NB water situation

imported
#1

OK! Change of topic! lets talk about water!

I’ll be starting at the latest May 1.

I am curious, from past NB hikers, about the water. How much to cary. I imagine that water levels are a bit higher in May than October/November in NM.
CO would be melting rather than freezing. Basin is dry either way? Most of the info is SB. So how was it? NBers? I’ve been reading past journals, ley maps.

Ahh Ley maps! How reliable are the creeks that are marked in typically dry areas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m prepared to pack liters and liter. I would just rather filter something running than cow sludge from an impoundment.

-San Gabe

San Gabe

#2

The condition of surface water creeks in otherwise dry areas can change quite a bit over the season. I’m not sure if you’re talking about southern NM or the basin in WY. Most of the creeks that would appear to be a critical water source are marked with a note. For those that aren’t, you can usually discern how reliable the creeks will be when you start-out in an area - i.e. if the first few creeks you cross are dry, the other similar creeks are likely to be dry too.

Jonathan

#3

Aside from the Gila, there are no running creeks until you get into San Pedro Parks north of Cuba. The water sources south of there are mostly intended to water the cows - either windmills, solar wells, electric wells, etc. There is one natural boxed spring in the Burro Mountains south of Silver City, but the rest of the artificial water sources are largely cow dependent. In a bad drought, ranchers remove their cows from the rangeland and turn off the water. This is more likely to happen in the spring than in the fall, because the Sonoran desert gets most of their rain in late summer (unlike Wyoming that gets most of the precipitation in the winter via snow). If there’s no rain there’s no grass, so there will be no cows – and hence no water for hikers to drink.

When we thruhiked, we generally carried enough water to get us through a full day (20 or so miles) in NM. We tried to time the water sources for afternoon, so we could drink and cook before moving on. If you look at the maps and Jim Wolf’s guide, you’ll see that there are a lot of possible sources - but some will not be working when you get there. Which ones is the question. Sometimes hikers ahead will post information to CDT-l about water availability - but that seems to be fairly rare. If you see fresh cow manure - there is water nearby. Look around for the cow paths. If you really have problems, in N.M. there are a lot of jeep roads and you can frequently get water from passing cars.

Ginny

#4

I had a 6 L capacity for the PCT desert and a 8-9 L capacity on the CDT. maybe more than some people but I liked not worrying about water. (2 L platypus bladders inside the pack and 4 aquafina 1 L bottles on the outside.)
As far as water quality it wasnt has bad as you would expect and a lot of the water was from the windmills which we didnt even treat.
Like Jonathan and Ginny pointed out you will see how the water reliability is once you get out there and since you are starting later than most people you will be able to get info from those ahead of you via email, CDT-L, here, and notes left on the trail.

We have water reports at the bottom of every day’s journal entry at trailjourals.com/kaymat
The info is 3 years old but 2006 was a dry year so it still may be of interest to you.
-mat / Laundromat
have a good hike!

mat

#5

I would just rather filter something running than cow sludge from an impoundment.

Sort of o/t, but a little factoid I recently came across. The idea is paraphrased from the excellent and eye-opening book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Apparently the rumen (digestive apparatus) of a range-fed cow has a neutral ph. That is to say, the bacteria that live inside the cow’s stomach and which the cow excretes along with the other contents of its stomach - in this case into the water of a stock impoundment - have evolved to thrive in a neutral ph environment. The human digestive system, in contrast, is highly acidic. Any bacteria that the hiker ingests when drinking from a stock impoundment - unavoidable scenarios, sometimes both - has to be able to survive in an acidic environment long enough to multiply and make the hiker sick, in order to be of any real concern to said hiker. The bacteria in the poop (or pee, I suppose) of a range (that is, grass) fed cow apparently doesn’t really have what it takes to make these water sources as bad for us as they sometimes look.

Treat the water before drinking, of course. Do what you can to make it more appetizing. But the e-coli concerns we’re familiar with from the news headlines stem largely from feedlot beef rather than the range cattle that populate the Divide. Feedlot cows are corn-fed, and a steady, unnatural diet of corn actually lowers the ph in the cow’s rumen so that the kinds of bacteria that thrive there are less likely to be bothered by the acid environment of our own digestive tracks and therefore more likely to wreak havoc on us.

Safer to drink a few unavoidable quarts from yonder stock tank than to order the medium rare double cheeseburger from the restaurant in town… probably.

blisterfree