Water Purification and Filtration on the Trail

hey y'all Dixie here today I want to talk to you about options for treating your water while your backpack imagine you're walking through the forest and you come across a nice clear cool stream of water do you think that it's safe to drink maybe the better question is how much do you like having diarrhea on trail the truth is you really can't tell if a source is safe to drink or not sure there might be some indications like a dead animal in the water or stagnant murky water that makes you feel like a particular water source might not be safe to drink but on the other hand a water source might look perfectly safe but you can't see the things in the water that might make you sick it is true that at higher elevations water may be safer to drink but with the lightweight options that are available today to treat your water you don't have to take that risk unless you just want to gamble some general tips to consider when figuring out what method of water treatment you want to use is time so how much time will it take you to treat the water then weight and cost of either the item or chemical that you're going to use and also what is the treatment effective against the main things you want to worry about in the US are bacteria and protozoa like Cryptosporidium and Giardia the first method I want to talk about today is the old trusty method which is boiling now boiling water can be time intensive and also fuel intensive because you need to bring the water to a full boil for about five minutes to make sure that you get everything and then you have to allow the water to cool down before you pour it into your clean bottle as far as fuel goes if you want to save on the weight of fuel or the cost of fuel you can make a fire to boil your water typically I don't use boiling as my first option in water treatment because of how time intensive it is but I've had some pretty gross water sources for example on the Pacific Crest Trail where there was a dead cat in some stagnant water and so before I was going to even begin to put that water into my filter I decided to boil it first and then filter it just to have that second line of defense also it's good to remember boiling as a backup method in case your water filter or other water treatment method fails because boiling doesn't filter your water you may need to run it through a bandana before you bowl it that way you don't have to eat or drink a bunch of dirt another option for treating water is the UV light purifier they can run a little on the heavy side the SteriPEN for example is about 6 ounces without batteries and with something like this it's a good idea to have a backup set of batteries also and they can be a little pricey running from 75 to $100 but some of the perks I've used in a SteriPEN or UV light purifier is that they treat water in less than a minute they neutralize bacteria protozoa and viruses and it doesn't leave any aftertaste in your water if you're going to use one of these though you want to make sure to filter any sediment out of your water through a bandana because they don't work as well in murky water and I've only seen one person used one of these on trail I've heard that they can fail or that they're a little iffy sometimes so if you're gonna use one of these you might want to have a back-up plan in mind next let's talk about chemical treatments chemical treatments are generally pretty lightweight inexpensive and they work pretty well however they take a little bit of time usually you have to add the chemical treatment to your water and then you have to wait at least thirty minutes and sometimes up to four hours depending on what you're wanting to treat a lot of the chemical treatments will treat bacteria protozoa and viruses it really just depends on what you're using the more traditional form of chemical treatment is iodine tablets the thing with iodine though is it leaves a pretty funky aftertaste and it does not treat Cryptosporidium chlorine dioxide treatments like aqua mera which comes in either the tablet form or the little liquid bottles will treat Cryptosporidium and I hear that aftertaste is not as funky and some people even say they don't taste anything at all and finally some people use good old bleach to treat their water I use this as a back-up plan when my Sawyer squeeze failed out on the Continental Divide Trail because I was not risking drinking out of that nasty Cal pond water in New Mexico after using this method I never want to have to use it again because I really couldn't get over just the scent of bleah as I was drinking if you decide to use bleach as your water treatment whether as your main form of treating water or as a back-up plan you'll use anywhere from two to four drops per liter and that really just depends on how cloudy the water is how cold it is so if it's cloudy or and colder you want to go towards the four drop side and if it's you know pretty clear and room temperature then you might want to go more towards two drops and finally you can always use water filters in the world of water filters you really have several options including pumps gravity systems and what I call either drink through or squeeze through filters the way that pumps work is you usually have a tube that goes down into the water source and you manually pump water into a clean container one example of a pump is a Katahdin hiker micro filter and it runs about $70 and weighs 11 ounces I've never used a pump for my filtration system just because to be so expensive they seem a little bulky and on the heavy side to me but it's all about personal preference and there are definitely people out there who use pumps for water filtration gravity filtration systems are really nice for having when you're backpacking in an area with trees or somewhere that you can hang a gravity system and also if you're hiking with a group because it filters a lot of water at one time and you don't really have to do anything except collect the water and hang the dirty bag up in the tree then gravity will naturally feed the water through the filter and down to the clean bag I used a platypus gravity filter on the Appalachian Trail I really liked using this and I only transitioned because when I started the Pacific Crest Trail it was harder to find places to hang the bag gravity systems can run a little on the heavier side in the filtration category the Platypus gravity filter that I used was seven point two ounces and they are a little pricey the one I used was a hundred and ten dollars and finally the drink through slash squeeze through filters an example of a drink through filter is the live straw it weighs about two ounces and only cost $20 so it's pretty inexpensive with the live straw you just drink straight through the straw and as you're drinking it filters the water if you don't drink directly from a water source you can collect dirty water in a widemouth bottle and then put the straw down in there and drink I'm not particularly a fan of the live straw because it's great for when you're just wanting to drink clean water but when it comes to cooking and you've got to cook with dirty water then you have to make sure that you bring your water to a full boil unless you want to like drink your water through the straw and then spit it into your cook pot and then you could be cooking with sediment in your water so you have to take the time to run it through a bandana and to me that's just too much hassle if I'm gonna have a filter I want it to work and be able to filter my water and then cook with it an example of a squeezer filter is the Sawyer squeeze it weighs three ounces and costs about $40 the way that it works is you collect dirty water in a pouch hook it to the filter and then you squeeze the pouch and squeeze clean water into a clean container I was a little frustrated with this setup because I went from my gravity filter where I really didn't have to do anything to now where I had this extra chore several times a day having to squeeze my water and I know it doesn't sound like that big of a deal but if you add up in a day how much time you actually spend doing this particular chore it can get a bit tedious you can actually turn this all your squeeze into a gravity system but what I decided to do was turn it into a drink through filter I collect dirty water in smart water bottles and the threading of the Sawyer squeeze fits well on to that type of bottle and then I just squeeze the bottle while I'm drinking and it becomes kind of like a mixture between a squeeze stir and a drink through filter this is my go-to pick for water treatment on trail and by far is the most popular filter used Sawyer does have a Sawyer mini that's a little bit lighter and a little bit cheaper but in my opinion it tends to get clogged a lot easier most filters only take out protozoa and bacteria not viruses but if you're looking for a filtration method that also removes viruses and you might want to check out the MSR Guardian filter it is very pricey at three hundred and fifty dollars and is really bulky and heavy but if you're going overseas somewhere and you really want to make sure that you're gonna be able to filter out viruses that's just one suggestion that you could check out so may require a little bit of maintenance while on trail if you're going to be out for several days and you're hiking in an area that's got pretty murky water you may have to back flush your filter but a lot of them come with syringes made for that and if not a lot of them will fit to the sports cap of a smart water water bottle so you just want to make sure you put clean water in the syringe or the bottle hook up to the output side and then squeeze clean water back through the filter hence the term back flushing you can also tap the filter on its side to kind of break up some of the gunk in there and then back flush several times until you notice that the water is clean alright y'all well that is all I have today on options for treating your water I will say that the most common methods i've seen on trail are chemical treatments like aqua mira and filters like the sawyer squeeze just a final tip you may want to bring drink mixes to add to your water because just because you filter it doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to taste wonderful and if you're using chemical treatments that have a kind of funny aftertaste using drink mixes can help you replenish your electrolytes if you're using something that has electrolytes and just help you stay hydrated in general one of my favorite ones to use on trail is Zipf is or mio with electrolytes but there are a lot of different types of drink mixes out there so you can play around with it and see what you like the best if any of y'all have a favorite water treatment method please share that in the comments because somebody who's currently just getting into backpacking and trying to shop for a filter or chemical treatments might want to see what other people use and why they like that thank y'all so much for watching and if you enjoyed this video or you like the content of the channel don't forget to subscribe before you go and we will see y'all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 130,694

Rating: 4.9624767 out of 5

Keywords: backpacking, backcountry, hiking, thr-hiking, bushwacking, water, river, stream, cat water, giardia, gear, filtration, aquamira, bleach

Id: 5-Agdf1aNVE

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2019