Hot answers tagged water
14
Should I understand a water source to mean a spring/well, or any place
where hikers may collect water (streams, lakes, etc.)?
Yes. Any source of water - no matter how large or small - should be avoided when choosing a camp site. 100 meters is just a guideline, 200 meters is better. 200 meters and out of sight is great.
The reasons are several-fold:
...
13
The rule is 3 liters per person per day. You may get away with 2 liters if it's not too hot and you stay moderate. Keep into account that your "normal day" intake is skewed by the contribute brought from food. If you eat food with less water in it, which is likely during a hike, your need for actual water is higher than the one you experience in your daily ...
8
The key is to always have a trash bag. Your most reliable backwoods method for clean water is condensation, either through natural action, or via a still of some kind. The primary component of this is having large enough suitable material to make said still. If you are depending on natural action, then surface area is still key. Assuming you left your ...
8
nope
yep (actually, yellow, not purple, thanks Clare)
Not in my experience, but I use clarifiers which remove the flavor in the water.
Also to clarify from comments, we did this for years before we started carrying a filter and it never damaged our containers. The plastic probably gets more damage from the sunlight caught during hiking than from the ...
7
This doesn't directly answer your question and might not be to your liking, but it's what I do.
Basically, I don't bother trying to keep it cold. However, I do add flavoring. I find that flavoring helps a great deal in making it feel a lot more OK to drink warm liquid. Think of it sortof like tea if that helps. Actually I don't add the flavoring for ...
5
One of the big differentiators in the past between hard and soft bottles was that soft bottles would absorb some of the flavor from drinks.
I'm not sure how much that affects soft bottles on the market today.
In contrast to what @JustinC said, I believe hard bottles are more likely to explode. Due to their rigidity they will hold their shape until the ...
5
I look at soft plastic drinking bottles as a great but slightly risky way to trim weight. Soft plastic should always be lighter than hard plastic, even if the difference is minor. The same applies to thin metal bottles which have the same benefits as hard plastic.
The risk is in the ability of the soft plastic to either puncture or explode under pressure.
...
4
There are a couple of reasons for this, as I understand it:
Your wastes (soap, Giardia in your poop, DEET, ...) will contaminate the water.
Lakeshores in high-altitude areas tend to be very delicate. People do a lot of ecological damage by pitching their tents right there. Unlike high-altitude areas in the Alps, the ones in the western US do not have huts, ...
4
Leaving aside the questions of water purity, then the answer would be fresh water, no question.
Salt water does not lather up many soaps very well, although detergents are a different story. Salt water also does not rinse cleanly, so even those long-distance sailors that use salt and Joy detergent (no corporate affiliation, but lots of online reading) use ...
4
I walked Hadrian's Wall recently carrying an 18kg backpack. It was hot, sunny weather for six of the seven days. I had a 2 litre bladder of water and by the end of each day I had ran out of water. That was not a nice feeling walking the last couple of miles without water. I have now upgraded to a three litre bladder.
3
An additional point that hasn't been mentioned, is when you camp next to a creek or stream the water level can quickly change, sometimes by quite a bit. It can be sunny where you are camped but heavy rain miles upstream from you, and the raising water level could wash away half of your camp while you sleep.
3
You might want to take a look at this site which is in Canada, but ships to the USA. Due note that since the DEA is restricting/banning the product, buying iodine crystals through the mail might get seized coming into the country.
If you want to help Polar Pure come back, take a look here for info on how you can help.
If you are looking for a more bulk ...
2
Not sure if they carry the diameter you are looking for but when a spigot breaks on one of my canisters I usually go to Ace Hardware and pickup a replacement. I have had good luck with Rubbermaid ones. I would expect stores like Home Depot or Lowes to have them as well.
The Reliance ones work if the mouth is the same size, I like them because you can turn ...
2
I never tried, but one option I read about is to tie a transparent plastic bag around a branch of a large leaf tree, and let water condensation from the plant to stick to the inner wall of the bag. Cut a small hole in the bag and let the liquid drip out.
An alternative is to dig a hole, put anything having a water content in it, add a cup at the bottom of ...
2
I carry 6L in the Mojave dunes but find that I only drink 3 to 4L. I may carry as much as 8L. Better safe than sorry.
Water is very heavy, but you can always ditch gear. I pack my backpack like a lightweight hiker, so I can carry all that water without my backpack getting too heavy to be any fun. My backpack weights around 40-45 pounds with water, but it's ...
2
Actually they can probably be fixed.
For the cap there are two options with JB Weld that I have used.
The first is described here, but basically consists of coating
the original cap with JB Weld kwikplastic.
The second is more complicated, but a better fix in my experience. First you have to coat the bottle
nipple with a polyethylene lube, so ...
2
I would try these options below in order, if you haven't already done so.
Repair
Contact the manufacturer or a retailer that sells that brand. There is a good chance they might fix them under warranty. I've had many good experiences with getting older equipment that you think might not be covered taken care of, but each brand varies on how far they'll go. ...
2
Warning! I am not a medical professional.
However, I asked my favorite doctor and she seemed to think it would be okay.
She said rust would just look like iron to your body and it would be consumed like food. So, I guess it is safe.
(Nota bene, if the container is rusting so extensively you swallow sharp flakes of metal, that is bad. The Chinese used to ...
2
I'd be weary of drinking from anything rusty personally - I'm not aware of the type of metal your thermos is made from, but several can start to produce potentially poisonous chemicals when they begin to oxidise. Sure, you could be ok but I wouldn't say it's worth the risk.
In terms of cleaning it, try something like Zud cleanser (readily available in the ...
1
You should never plan to not purify. Levels of contamination will depend on the location. A stream running by a pasture 50 miles upstream will possibly contain more contaminants than ocean, even if the ocean (on average) is worse.
If you have a way to purify, then purify! If you can't purify, consider heating your dishes over a flame afterwards until ...
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