was the water.

Here is a link to an article that some might find interesting.

http://erikschlimmer.com/pdf/GiardiaMyth-Buster.pdf

Tony

Thanks for that article link Tony. It nicely summarises the *facts*. I might add that Giardia only really thrives in running water, so rain water as found in water tanks from run off (often found at huts in NZ), is usually also safe as it is still water.

I've had one bout with Giardia that resulted from drinking unfiltered/untreated water from a Boundary Water Canoe Area trip along the Canadian/Minnesota border. As it turns out, I had no symptoms during the 5 day trip but onset of symptoms followed my return to "civilization". After about 2 weeks of symptoms convinced me it wasn't a "temporary" phenomenon, I visited my doctor who prescribed the appropriate meds. Turns out he was a fellow canoeist with some first-hand practical experience with Giardia to go along with his medical training. He also informed me that Giardia is also somewhat hard to confirm in the lab from stool samples. In other words, a negative lab result doesn't mean you don't have it.

It wasn't life-threatening (in the short term), but it was unsettling. It would have definitely been a memorable experience in the back-country!! As it was, I was careful to remain close to a bathroom facility during the course of the symptoms.

I have been diagnosed with giardia a few years ago. Due to the timing of symptom onset, it was a 100% sure bet I picked it up from drinking tap water in Honolulu. So now I'm thinking I should treat all suspect tap water, but not worry about pure mountain streams…..

I've also had food poisoning in the back country. When symptoms onset within a short (3-24 hours) time, it almost certainly is NOT giardia. Fortunately the bout of poisoning passed within 12 hours, but what a heck of a 12 hours THAT was.

I had a rousing case of amoebic dysentery from water I drank in the southern Appalachians. I was in the Army at the time and was a medic with formal training in preventative medicine (You know, water treatment, field waste disposal, that sort of thing). I don't feel that I was a particularly effective preventative medicine specialist at that time. Unless our food was contaminated, which is unlikely, it pretty much had to have been the water.

The timing of the onset meant that I had to have drunk the contaminated water several days after the field exercise started. There were six other cases besides mine and all started about the same time. I took a lot of gas from the others about this; talk about wanting to trade their medic in on a better model and such.

Anyhow, other than a severe case of influenza I had in 1968, that is about as sick as I have ever been or ever want to be.

We had worked our way through an area of National Forest, I think, where moonshiners had been reported to have had stills in the recent past and we had drunk from reportedly uncontaminated streams. The suspicion was that the moonshiners lack of sanitation probably had lead to localized stream water contamination.

I also picked up a case of bacillary dysentery from stream water in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco but that is a different story involving above-average foolishness on my part. We get too soon old and too late smart!

So how cautious are you guys? What about swimming? I have never been swimming without getting water in my mouth.

Do you use treated water to wash your face?

BTW I'm sure Chris is talking about only ever CARRYING a liter of water not only drinking a liter a day. Big difference. If water sources are good I carry NO water.

I have had amoebic dysentery twice. Awful. Both times were in *developing* countries and had nothing to do with clear mountain stream water (more likely some fruit, vegetable, pretend bottled water or just plain bad food prep hygeine). I now carry metronidazole whenever I travel overseas!

Hi Sid

> iodine over long periods of time is supposed to have health concerns
Technically speaking this is true.
But what is not stated is how much iodine and for how long.

There are people in a region of China (I think) whose local drinking water is naturally iodated, to a level way above what iodine pills would give you. This causes them some small goitre problems over their life time. Now, compared to their iodine intake, what you might get from normal walking practice is … miniscule – or microscopic.

There is the usual generic warning to pregnant mothers of course. It's never been proven to be a problem, it's just customary.

We used Coghlans iodine pills for many years without any problems. Note that I treated our drinking water when doubtful, but not always, and did not treat our cooking water – why bother?

Cheers

I can most certainly taste iodine. I can even taste it when just a dusting of Micropur is put into my water bottle also.

Now, I live in the middle of the heartland here where most of the water has chemical run off from pesticides in the fields and there is also a good chance that there is run off from fecal matter of a variety of livestock or the town about 13 miles up. I don't drink off the small lakes man made or otherwise because they are quite foul but the little streams and creeks seem to be okay most of the time. Much better tasting than the tap even though I live on top of one of the best aquifers in the US. I will sometimes filter the water through a bandana or other such type media and/or sometimes boil it out and about. Never really any problems yet. Never been sick off of it. Maybe it has to do something with the mountains? Sometimes I will just stick a bit of gelatin in the water to drop some of the stuff out.

But then again I really don't exert myself on my hiking and usually only go through 2-3 liters of water a day. That and I usually eat just about everything and had food poisoning five times in my life (three times from one ex-girlfriend, one to the point where I was hospitalized). Maybe I am just getting used to the stuff?

I'd like to chime in on the iodine question.

It has been my choice for water filtration for many years. It is light and convenient and there is no taste.

Huh? No taste?

Yes, the 'taste'/smell disappears completely after adding the smallest pinch of ascorbic acid (vitamin c) powder. Without the vitamin C, I agree, it tastes pretty horrible and I wouldn't want to be drinking it over the course of a trip. However with the vit C powder added, the taste isn't masked… it vanishes (as does the iodine colour). You can drink from a mountain stream and it tastes like drinking from a mountain stream!

Of course, you have to wait 30 min or so for the iodine to work, and even then it will not kill all types of nasties. So it depends what you suspect may be in your water. However it is an excellent backup alternative since the pills are light and easy to use. It's nice to just pop a tablet in a bottle of water and then forget about it (actually it helps to give it a swirl about 5 minutes later). No messing about with measuring, batteries, filtering etc etc. But like I said, it only works for some nasties. In addition, a very small proportion of people may react negatively to iodine I believe (someone here on BPL has described their reaction and it didn't sound good!).

Anyway, I'm thinking of trying a steripen simply because it will treat just about every nasty which could be in the water. If I find it too annoying to sit around for 2 minutes stirring and fiddling then I'll go back to iodine and take my chances.

But if you haven't tried adding ascorbic acid powder (you can buy in at a chemist/drug store) to iodine tablets… give it a go!

I'm also an advocate of iodine tablets and used them for years after Giardia started making headlines, and didn't really mind the taste all that much. Previous to that I drank straight out of Montana streams for 25-30 years without a problem. More recently I use a 24oz water bottle with a built-in filter made by Bota of Boulder; the filter is good for about 100 qts and then should be replaced. Only about 3 bucks…cheap!

However I only use the tabs or filter at low elevations or high use areas, areas that are likely to have lots of dog traffic. One study linked blooms of giardia to the prevalence of dogs, which as it turns out are carriers of Giardia. So before I drink straight out of a stream I make sure that I'm far, far from the crowds or in an area that prohibits dogs. Also, I have located several high elevation springs and tank up right at the source, yum! Happy trails!