ARKANSAS SPORTSMAN

Better safe than sorry with water

Anyone who camps along waterways while fishing, hunting or hiking should have a water purification kit in his gear bag.

For nearly 30 years I have sipped from the streams I float, and from along those which I hike. It has never made me ill, but only because I treat water I drink from lakes, rivers and streams.

That goes back to a piece of advice I got from Jim Rawlins, author of A Hiker’s Guide to the Ouachita National Recreation Trail, when I was preparing to backpack from Arkansas to Maine in 1987.

“Water. Trust it or treat it,” Rawlins said.

It’s wise to treat it. The only time I ever drank untreated water straight from a source was from the upper White River near Pettigrew in October 1987. It didn’t hurt me, but it will eventually if you do it long enough.

When you float a stream, you have two options for hydration. You can bring water from home, in jugs or bottles. That takes up space, it’s heavy, and empty water bottles pose a trash problem.

Or, you can get it from a lake or river, which offer an unlimited supply for cooking and drinking that’s available on demand. Best of all, you don’t have to store it. Treating it is easy and inexpensive.

For years, I’ve treated drinking water from rivers, streams and lakes all over the U.S. with an MSR Waterworks microfilter. It’s a simple, hand-operated pump that pulls water from a natural source and forces it through a dense ceramic filter that strains out, according to MSR’s Web site, 99.999 percent of the bacteria, protozoa, chemicals and particulates that are common in North American waters. These include giardia and cryptosporidium. It also has a pre-filter at the tip of the intake hose that removes large contaminants and particles, like sand, silt and leaves. It can pump out about 1.25 litres of clean, sweet drinking water in about a minute.

Other filters do the same thing just as well. Katadyn makes several models of portable filters that are available locally. I’ve never used them, but the brand is field tested and has a sterling reputation.

In addition to pump filters, you can get a variety of straws that perform the same function by lung power. Use them like any other straw, except these have interior elements that filter bacteria, protozoa and solids. Since these are strictly source-to-mouth devices, they offer no way to store water, so they are best suited for emergency use. There also are gravity-fed filtration bottles, like miniature versions of PUR or Brita pitchers.

No matter how pristine the surrounding environment, surface water is untrustworthy because contaminants can enter the system from so many sources, especially in the Ozarks where water travels underground through the karst topography for long distances. For maximum protection, you’ll need to beef up your treatment procedures to kill a wider range of pathogens, as well as viruses.

I’ve been doing this for a long time by treating filtered water with a SteriPEN. It’s a battery-powered device that kills pathogens with ultraviolet light.

You can also use iodine tablets, chlorine bleach or Aquamira drops. They work, but they take time. Iodine, for example, takes about 30 minutes to kill pathogens in a liter of water, and it tastes terrible. Aquamira drops use chlorine dioxide and do not create a bad taste.

For emergencies, I have an old PUR Explorer purifier. It’s also a pump device that strains water through a microfilter, and then through an iodine cartridge. Still, you have to let your water sit for about 30 minutes to give the iodine time to work its magic.

Probably the best of all worlds is the First Need Elite XLE, which removes viruses, cysts and bacteria without the use of chemicals. It also removes pesticides. It costs about $100 and gets very good reviews from all sources. The only consistent complaint is about its weight. That’s only an issue if you use it for backpacking. For canoeing, it’s irrelevant.

Regardless, a water purification system increases the versatility of a camping kit and helps ensure your health and safety.

Sports, Pages 24 on 03/13/2014

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