backpacking in East Texas
 

Zulu and I will be backpacking in East Texas for a couple of days. 20 miles in two days.

One problem is that they recommend we take our own water (they don't recommend drinking any of the available water even w/ treatment).

I'm planning on carrying 6 liters. That is going to suck.

Should be fun otherwise.

Anybody ever watch the new series "I Shouldn't be Alive" on Discovery HD? They cover cases where folks narrowly escape death. A few weeks ago they did the story of the LDS scout troop from Utah that hiked into the Grand Canyon a few years back and ran out of water. One boy ended up dying and it is amazing that more didn't die. They had nowhere near enough water.

trust me, I'll be drinking creek water before it comes to that. This is verdant east Texas.

Certainly you could boil the water, eh?

I actually thought of distilling the water. Figuring out some sort of simple setup. But I guess I am just not bright enough. Something like a hose attached to a lid over boiling water.

There are portable filtration setups that we use in the west with reasonable success. You can also use tablets, your local GI doc probably has the pills against giarardia (sp?).

Poor Waters. He lives in a terrible place, especially given his interests.

I have iodine tablets. It's just that for whatever reason, they don't recommend filtration or treatment. I imagine filtration would be a lot better than treatment. But only Zulu has a filter, and he doesn't want to break it out.

Nothing could survive filtration plus boiling.

If you do any backpacking, I highly recommend one of the new ceramic filters. Good investment for your 72-hr kit also. Once it gets hard to pump (due to clogging), you just sand off the outer skin of the ceramic filter and you are good to go again. Great filters.

http://www.amazon.com/MSR-Waterworks...9?ie=UTF8&s=hi

that's why zulu doesn't want to use it. because it's in his 72 hour kit.