No but seriously no one hiking should be just drinking water from any source without seriously contemplating of it's worth risking it versus how thirsty they are.
I've done a good amount of dispersed camping in some of the most pristine environments and I never trusted the water enough to not boil it. My grandpa taught me you ALWAYS boil it for THIS EXACT SCENARIO TO BE AVOIDED. You want diarrhea while camping miles away from civilization? You feel like getting parasites? No? Then boil your damn water when out camping no matter how secluded from humanity you are.
I drink out of rocks and glaciers only and that’s rare. One time we were doing a bachelor party on the river, woke up one morning absolutely parched. Knew I was going to get messed up but our drinking water for the day wasn’t ready and hadn’t been started yet. So I guzzled that sweet cool river water down. Had giardia for the next week. Not great not terrible. In retrospect another beer would have been the way to go... or just wait the few minutes for filtered water. Young me didn’t make the best decisions.
Just pack a filter, dawg... Water from a rock isn't necessarily safe, neither is glacier melt. Regardless of the source, you're still getting it from outside. It's exposed to everything. You cannot know what may or may not have contaminated that water before it got to you.
Sawyer filter and a Smartwater bottle, ~$50 to not get giardia again, or something far worse. No brainer imo.
I have sources that are safe to drink out of. It's not like I walk up to random water sources and start drinking. I have different filters that come with me for different things. Yes, treat your water.
No you don't. Unless you collect water, collect a sample of that water, send that sample to a lab for analysis, and then drink the water, you do not know that it is safe.
There is zero reason not to filter all water you find in the wild. Don't be a dipshit.
I hiked the Swiss Alps many years ago and they had water fountains setup at various trails. Locals said it came from the mountains but I still never felt comfortable just drinking out of it.
Jeremy Wade had an entire episode on parasites because the rivers he fished in, and sometimes goes into, are 100% full of parasites, and how the serious cases can really mess people. He even ends the episode revealing that he has parasites, benign ones but they are still there.
This 💩 always makes me wonder how the hell did our ancestors survive. Imagine being thirsty as hell from walking, foraging, etc but you can’t dip your face into the water and guzzle it. How did they survive?
They drank the water. They could handle it. All our water and food goes through processing plants, our environment are entirely different. Our immune systems are built different. Also modern rivers have become more contaminated than before bc population growth and our way of living. But also sometimes they didnt? They’d get sick and die from parasites. Thankfully medicine has come along way since then
Our immune systems are surprisingly similar to those 5000 years ago, it's what they've learned to need to have instructions on hand for attacking that's changed. In that sense you're right, the building of the instruction booklet (which includes info from breast milk and of course life-long interactions with potential harmful agents) is very different but it was different 200 years ago in the same sense. Realistically, if time travel exists and you visited ancient ancestors, you'd potentially start a plague and definitely die from something they consider a minor nuisance.
Also... this is why people had 8-12 kids when they could. Not just labor for the family but not many survived. The above poster wonders how they survived, many didn't and those that did got sick plenty, they just didn't have to show up Tuesday morning at 9am to an office building or end up homeless in a food desert.
Not all of us. Look at India for example, they’re immune to stuff in their water whilst a westerner traveling there might get the notorious Delhi belly consuming it.
they have partial tolerance sure but its still objectively bad for your health to drink it. there's a reason why most of them don't drink their own tap water lmfao
They're often partially immune because they already got sick enough from it multiple times to have build up some immunity, not because they start out that way.
Many didn't, and of those that did many got sick. Springs of varying sizes were incredibly important, as was making beer and soup. Some places were less bad and civilization thrived (until close proximity to animals brought cow-sized diseases to the human body), some were worse and you had entire family lines die out over diarrhea or parasites. It probably helped that they could forage for food, with many vegetables/fruits having some water content, and also didn't have to show up at 9am Tuesday for work in an office building or end up homeless in a food desert.
nlaw said in korea they were drinking from a creek, walked upstream a bit and there were dead people in it. He had a Bronze and Silver Star, I believed him
Then boil your damn water when out camping no matter how secluded from humanity you are.
I used to do a lot of back woods camping when I was younger and more physically able. It always blew my mind when someone would comment about being able to drink stream water and such when you were far away from towns or cities and such.
So many people don't understand that in most cases, nature is gonna fuck you up in ways that human contaminated water can't even come close to.
Never been camping but interested in starting to. Is boiling your water always making your water safe? Or is there times where the water still won’t be safe to drink even after boiling?
Some of the most damaging and dangerous things that can be in water are entirely invisible to the naked eye. You would have to be an absolute moron to just drink water from a random stream
Actually it’s recommended to boil if youre in areas with livestock runoff, as viruses are more prevalent in those watersheds and membrane filters do not remove viruses.
It really depends on where in the world you are. In the US, sure, you should usually always filter or boil, unless taking it directly from a snowfield or glacier. But in Norway or Sweden for example, it is completely safe to drink the water in the mountain areas, and likewise in many other places of the world. It mainly depends on the wildlife situation in the area.
I grew up in the country, walking around in the mountains, sipping cool water from streams. I was about 10 when after sipping some water I found a dead fawn in the creek downstream from where I drank. I'm 60 now and I am sure that was the last time I drank from a random water source.
Judging by the look of this place, this seems to be the Katmai National Park in Alaska. It's a nature reserve and no one live downstream from this area. It all flows into the ocean without going near any major human settlement. The closest is Naknek. A tiny ass village that is basically off the coast of the Arctic Ocean, so they aren't drinking the shore water anywhere near there.
Reminds of this tiktok dude who was drinking from a pond until he got giardia (spelling?) He posted six videos for each day. He hasn't posted any updates since last year.
When I was a kid in outdoor ed the teacher was showing us slides of the trip we had just been on, and the last slide was a kid filling her canteen from a creek and a few feet upstream was the teachers dog peeing directly into the creek.
I do think that it was wrong of him to show us that, but I am glad that he did.
Then again, you don't get to join the Jeremiah Johnson Club unless you've hung your inflamed red butthole over the side of yer canoe for a couple days dealing with a bad case of the river water squitters
Imagine going to work like this and keep telling people "oh, as long as it does not get tangled on the office chair wheels, this has no effect on my health really; but it can be a tad bit stressful".
8.3k
u/sackie_b 13h ago
This stresses me out, as well.