Poll: Water & Giardia

[elk_hunter]

When you're in the mountains and thirsty, will you dip into a river/stream and drink water as-is? Are you worried about Giardia?

 

[stanley]

Anyone who has ever truly had Giardia will always do what ever they possibly can in the future to drink only 'safe' water (bottled, purified, tap, hose, what-ever...). I came down with Giardia while deer hunting in Southern Utah while in college. Even with heavy drugs applied, it was over 5 weeks of crappy hell!!!

Drink from any ol' creek you want, just beware the bugs!

S.

 

[mtmiller]

I'll skip the beaver-fever and filter my water.

 

[Moosie]

You NEVER know whats up the stream from were you are standing. that being said, I have drank from ALOT of rivers that looked very clean and some that don't look so clean. A thirsty man will do alot that he's not suposed to. I attribute my lack of getting the CHIZZ from eating poorly and having a bad diet. If you seen some of the crap I eat it would make the Giardia bugs get sick

 

[Spitz]

I spent two years living in rural Mexico acquiring and nurturing all types of bugs in my system. Seven years later I think I still have them cause I could drink downstream of mtmiller's "bear" camp without so much as a juicy fart. My bugs eat pieces of chiz like Giardia for breakfast.

That said; I still filter.

 

[Bambistew]

Mix your water with a little Crown and you're good to go.

 

[GFHunter]

Always drank from creeks and rivers and never once been diagnosed with atomic BUTT PISS.

 

[A-con]

Back in the 70s, we used to backpack the Sierras and not even take a canteen. There were so many small streams, you get thirsty, just walk another ¼ mile, bend down and take a drink.
The only thing that ever got me was eating at that new Vietnamese restaurant down in the Tower district.
Now a days, I filter. I don’t know if the water is any worse now then it was back then, but I try to be a lot safer. I’m not going to waste a good tag sitting on the crapper.

 

[BillyGoat]

I was on a remote backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon one time when I was a kid. Two of the guys drank straight from a spring the 1st of 6 days and the next morning both were sick as dogs. Couldn't have been giardia since I believe that's far too quick, but ever since I've been terrified of the misery they went through especially if I'm alone. Hell, I even put pills in after melting snow. It's just not worth the risk and if using pills instead of a filter, I always have some mix to mask any bad taste anyway. Actually I gave up on filters long ago because they were a PITA - always clogging and slow. Maybe the technology has improved these days, but pills are so easy and light.

I do know a couple of old timers that to this day don't purify anything and they never get sick. Maybe they did some time down in a 3rd world country like Spitz.

 

[The Hedgehog]

I've been so thirsty that I've sipped the juice from cattle footprints in the dirt. I remember that it looked like mango juice, but didn't taste like it.

Just last night after falling off a log into a creek, I decided to take a drink of it. My 3 cans of beer were 3 miles down the trail in the creek and I didn't feel like waiting that long.

Here's a picture I took from above, a couple hours before falling in the creek below.

 

[ELKCHSR]

I'm not 100% on this particular issue but it's said if you contract Giardia, it stays in your system like a virus for the rest of your life

As with Greenhorn, a guy will drink most any thing when it comes to it

It takes about two to three weeks for the bug to propagate in your system enough to give you the squirts

I don't drink out of beaver ponds or just down stream of them, opting more for water coming off hillsides

Elkhunter posted some thing a number of years ago that said that only 2% of the water in Montana was infected, I don't know how true that is

I believe some of the best fishing takes place along slower moving waters and that’s also where a number of game animals can be found

Since the cleaner water would come from harder to reach places, less people less illness

There probably isn't a correlation, but it seems to fit

 

[scottymack]

I purify water, I have seen too many people get sick.

 

[elk_hunter]

Is there any data or anything else to support a notion that water moving over rocks purifies itself after a certain distance?

 

[Bambistew]

I read an article a while ago in some science journal on Giardia. Was pretty intersting to say the least. It said that you were about 10x as likely to contract it from a public swiming pool than a mountian stream. It went into depth on the amount of 'bugs' per gallon of water and how many it takes to get you sick and also talked about how one carrier can produce enough bugs to contaminate x amount of gallons of water etc. The conclusion was that its pretty rare to get it from streams that have a high volume of water and low incedence of contamination. i.e. mountains streams and springs...

I'm sure you could find the article if you did a serch. It was on Giardia in the Sierra Mountains.

I've drank from springs and creeks in the mountains for years, most all those streams had no cattle or beavers around however. I do not drink from lakes or standing pools of water unles its boiled or filtered.

I even drank out of the Powder River one day on an antelope hunt. Had to strain it through my teeth but I was friggn thirsty.

 

[elk_hunter]

Yep; a ton of articles out there on the subject. This one was interesting...apparently Giardia have quite a difficult time surviving freezes. Also of note; soil filters Giardia so drinking out of springs should be fine. Mmmm...Rocky Mountain H2O!

http://www.californiamountaineer.com/giardia.html

 

[ELKCHSR]

Very good find

Thanks...

 

[1_pointer]

I filter my water, but last year on the mtn goat hunt the filter was froze pecker stiff and I was to thirsty to wait so I slurped up as much as I could. Generally I try to be safe about water, but I'm not too terribly worried about it.

 

[camo308]

We have backpacked all around the Sierra. Sometimes we filter sometimes we don't. I usually pick the snow melt for a source but I know a doctor who did a lot of research on the subject who never filters any water he drinks. He doesn't drink the obviously tainted stuff but otherwise he's not concerned with it. I also read that the safest unfiltered water is the top few inches of a lake where the water is purified by the ultraviolet rays of the sun. Just pick out he water striders and glup it down. But the tale that is told about the water flowing over rocks for any distance actually doesn't do anything to clean it up.

I heard the tap water in San Francisco has more crap in it than any mountain stream does.