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  1. #21
    Registered User Bencape4's Avatar
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    with options as cheap and light as gravity works, steripen, sawyer squeeze, and just bleach, its silly not to. just be extra careful. no one wants to ahve to leave the trail for something stupid like that.

  2. #22
    Registered User schnikel's Avatar
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    My wife and I hiked the JMT back in '11. We brought Aqua Mira but ran out at VVR. I didn't know you couldn't buy it in CA and didn't want to use the tablets they sold there. I found some MSR sweet water in the hiker box and took it. It made the water taste horrid and only used it a couple times when I pulled from lakes. The rest of the time from VVR south we did not filter and we both were fine. Best tasting water I've ever had! We had no problem finding running water from streams, though it was late Aug/earl Sept. 2011 which was a high snow year, YMMV.
    Schnikel

  3. #23
    Registered User Wise Old Owl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bessiebreeze View Post
    Purifying your water is necessary. And the lightest, cheapest, easiest way to do this is by using iodine tablets.
    Clearly it works for you I am allergic and it makes me sick on the trail - a well known allergy.

    Quote Originally Posted by wcgornto View Post
    Katadyn Hiker Pro filter for me. Unless it is from a spring at the source, I filter all water. This is one area where i make a concession to carry the heavier weight option. It is much more convenient for me to filter as much water as I want whenever I want it and to have it immediately available. I often use water bladders rather than one liter water bottles, and both steripen and chemical treatment are designed for use with a specific batch size of a liter or less, while filtering is not. Plus, with chemical treatment, there is the time element of waiting for the water to be ready for use. The other benefit of filtering is that it takes out the silt and crunchies more readily and more effectively than with other treatment options.

    I love this - yep its one pound - but when kayaking or canoe its awesome!

    Quote Originally Posted by k2basecamp View Post
    The problem is those nice running streams you talk about are also used by all kinds of animals for their water source too. They dont know that its not good practice to go the bathroom at the same time. So you're always rollin the dice when you dont filter, treat, or uv.

    You feelin' lucky ?
    My son saw a bubble up coming up from the deep ground on a hill, clearly a spring... he asked permission and still got the trots the next day.. deep in Pa woods.
    Dogs are excellent judges of character, this fact goes a long way toward explaining why some people don't like being around them.

    Woo

  4. #24
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    I used a Steripen last year. Water along the JMT is probably the most refreshing on the planet, and the Steripen didn't affect the taste at all. One of my son's brought a Sawyer inline filter which we sometimes used, but the Steripen was our preferred method.

    We probably could have drank the water straight from the stream the whole way with no problems, I used to drink untreated water in the Sierras for years with no issues. But as Bencape4 said, there's really no reason to risk it with the options available today.

  5. #25

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    Does anyone have a problem with the aquamira bottles leaking, cracking, being hard to squeeze,etc?

  6. #26
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    Leaking? Yes, by personal experience. I'm not sure about the others. If I dug out my old bottles, they'd probably crack and be hard to open. It's probably time for both of us to throw our Aqua Mira away.

  7. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by NashvilleNOBO2013 View Post
    Does anyone have a problem with the aquamira bottles leaking, cracking, being hard to squeeze,etc?
    I am an Aqua Mira fan, but yes to all of the above. I've found that in some AM bottles the hole in the dropper cap is too small. I open it up slightly and that makes the bottle easier to squeeze and seemingly less likely to crack from being squashed trying to force out the liquid through a too-small hole.

    I didn't treat much of my water in the Sierra based on advice that it was safe, and I got Giardia for the third time. You can't tell if the water is safe by looking at it.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wise Old Owl View Post
    My son saw a bubble up coming up from the deep ground on a hill, clearly a spring... he asked permission and still got the trots the next day.. deep in Pa woods.
    Highly unlikely it was giardiasis, it take several days for the symptoms to develop.

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wise Old Owl View Post
    My son saw a bubble up coming up from the deep ground on a hill, clearly a spring... he asked permission and still got the trots the next day.. deep in Pa woods.
    Quote Originally Posted by Malto View Post
    Highly unlikely it was giardiasis, it take several days for the symptoms to develop.
    When my daughter was a toddler, she insisted on tasting one of the mineral springs in Saratoga. She loved anything fizzy at the time, and pronounced it yummy and downed a cupful. Ooooh-boy. That particular spring was high in magnesium, and we were dealing with diaper overflow for the next day-and-a-half. We learnt afterward that the guidebook for the springs called that one 'vigorously cathartic.'

    Pennsylvania has some limestone springs, too - could your son's symptoms be simply that he was drinking mineral water with a laxative effect?
    I always know where I am. I'm right here.

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