Water treatment reflections. Have you gotten sick?

[mello]

Sorry to hear that. I recently had a very similar experience, but turned out fine. Steripen failed right out of the gate (batteries - my own fault). I was only doing a couple of nights, so I risked it. But, I waited until I was above 10,000 ft. and drank from the outlet stream above the crossing. It was early enough in the season that people hadn't been swimming in the lakes either.

I met an older couple on the way up and they talked about the days before filters and said it was pretty common to not treat at all. I personally wouldn't make a habit of it though. Psychologically, I feel better knowing there is some treatment. My original plan was to go further in on the second night, but I ended up base camping instead - in part because I figured each new water source would be an additional risk.

[Tom_H]

When I was young, I drank untreated water out of small tributaries to southern rivers, from high altitude streams in CO, NM, the Appalachians and the Sierra. I started filtering or treating water when giardiasis became more prevalent in the late 70s. I never got sick once.

In 1995 we went to China to adopt our daughter. I took a bunch of freeze dried backpacking food and a very small electric boiler with me. I bought bottled water and then boiled it before drinking it. Near the end of the trip I ran out of Mountain House meals and so ate at what is considered a very high end restaurant in Guangzhou. I was as sick as a dog within hours. I ran high fevers for weeks and had problems with my liver, all at the very beginning of the school year.

[franklin411]

The thing about contamination counts for tap water sources is that water districts test their water constantly because they have to under the Safe Drinking Water Act. How often does anyone go up to Some Random Sierra Stream and test its water? Once in 20 years?

I would say we don't really know how bad the water is in the Sierra because it's not tested often enough, so I filter.

[kbarb]

In the old days, say 40-50 years ago we never filtered water and found great glee in drinking cold clear water directly from little streamlets crossing into trails and so on (not in the trail of course).

Since then I've read some of those "scientific" articles explaining that you need a higher exposure to giardia (?) than you'd think to actually get sick. I forget what the number was.
But I'm a lot more careful now, generally filtering except at high, above tree-line, alpine elevations. I've never gotten sick, but I don't really feel like pressing my luck.

I think it's important to point out that people could vary in their resistance and vulnerability. I know from experience my immune system is pretty strong, probably because I haven't led a super careful, super hygienic life - way above typical practices - and some of that might even be genetic, who knows. I hardly ever get sick in general.

I consider myself lucky, but another person might be completely different in vulnerability. (If and when I get "want to die" ill, I might change my own self evaluation.)

Very interesting discussion though.

[Teresa Gergen]

.....

[bobby49]

We were hiking up Mount Conness one time, and a person in the group me asked how safe the water was. I looked up ahead two hundred yards and saw the snow field that was melting and flowing to the trickle where we stood. I said that I thought that the water was probably safe, but I wasn't sure. This person then dipped a cup into the water and started to bring it up to her lips. Then she looked in the water, and there was a tiny squirming worm. That was pretty much the end of our discussion and we started using Iodine.

[SSSdave]

Love drinking clean clear cold mountain water!

Never been sick backpacking. I might have had G once but that was probably from a restaurant. Lived 2 years in an Asian third world country so probably built up immunities to many microbes. Rarely bring a filter except when water sources are suspect. Careful about where I get my Sierra Nevada water and skilled at knowing where clean water is likely to be found off trails.

[B.Kruger]

...

I think it's important to point out that people could vary in their resistance and vulnerability. I know from experience my immune system is pretty strong, probably because I haven't led a super careful, super hygienic life - way above typical practices - and some of that might even be genetic, who knows. I hardly ever get sick in general.
...

A really great point. And supported by the variety of responses I'm reading here. It's definitely true that no two immune systems are exactly alike.

[B.Kruger]

We were hiking up Mount Conness one time, and a person in the group me asked how safe the water was. I looked up ahead two hundred yards and saw the snow field that was melting and flowing to the trickle where we stood. I said that I thought that the water was probably safe, but I wasn't sure. This person then dipped a cup into the water and started to bring it up to her lips. Then she looked in the water, and there was a tiny squirming worm. That was pretty much the end of our discussion and we started using Iodine.

Ha! Nothing like visual aids to really drive a point home.

[wildhiker]

Your mileage may vary...

I've drunk the untreated water from high lakes and streams in the Sierra in areas with no domestic livestock grazing or heavy pack stock use for nearly 50 years of trips and haven't gotten sick. I preferentially seek out streams tumbling down mountainsides with no trails above, or deep lakes (dilution is always good). When my children were small, I treated water for our backpacking trips - no sense taking chances for them. Anytime I go to an area that allows cattle or sheep grazing (much of the northern Sierra and most other backcountry places in the world), I absolutely treat the water.

I did get seriously ill on a college trip rafting the Grand Canyon where I drank freely from any stream that didn't look silty - but who knows where that water has been!

Finally, I got the worst gastro-intestinal illness of my life a day after returning from a Sierra backpack trip. When I was well enough to visit the doctor a couple of days later, he assumed it was Giardia and started me on the treatment. But the lab analysis of the stool sample a couple of days later showed it was actually campylobacter, not giardia. Probably picked up that bug not from the Sierra water but from an employee at the fast-food joint where we stopped for dinner on the way home and I had chicken while everyone else who drank the same Sierra water had burgers (they did not get sick).

-Phil