Hydration

Water.

H2O.

We do not think much about it though we depend on it and use it every day.

We have grown accustomed to the convenience provided by wells, reservoirs, pipes, and faucets. About the only time we give it much thought and realize our dependence on it is when a municipal water main breaks or the well goes down disrupting its flow out our faucets. We discover ourselves then suddenly plunged into a little momentary crisis with our familiar routines blasted all to heck. Those momentary crises are fortunately short lived and rarely become more than minor inconveniences.

Most of our body weight is water. On a normal day a normal adult should drink a gallon of water to replenish their normal water loss through perspiration and to carry on healthy body functions. We perspire less in the winter, depending on what we are doing, but our other bodily functions do not take a break when the mercury drops out of the hot zone. Hydration is as important in cold weather as it is in hot weather.

Where the issue of water and hydration is concerned, John “Lofty” Wiseman, in his SAS Survival Handbook, says this …

Without water you will last about 2.5 days at 48 degrees C (120 degrees F) if you spend the whole time resting in the shade, though you could last as long as 12 days if the temperature stays below 21 decrees C (70 degrees F).

That quote is a serious dose of perspective. At least it should be. Whether we are planning a trek on a trail or preparing for some sort of potential disaster that disrupts or destroys the normal services we are accustomed to.

Water.

It is one of the Big Four.

Fire, Water, Shelter, Food.

We cannot live without it. The effects of dehydration, before we are depleted to the point that physical life is no longer sustainable, set in making it extremely difficult to reason and do what functionally needs to be done to tend to ourselves and our physical needs.

Water weighs in at 8.3 pounds per gallon. That weight makes it impractical to transport all we need with us for a weekend (or longer) trek.  

Securing water in this geographic region, where sixty to seventy inches of rain annually is normal, is not a difficult proposition. We are surrounded by water.

Some care needs to be taken with it though. Especially in our immediate area where crops and golf courses are regularly and abundantly sprayed with chemicals that find their way into the watersheds when it rains. People need to know the lay of the land, how water flows, and where it goes. Some pesticides and herbicides are also known to leech into the shallow ground water that can be accessed. Removing those contaminants from collected water involves a lot more than we can carry in our kits.

Chemical contaminants are not a worry once you move into the more genuine woodland environments a short drive away. The concerns with collected water in a woodland environment are easily taken care of by either boiling or filtering.

I am not a fan of the little tablets that you drop into your canteen to kill the little boogers that will turn your world on its head.

A number of reasons.

The first is they have a definite shelf life and after they have reached it they are no longer effective. The second is that in a long-term situation that little bottle of tablets is going to soon run out. Either of these, expiration or empty, puts us right back to boiling or filtering as a means to make water potable.

A third reason is that there are some water borne concerns that the tablets, at least those that are readily available to most folks at the grab-it-and-fly stores, do not take care of.

FILTERING

There are a number of filtering options available on the market ranging from a few bucks to quite a few bucks.

Sawyer makes what they call the Life Straw.

This is the filtering option that I carry in my kit. It sells for around $20.00 and is a smart option to add to a kit. There are no mechanical parts to break and the water filtering tool is supposed to be good for something like 1,000 liters of water if properly used. That is a lot of water stops while on the move along a trail. Using a filtering option for sipping on the move allows us to conserve the contents of our canteen.

You simply stick it into a stream, creek, puddle, or collected container of water and use it like a straw to suck up a drink of filtered water.  Once you have quenched your thirst you blow back through the straw to clean the filter end of any debris that may have collected on it.

Keep in mind though, if you collect water in a container and use the straw to drink from the container, the container needs to be treated with care and not used for any other purpose until it has been sterilized to avoid contracting a bad bug. Metal containers can be easily heat treated over a fire to destroy any water borne illness causing boogers.

BOILING

One of the things we have to wrap our minds around when we walk away from our conveniences and into a woodland-wilderness environment is that every item associated with our life and health is our sole responsibility.

Our minds may indeed entertain a myriad of thoughts on a vast range of subjects. Getting away from all that we are familiar with as the “norm” and deep into a woodland environment for an extended period where our real life-needs become focused has a way of causing us to mentally consider, weigh, and sort things.

One of the things that I try to instill in people is to always be thinking ahead to that next fire and to that next drink of water. Have on you and with you the necessary items to accomplish these tasks.

Boiling water and filling containers with safe drinking water becomes part of our daily woodland-wilderness routine … morning and evening on the breakfast and supper fires. It is also something that necessity may fling upon us during other parts of the day.

So how long do you boil water to make it safe?

I have read several time recommendations from several sources. The two extreme ends of the discussion are … as soon as it begins to boil the heat has destroyed any living hazard … the other end says 15 minutes to make it safe. What I am personally comfortable with is closer to the left side of the discussion.

Both the Washington State Department of Health and the United States Environmental Protection Agency recommend bringing water to a rolling boil and hold it there for 1 minute.

I am personally comfortable with 1 to 5 minutes.

Do you strain out debris from collected water before or after it is boiled?

Think about it.

Anything that comes into contact with questionable water before it is sterilized should also be considered suspect. Why contaminate an otherwise usable bandana or sleeve from your T-Shirt using it to strain grit or vegetative debris from water before you boil it?

The collected water, along with the metal container it was collected in, having sat over a fire long enough to bring it to a rolling boil for 1 to 5 minutes, is sterilized. Wait until after the sterilizing process to bring anything into contact with it.