Nor Any Drop to Drink

One of my prevailing obsessions these days is the snow level in the Sierras. There's a handy set of figures here, detailing the maximum, minimum, previous, current, and average snowfall on three sections of the trail. I look at them nearly every day. As you can see, last year's green doodle barely manages to clear the bottom of the graph, and the pink line indicating the snowfall for this year lingers somewhat below average. Anything could change, of course, but that's where we are now. This is good news in terms of how soon we can enter the Sierras, and by extension how soon we can begin hiking; and it's good news for short women who are maybe not excited by the prospect of fording raging rivers of snowmelt. But last year's record dry spell deteriorated into a brutal fire season, and I don't think anybody wants to witness a repeat performance. Less snow means less water for drinking, too, for the second year in a row, in a desert setting where natural water sources already run the gamut of "variable quality."

Some thru-hikers prefer not to treat their water, and that is their choice. I used to haul wild water from the spring outside of Fox in Alaska and it was great. But giardia poses a greater threat to long-distance hikers on the PCT than bears do. (Cryptosporidium and salmonella appear on the list, too, but giardia gets top billing.) Giardia is transmitted through fecal matter of infected animals (including humans), principally through water. My folks know it as beaver fever. Once you've got it, there's no way to just muscle through--you have to get off the trail and find medical help. Seriously. The parasite won't kill you, but if you insist on forcing the matter in the middle of the wilderness, dehydration will kick your ass. Not to mention hunger, and feeling utterly wretched while attempting to walk 20 miles every day. I have invested too much money and precious optimism in this trip to risk it on something as easily prevented as a water-borne illness. Thou shalt treat thy water.

While Si and I were in New Zealand we boiled questionable water for three to eight minutes as dictated by the signs next to the taps, and I have no idea whether or not it was effective, but we both lived to tell the tale. Obviously boiling isn't feasible on the PCT. There must be ten thousand water filters and chemical treatment systems to choose amongst, and it's much less fun than picking out a shelter. If so inclined, you can exercise your right to buy all sorts of loathsome equipment for large sums of money: great heavy pumps with intricate moving parts that break or clog, drops and tablets that magically transform your water into potable, unpalatable iodine juice.

I'm kidding, you don't really have to do that. As our water becomes less reliable, our treatment methods grow more efficient. These drops are tasteless! This filter leaves your water tasting better than before! Speaking of first-world solutions, they have pen-sized ultraviolet lights for killing germs, gadzooks. I suppose the question isn't as much to do with which treatment system is most effective (used correctly, I reckon they're all about the same) but which one you'll employ most effectively, which one you can integrate into your hiking style.

Well hell if I know. I'll only be able to figure it out with practice, and it's likely that in consequence my water-treatment method will change over the course of the trip. Which is to say, after I've had a chance to see what everybody else is packing. Nothing looks very promising at the outset. Pumps break, gravity filters are slow, steripens eat batteries. A few tablets are good for emergency backup, but not as a first line of defense. In my research, the two methods that I find most appealing are Aquamira and the Sawyer In-Line filter.

Aquamira is a set of drops that comes in two tubes, like epoxy. Put in one, let it mix, put in the other, wait 15 minutes, and then it's safe to drink. Active ingredient is chlorine dioxide. It's a little slow--you need a timer--but it's easy. Nothing to break. It's small, too, so of course it's much favored by backpackers. On the downside, buying all those tiny bottles (30 gallons of water per set) has the potential to add up in the long run (as opposed to getting a filter that lasts the whole trip), and you can't just pick them up at the gas station with your stove fuel, so you'd wind up ordering a bundle and mailing them to yourself along the trail. (Logistics, ugh.) Some people give up and just carry a tiny dropper of bleach. Well why not, the Red Cross does it. To each her own.

The idea of adding something to the water seems inherently flawed to me, when what you're trying to do is get something out of your water. (Nobody talks about fertilizer runoff or mineral taints, incidentally. Just parasites.) My other dilemma is the mechanics of using chemical treatments efficiently. Say you scoop some water from a stream using a water bottle--the outside of the bottle, including the seams on the mouthpiece, are covered in "dirty" water that doesn't get treated when you introduce the drops to the vessel, so strictly speaking, it isn't safe to drink from the bottle. So, what then? You pour the treated water into a second vessel, designated "clean," and keep one exclusively for doing the scooping? I don't know.

This incidentally raises the question of vessels. I love my stickered-up "indestructable" Nalgene bottles, but they're unnecessarily heavy for this adventure. The most lightweight water bottles are these pretty Platypus bladders, and their Evernew cousins. Not only are they light, but they're collapsible. Paul has one, and it's nice, surprisingly sturdy. The things to watch out for are punctures and, well, pricetags. In some areas you might need to carry seven liters of water, which is quite a few Platy bottles, and all of a sudden you're paying how much for what now? Gatorade bottles, by contrast, are light, sturdy, wide-mouthed, readily available, easily disposable, and cheap. You get one for free every time you buy 32 oz of Gatorade. They don't need to be collapsible, because you can just throw out the surplus containers in town when you don't need them (or when they fail), then pick up another couple liters of Gatorade when you approach a stretch of dry trail, because that's something you can totally buy at the gas station. I think Gatorade is pretty gross, frankly, but I can't argue with the logic, so I scrounged a couple empty bottles out of the recycle bin at work, to get me started. Maybe I will develop a taste for it later.

Then you have hydration bladders, the kind with hoses and bite-valves. Hands-free hydration. From a lifetime of day-hikes, I know that I will not pause to dig out my water bottle until I'm intolerably thirsty. I just won't. I stop for nothing. Drinking water from a bottle won't "force" me to take breaks, I just wind up not drinking water until I see stars. It's lunacy, really. It only takes a few seconds to unbuckle your pack and take a few sips. But there it is, some madwomen will just keep walking. For this reason I have a Camelbak, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. I didn't take it to Antarctica, for obvious and reasonable reasons. I resisted steadily the idea of taking it on the PCT, because I convinced myself it wasn't really necessary. It's a little heavier than the newer models, the hose is a pain in the ass to clean, and the soft sides, again, are subject to puncture wounds. But I have to admit it works for me, in the same essential fashion as, I don't know, wearing shoes works. A few ounces in my pack one way or the other won't make nearly as much difference as a constant supply of water to my body. If it fails for any reason, I'll just have to cope and replace it.

Point conceded, the Sawyer in-line filter suddenly looks really appealing. You splice a two-ounce piece of machinery into the hydration tube and continue to drink normally. (Please fit your own hydration tube before assisting others.) The suction draws water through the filter, so no pumping required. It needs a back-flushing in town now and then to purge the filter, and you don't want to leave it sitting out on cold nights or the filtering mechanism might freeze and perish, but it's light, easy, doesn't "run out," there's no waiting for a chemical reaction, and because the mouth piece is removed from the reservoir you can immerse the whole bladder in the river if you want, no problem. And if I buy it from REI it falls under their 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, so if I do encounter a problem somewhere along the trail I can just call the company and get it resolved, ahem ahem. With a couple of scrounged Gatorade jugs as auxiliary vessels, that system might work for me.

I feel like I'm developing a greater appreciation for the consumption of small beer among the peasantry. Water treatment is a beast.