A note on Giardia. I grew up sipping straight from rural streams and springs, and knew where the tastiest water was for miles around both home and cabin. Never had a problem.
But I have had Giardia, proven by a jejunal tube biopsy of the lining of my small intestine, which was found to be covered by Giardia trophozoites. I have a framed photo enlargement of the microcopy, my only photo from that trip.
Some explanation; I paid for early trips by working when home as a human volunteer (guinea pig) for in-patient medical research studies. On one study a small intestine biopsy was taken looking for E.coli. What they found was Giardia, which I had likely acquired on the N. Fork of the Shoshone weeks before.
The docs were very excited when they identified the trophozoites, and still had me in-patient as a willing captive, so they put a heparin lock in, fed me on measured milk for a day and did hourly blood draws looking for malabsorption. They got published paper out of it; I was referred to as “An 18 year old college student”, which sounded better than “A wandering teenage vagabond”.
One round of Giardia was enough for me, and I was largely asymptomatic (lots of stomach gurgling and weight loss). One of my two companions on that trip was stricken more severely, with many urgent pullovers en route home so he could squat in the roadside weeds. For 2000 miles, from Cody to Baltimore.
(BTW, we were using water purification tablets on that trip, but got sloppy or didn’t wait long enough with ice cold water at some point)
Not just
“Beaver Fever”; muskrat, moose, caribou, deer, dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, beavers, coyotes, primates, rodents, and raccoons can all have giardiasis. crap is dang near universal (pun intended).
Once was enough, I filter everything, even cooking water that I may prefer to bring to a boil only briefly.
Used a Sweetwater mini pump for years and a Lifestraw when out on the stream fishing. Just got the Platypus gravity system and love it! I also have bought a few silk "Cowboy" bandanas, which are quite a bit larger than a standard bandana, and they make a great filter for sediment screening.
We have a couple of manual pump filters, including two Sweetwater Guardians with silt stoppers and some DIY accessories*, and I still sometimes bring one of those on group trips or long solos as a back up to the gravity filter, or in case pump filtering somehow proves easier.
*DIYing connector adapters and pre-filters and non-OEM replacement filters for various manufacturer’s filter units is well inter-net documented. Simply being able to screw X company’s filter end onto Y company’s canteen or dromedary bag, or replace the OEM filters with something more efficient and less proprietary costly, helps with any system.
My wife got me a LifeStraw years ago and I think it is still in the original package. I have thought about taking it as a minimalist backup, but I’d rather have a means of producing at least a canteen of filtered water that didn’t involve sucking. Or spitting; I could bring my morning oatmeal and coffee water to a rolling boil for several minutes (3 minutes at 6000 ft, where’s my watch) and then wait for my coffee to cool, or suck up mouthfuls of filtered water with the Lifestraw and spit that in the JetBoil. Hey, anyone need a refill on coffee?
Since getting a gravity filter pumping has yet to be necessary/easier, and I haven’t used one of the pumps since. In part because I am naturally lazy and a gravity filter takes no effort, especially if I need to filter a quantity of water. I do carry a replacement (Sawyer) filter for the (Platypus) gravity bag, just in case; anything else on a simple gravity set-up I could patch in the field.
Part of that quantity is the “we”. On a family or group trip our water needs are X times the number of people and gravity filtering multiple liters of water effortlessly makes more sense. For a solo traveler a filter bottle or mini-pump may be fine, provided there is always a good source of decently filterable water available.
Part of that quantity is that on some trips, desert rivers and the like, un-silty sources of filterable water can be few and far between. I can alum settle the silt before filtering, but would rather not unless absolutely necessary. Even without adding alum simply waiting 30 minutes with water in a collapsible bucket helps settle particulates (OK, some floating on top) from small stream and boggy waters. Tannins excepted, and I’m OK with that naturally flavored peaty taste (except in soft-water concentrations, where it makes coffee taste like crap)
But when using alum the vigorous stirring required, waiting, settling, careful dipping to not disturb the bottom silt layer on the bottom of the bucket, carefully pouring that precious extract into the gravity bag and etc becomes a time consuming chore. And, while filtered potable, the resulting water often isn’t that dang tasty.
If I’m in a spot that has a freshwater spring or pool I will fill up a dromedary bag, sometimes two depending on the next known source along the way. Two dromedary bags equals 5 gallons/20 liters of water. No way I am pumping that quantity of filtered water when I could be relaxing, rising only to refill a gravity bag and occasionally backwash the filter.
Also no way I am carrying 40 lbs of water much further than from source to camp, and before loading the canoe in the morning I’ll fill every canteen I have, and my belly too.
Like anything else gear and equipment-wise there are too many variables for any one universal choice.
But it’s a gravity bag all the way. Smiley Face.
