Summertime means backpacking season. That time of year when you pack everything you need to survive on your back and trek with it into the wilderness. One thing you can never bring enough of, however, is water. Your body requires far more water than most people are able to carry. Backpackers therefore rely on the fields, streams, and lakes they camp near to provide them with enough H2O to survive.
The problem is that not all of this water is clean. An informative article in The LA Times discusses the challenges that backpackers face in their pursuit of diarrhea-free weekend escapes. Kathleen Doheny’s article reviews recent studies analyzing water samples throughout California’s Sierra Nevadas. Most were free of intestine-attacking bacteria, but those measured below cattle-grazing grounds were not. The problem, as Doheny points out, is that no one ever knows if cattle happen to be grazing up river from where you pull your water supply.
Smart backpackers treat their water to be on the safe side; a six hour hike out of the wilderness is no fun with loose bowels.