Last Year's Hike...Dehydration

baloney on drinking untreated water! those parasites can mess you up for a year, and cost you many tens of thousands of $. So you have to stop and boil some water, so what? I always carry both potable aqua and a filter, man. water weighs 8 lbs per gallon, and if yuo are pushing hard, you can need 2 gallons or more per day. If you are not certain of where you can get more, every few hours, you'd better carry plenty (and take it easy). dehydration can start to hurt your performance in as little as half an hour, and can render you unable to help yourself in a very few hours. it's not as deadly dangerous as extreme cold, but it's close, and adds to the risk of heat stroke or heat exhaustion.
 
Agreed. You only have to experience giardia once. Been there, done that. And there's stuff out there much worse than giardia.
 
I believe Giardia is what they call an "amoeba" in South America. I fortunately didn't have this problem but I observed others taking meds.

When I was younger, I would seldom carry water with me on a hike, even a day hike. Now I carry water religiously if I am going to be out more than a couple hours in normal temperatures (50-75 degrees F). So, I pay attention.
 
I take a water bottle almost everywhere I go, its important to sanitize the container each day. I put some water in it with a drop of bleach and shake it for a full minute, let stand and then rinse and fill. I take a liter bottle with me on snowmobile trips in winter. Getting stuck in the slush will drain the body quickly, a 5 minute ride can mean several hours of strenuous walking in heavy winter gear. Same thing in summer when going on an ATV ride. I have a long commute to resupply my home and I always carry water in the truck I take with me fresh from home. Don't leave bottled water in a vehicle for any length of time. The cycling of heat and cold will cause toxic chemicals to leech from the plastic into the water.
 
Toxic chemicals from a plastic water bottle are the least of my worries. I might be more concerned about a constant diet of sodium hypochlorite (sodium salt of hypochlorous acid). As purchased it varies widely in concentration (3-8%) and loses it's strength over time beginning at the point of manufacture, through distribution, sitting in warehouses and in stores. So without doing a chemical test, you really don't know how many ppm you are drinking. Sodium hypochlorite also reacts with most nitrogen compounds to form volatile chloramines, dichloramines, and nitrogen trichloride.
 
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