Today I learned you can have Giardia in your body, but exhibit no symptoms. This makes sense of course, but isn’t something I considered when reading anecdotes of people who say they don’t treat their water and never get sick. It might not be the drink, but the drinker.
In any event, last week I was a mile or two into a planned half day trail run to a relatively obscure alpine basin when I realized I grabbed the soft flask that had the regular cap, not the filter cap I intended to bring! 500 ml for several hours in the sun… Oh well, there will be plenty of delicious, cold clean water everywhere once I get up high I told myself. So, I filled my bottle above treeline, from a trickling south-facing stream below a steep rock face still holding snow. As it emerged from a talus slope, I scooped it up and drank heartily. No symptoms yet ;)
