February 6 Drinking water
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
Whew! It’s been a hectic over-a-week here at our house, which is why I haven’t posted anything for awhile. We were organizing and running what’s called an “Awana Grand Prix”–it’s like the Boy Scouts’ Pinewood Derby–little 7 ” wooden cars running down a LOOOOOONG track to see who’s made the fastest car. We had all ages from 2 years old through adults competing, and the venue was in a local teen hangout called The Phoenix Theater. It’s a very cool place, with every surface covered by colorful paintings, plus there is an indoor skateboard park. Local garage bands (and some bigger names, too) go there to perform. Best of all, it was free, because the guy who owns the place was in Awana when he was a kid, and was very happy to help us out!
Bill was sure his car (black with silver trim; very sleek) was going to win the adult races, but he came in second. Oh well.
Besides the Grand Prix, the training/coaching sessions for other Awana competitions have really ramped up, and I am gone from home for hours, working with kids ages all the way from 5 to 17!
Add in training for the PCT, and that’s why I haven’t posted for awhile! I now carry 14 pounds on every hike or walk, and Bill is at 19 pounds. We increase by a pound a week. It has pretty much been raining every day, or if not raining, it’s cloudy and cold and all the trails are very muddy. We are beginning to be a bit concerned about snow levels in the Sierras and the implications for our hike this year. We’ll see…..
Since all the hills and valleys around here are supersaturated, all the rain pretty much just runs off now instead of soaking in, so I thought that might be a good reason for me to lay out the conclusions Bill and I have come to about drinking water along the PCT.
Years ago, when we first started backpacking, we never bothered to treat our drinking water. We were careful about where we collected the water, and never had a problem. When we started taking our then 3 year old daughter along on our backpacking adventures (she had to walk on her own two feet and carry a tiny pack!!) we became concerned. A little person like her would not be able to handle something nasty in the water. So we started to bring a water treatment along which is no longer available. It had two steps–first to SUPER-chlorinate the water and let it sit a bit, then add some other stuff that neutralized the chlorine. The final product was safe, tasty water.
Eventually, our daughter grew up and was no longer interested in backpacking with us, so we went back to not treating our water. But as we began to plan for the PCT, we read people’s journals and how they were getting really sick along the trail from something in the water they drank. So after much debate over what to do, we got a water filter–the kind that you pump and pump and pump. It weighed about 14 oz. We dragged it along all through Southern California and dutifully filtered much of the water we came to. But oh man, it was TEDIOUS! And we remembered that the folks who got sick along the PCT had been filtering their water–guess it didn’t do them much good. So finally we said phooey, and sent the water filter home. We did all of the Sierras, northern California, Oregon and Washington with no water filter and no problems.
The water filter now sits in our garage collecting dust, and we are back to just being careful where and how we collect water AND also taking careful little steps to acclimate ourselves to handle drinking “surface water.” I think that Ray Jardine is right–the reason people were getting sick was not the water, it was probably because they were not properly cleaning their HANDS after “answering the call of nature” behind a bush along the trail. Ray said that before any longdistance hiking adventure, he and Jenny would drink very small amounts of creek water, etc. to help their bodies get used to coping with the resident bacteria, etc.
Our plan for the PCT in 2010 is to just hit the trail with no filter. We might carry a bit of iodine just in case, but even doing that is debatable. The only places where the water is often messed up are in southern California and parts of northern California where we were sharing the PCT with the cows.
We carry our water in Platypuses and use a drinking tube to suck water whenever we want it. If I had had to stop and get out a water bottle every time I wanted a drink, that would really have been a drag. I like being able to drink whenever I feel like it. The “Platys” travelled inside our packs in a “hydration sleeve”, where the water stayed cool in hot weather and did not get horribly cold in cold weather. The ONLY problem we had on the whole PCT was that the drinking tubes got a bit cruddy after about 3 months. If we’d had a proper brush to clean them, we could have done that, but we ended up just buying new ones when we got to a big enough town.
We each carried TWO of the 2 and a half liter bags, plus each of us had a 1 liter plastic bottle. We rarely carried a full load of water–we tried to calculate carefully and carry just enough to get to the next water, and if it was possible, to stop and cook at a water source so we didn’t have to carry cooking water. Now, I have to say this–reading some people’s journals about how much water they drank every day was sort of amazing to me. People were obsessing over drinking like a quart an hour, and were carrying backbreaking loads as a result. We tended to drink lots at water sources (I could blow down two quarts or more) and be less “guzzly” inbetween. There was only one day where “White Beard” and I went through a whole 6 liters each in less than a day, and that was when we were between Tehachapi and Walker Pass and it was horribly hot.
I have to say this also: most of the water in southern California tastes awful. Yuck! The rest of the trail is fine, and the water up in Oregon and Washington is awesomely good! We took to carrying several little tubes of Crystalite powder to use when the water tasted really horrible. Toss a tube of Crystalite lemonade powder in your southern California water, and it becomes OK instead of gagworthy.
But I have to say, I am SO looking forward to that awesome Washington and Oregon water!
Wow. You guys are brave. i don’t think I’d ever drink non-filtered water out of a stream again. I had a friend who did and he suffered terribly as a result. You NEVER know what’s going on upstream. I think the people who got sick even when they filtered somehow had contaminated their filter system. I’d rethink the no filter/treatment policy.
I also find that the Gatorade packets are pretty good if you get bored with the crystal light.
Oh my gosh it is wonderful to read your journals knowing all the experience you have already had. I love the idea of cooking in the middle of the day and spreading out your meals. It seems to break up the day better and makes you rest easier about bears.
Just wondering, since I have always used a filter, how are you “safe about where you collect your water?”
I am very excited to follow your journey this year!
So how do you deal with floaties in your water, sediment or all the other stuff?
Spent a lot of time in REI today and was told to use one of the pump filters to keep particles out of my water, didn’t buy one b/c I have an older ceramic filter one from years ago and was thinking to use it but if I can get away without it I would like to.
Right, I didn’t mention what we do about floaties. Well, I guess the bottom line is that we have learned to be fairly “floatie-tolerant.” When we started backpacking years ago, we used to go to Lassen National Park (one of the awesomest places there is!) and camp by some of the many beautiful lakes there. We always got our water right from the lake. We found that there were a lot less floaties and things if Bill swam partway out and collected water away from shore. BUT–some of the lakes had little tiny red bug things in their water, no matter how far out Bill swam. So we finally said, “Whatever!” and just drank the water anyway. So our policy now is generally to LOOK at the floaties and if they look pretty harmless (bits of leaf, for example) we don’t worry about them. If we are concerned, we look for another place to get some water.
Thruhiker extraordinaire, Billy Goat, has a good solution for floaties–he uses a piece of nylon stocking. He said he carries two of these, and they double as “arm warmers” for when it’s really cold. We are considering trying his method on our hike this year.
Several people have expressed concern about our not filtering/treating our water. Yes, we also have had friends who became horribly, horribly sick from giardia/whatever, and they are now terrified of drinking anything that’s even slightly questionable. The problem is, if all you ever do is drink santized water, your body never develops the capability of dealing with “stuff” in the water.
Here’s what Ray Jardine said (in his book “Beyond Backpacking”)
“According to conventional backpacking wisdom, giardia contaminates all wilderness water, and we hikers need to purify every drop that we drink…Jenny and I followed this rule faithfully during our first four mega-hikes. And I was sick with giardia-type symptoms many times….the filter cartridges we were using were brand-name varieties, and we had no reason to suspect they were not working properly. Clearly the conventional wisdom was not working. So we abandoned it and tried a different approach. While training for our fifth thruhike, we drank directly from clean, natural sources, a few sips at first, then gradually increasing in quantity…in this way we helped condition our bodies to the water’s natural flora. Then during the actual journey we drank all our water straight from the springs, creeks, and sometimes the lakes, after carefully appraising each source. And for the first time in years I remained symptom-free.”
Ray then listed his criteria for evaluating whether a water source is safe. We use his list, also, when we evaluate water.
1) Never use stagnant water.
2) Never use water that has any sign of foam.
3) Be very cautious if the water has algae. Pristine springs do sometimes have algae, and that’s OK, but long stringy green algae in a creek–not good.
4) Generally don’t use water from areas where cattle/sheep have been grazing. The one exception to this is a protected spring. We have happily drunk from springs in cattle areas, and had no problems.
5)Lake water from lakes that have a nice CLEAN bottom (not “mucky & yucky”) is generally OK.
The BEST places to get water are SPRINGS, preferably up high on a hill or mountain. The lower you get, the more likely that the water is contaminated.
Also, when we collected water from a creek that flowed across the trail, we always went UPstream a ways to get the water, to avoid the possibility of pollution from horses on the trail itself.
I guess that the bottom line is, we HATE wasting hours and hours pumping a filter, and we find that we drink a lot more water when there is no fuss and bother with it, which keeps our bodies better hydrated, and helps us hike better!
Addendum from “White Beard” on the subject of water….
To be real, the ONLY water purification method that WORKS is to boil your water. The problem with this is–what do you do for fuel? To carry that much fuel would be a serious weight problem. You could use sticks, fallen bits of wood from the forest floor, etc., but what if you are out in the desert and there is no wood? It makes a lot more sense to accustom your insides to the typical flora of surface water, and then be very careful where you get your water.
From The 3rd Monty: I read an interesting article one time by a woman who leads Sierra Club backpacking trips. She said that she took very seriously her responsibility to protect the people in her group from getting sick due to pathogens, etc. in surface water. After trying many different water purifying systems, she concluded that the only one that worked reliably every time was to BOIL THE WATER. So on every trip she led, every drop of water that entered anyone’s mouth was first thoroughly boiled. The result: she never had even one “student’ get sick. So for you guys who have “water phobia”, you’d better figure on doing a lot of water boiling! Hey, when we go snow camping, we spend a lot of time MELTING snow in a pot to get water. The only problem with all that is trying to make it to Canada before the snow flies…..
Good points raised here. Thank you for that, but you deserve more thanks than that. I am afflicted with color blindness (deuteranopia in my case). I use Safari browser (no idea if that is important), and a good many internet sites are hard to read as a result of an inconsiderate variety of colours employed ithe design. Here, as the selection of colours is fine, the website is quite clear and easy to comprehend. I don’t know whether it was a planned and mindful deed, or just good luck, but just the same, thanks.
Hi Guys,
Yes, the ONLY way to be 100% safe is to boil all your water. Of course no one on a trip as long as the PCT will or should do this( Heck, i won’t boil all my water on a three day hike!). It’s all about risk. How much risk are you willing to take?
I’ve never walked the PCT ( I want to though – and live vicariously through this and other journals) but I would like to suggest that purifying water with chemicals (yuck) or by pumping is an acceptable way to reduce you risk of naughty bugs in your gut.
By the way – great blog! I look forward to our trip on the PCT. Ok, well it’s YOUR trip, but I know I’ll enjoy reading about it.
Well, I guess White Beard and I are risk-takers! Which is a weird thing for me to say, because I am normally VERY cautious, and some things downright scare me–like trying to teeter across a roaring river on some skinny little log. That for me is total terror. The “knife edge” trail at Goat Rocks practically did me in too, I was so scared.
But when it comes to drinking water, I guess that since we have been drinking surface water on all our backpacking trips for many years and never had a problem, I tend to not worry about it but just be careful. And OK, if you can handle this (I don’t know your opinion on spiritual matters) I do also pray a bit when we collect water–something along the lines of “Please, Lord, we are doing our best to choose this water wisely. If there’s any nasties in it, please deal with them so that it will be health and a blessing to us and not cause problems.”
Anyway, keep up your dream of hiking the PCT! We dreamed about it for YEARS before we were able to do it! And reading people’s journals was really helpful. Glad you like ours!
I wanted to respond to CBrakewell’s comment about our blog being clear and easy to read if you are colorblind. Yes, it was intentional to have it that way. Our daughter (who is a professional web/graphic/print designer person) has a friend who is colorblind, and that made her aware of the frustrations caused by websites that are not designed to be reader-friendly to colorblind folks. So yes, the design of our website is deliberately done with that in mind. She says that sometimes it’s hard to convince her clients to agree to colorblind-friendly design because they just don’t “get it”. She checks every site she designs to make sure it’s OK.
By the way, she said your observation that the website was colorblind-friendly is the FIRST TIME she’s had anyone notice what she’d done, and she is very grateful for you letting us know! So thankyou for your very insightful and kind comment!