Wow!! Just got back to trailforums to see my post was shot to hell by LOUP. Loup, yes I had my stool tested and confirmed I had Giardia. Why would I claim otherwise?
You can shoot craps if you want but I already did literally. Never again. Playing the odds on a once in a lifetime backpack trip is just irresponsible since it is so easy to treat/filter water and yes as you suggested…use proper hygeine techniques. Maybe the lab was wrong when they said it was giardia…Probably not.
Woofer
I just got done reading the CDC report linked in this thread. Am i missing something? It never makes any reference to any testing done to the water sources. There is a lot of data on people and poop, but none on the source of the giardia.
You can hate on Loup for using lots of words and long posts and for insisting on proof before he panics about water sources, but his take is pretty standard in some backcountry user groups. The only studies on backcountry water sources that have been done show that mountain water is cleaner than tap, including having safely trace amounts of giardia. It’s perfectly responsible and normal to decide that you’re going to choose your water source selectively and not treat it.
I wish i knew the CT specifically to comment on it, but i know other areas. If you’re interested in saving time, weight (which increases safety), and not ingesting too many extra chemicals, i’d start cautiously but go for it. I always take a look at a topo map before drinking from a source. You want to know what’s above what you’re drinking. If it’s a steep slope for hundreds of feet to a mountain top, your odds are astronomically good that the water is safe. Beavers (or cattle, or even deer) don’t poop on the sides of cliffs.
On the other hand, if there’s a trail within 1000’ above the source, or a meadow, or any flatland that’s likely to have poopage, i’d treat the water or move on to another source. :cheers
markv
So let me see if I got this right. Safer to save weight, but you should filter sometimes, so you still need a filter. The topo map tells you if you should filter or not. Does the filter weigh less if you don’t use it? Am I missing something here?
IMO, Loup & company are what could be described as “lazy hikers”. Don’t filter, don’t hang your food… do whatever feels right at the time. They don’t do things that make sense because they are too lazy to do the right thing. Great role models. HYOH
timion
No, maybe i wasn’t clear. I don’t bring a filter. I bring drops, either A.M. or bleach. So i already am saving the weight of a filter. I could use the drops all the time, but i’d just as well not add chemicals to my body for no reason, so if i can judge a source as safe, i’m not going to be stupidly scared into treating it anyway. If that’s the way to be, you should be filtering your tap water too while you’re at it…it would make as much sense.
That’s not lazy. It’s me trying my best to take care of my body and hike well. As far as hanging food, i must have missed that thread, but considering the damage to trees and the lousy hanging job most hikers do (bears would have no problem getting the food down), there is definitely also a very good and responsible logic behind stealth camping with your food in your tent. In some areas, like Yosemite or Glacier, this would be dangerous and irresponsible. But in those areas you would carry a bear canister instead of hanging your food anyway. In many areas, any reasonable and experienced hiker would sleep with their food, not out of laziness, but out of simply being logical. Hanging your food in those areas would be like hanging it in your backyard because you’re afraid of a bear breaking into your refrigerator.
Why is it the pro-filter and pro-hanging crowd is so belligerent anyway?
markv
I might as well throw in there my other past water experiences. I used a filter for awhile. Two different ones clogged and stopped working. So, i needed drops as backup. I have a Steripen. It’s also mechanically failed on me twice over the years. They’ve been good about fixing/replacing it. Steripens are great when they work. But in the backcountry, what if they don’t? You’re still stuck with drops as a backup. So basically, the only thing i can trust is drops anyway, so for a few thousand miles now i’ve just carried drops. This makes me especially interested in when i can safely NOT use them, so that i don’t have to ingest more than necessary, even though they’re supposedly 100% safe, who knows really. I’ll use them if i think i have to, but not if i think i don’t have to.
I’ll still use the Steripen for international travel, and for certain low-mileage base camp types of trips. For example, the Kalalau Trail in Hawaii. You hike one long day to a beach to stay at for awhile and there’s one water source there with goats above it. So you have to treat all your water, and you’re staying still more often than you’re hiking. In that case, it’s worth the weight to carry the Steripen. The filter is collecting dust in the closet. When i was on part of the CDT where i knew there’d be cow tanks, i took a couple practically weightless coffee filters to pre-filter, and drops to disinfect.
Not saying this is the only way, but i’ve tried them all, and it’s what i’ve settled on. Other gear things i’m still messing with, but the drops are here to stay.
markv
I have had similar experiences with the Steripen. A lot of times mine would give the error signal so I often ended up doing the same bottle over several times. The error seemed to be triggered when the water was cold. That led to lousy battery life and I decided it was not worth the hassle. I use a 9 ounce Kataydn ceramic filter now and so far it has never failed. I’ve used chemical purification too, but prefer the taste of untreated water. For backup I also have a Lifestraw that weighs 1.7 ounces and it works great. This is the device that was distributed all over Africa and during the Haitian crisis. They are sold on Amazon for $25. The Lifestraw plus Aqua Mira would probably be a good setup. You could camel up with the Lifestraw when you hit water and carry some more while waiting for the chemicals to work.
On the CDT I met a lot of people who drank surface water with no ill effects. Personally, I have contracted Giardia twice. Once in Asia(Turkmenestan) and once in the Weminuche Wilderness. Although I was filtering, I washed my dishes a couple of times with unpurified lake water and I think that is what caused it in the Weminuche. Giardia doesn’t debilitate me but it is truly annoying so I almost always filter now, unless I am certain I getting water directly from a spring. Both times I contracted it I tested positive so the diagnosis was solid.
bearcreek
bearcreek, wouldn’t you think that if you were filtering the whole time and still got giardia, that it could have come from something other than the water? The stats on ingesting enough cysts to get sick only from leftover cysts dried onto a dish after washing it with lake water seem again really astronomical.
My medically uneducated guess would be that if you’ve tested positive twice in those circumstances yet didn’t feel debilitated, that really you carry giardia normally, but are asymptomatic, and that something else is what actually made you feel sick. I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But seriously, doesn’t that seem much more plausible?
markv
I don’t think so at all.
There are some distinct symptoms for Giardia that set it apart from other forms of travelers diarrhea. I have worked in primitive locations all around the world and have a pretty good idea of when something makes me sick.
The medications used to treat Giardia are almost miraculous in how quickly they alleviate symptoms. (Those meds also work for numerous other waterborne illnesses like Crypto and Dysentery)
I would love it if I carried it normally. I could quit filtering water and worrying about it.
bearcreek