Skillz.....Novel sources of water...

[kgd]

I'm bored and was watching mantracker. Two athletes, one a football player/snow shower recreationist and the second a competition mountain biker "The Rev" try to evade Mantracker in California. They both got caught, but water was the rouse that Mantraker and his guide used. They set up traps at each water hole. The two athletes had a hard time catching on and fell for the rouse twice, eventually getting caught. Even though there was snow all over the place, they seemed not to use it. The football player did in the end use use some fresh snow, but he did it poorly, stuffing snow in his mouth without melting it.

So this thread is about unusual water sources or the little tricks one would use. There is the tree aspiration. Dew harvesting. Solar stills. What else?

Are some plants useful for harvesting water? Lets hear it folks. How do you find water when the stream bed you thought was there turns out dry???

 

[Mistwalker]

I'm bored and was watching mantracker. Two athletes, one a football player/snow shower recreationist and the second a competition mountain biker "The Rev" try to evade Mantracker in California. They both got caught, but water was the rouse that Mantraker and his guide used. They set up traps at each water hole. The two athletes had a hard time catching on and fell for the rouse twice, eventually getting caught. Even though there was snow all over the place, they seemed not to use it. The football player did in the end use use some fresh snow, but he did it poorly, stuffing snow in his mouth without melting it.

So this thread is about unusual water sources or the little tricks one would use. There is the tree aspiration. Dew harvesting. Solar stills. What else?

Are some plants useful for harvesting water? Lets hear it folks. How do you find water when the stream bed you thought was there turns out dry???

I live in a temperate rain forest....my six quart stock pot that I accidentally left outside for two days when I got distracted is filled nearly to the rim after two days of rain. So mainly I have been studying this aspect from an outside-my-environment perspective. When I lived in Florida I learned that in the coastal parts of Florida it is possible to just dig down deep enough to find fresh water and you don't even have to be that far from the shore for it not to be salt water. I have friends out west who have sent me pictures of some of the cactus that can be used for this. Here most of the time, except in "drought" conditions, I can dig into a "dry" stream bed and find water, or just walk to the river or one of MANY perennial creeks. I suppose there are some areas of the country where you'd just be S.O.L.

 

[kgd]

Hey Mistwalker - I'd love it if you could dig up those cactus "water" plants. This was one of the motivations for this thread as I was watching the Mantracker show (I don't normally watch TV but it is a long weekend, my wife and family are gone and I just playing total couch potato) they kept running by different species of cactus and I couldn't help but wonder if you could get water from them.

I haven't dug old stream beds for water, but what depth is common to dig? How long would you go at it before you gave up? Would you dig 1 foot, 2 feet??? Thanks...

 

[Mistwalker]

Well here in my area there are lots of run off streams that come down the sides of the mountain. at the bottoms of the falls there is often sandy bottomed pools where under the sand is a solid shelf of stone that works like a bowl the sand often retains water and by removing some you create a pool. How deep I would dig would depend on what signs I saw as I dug. If I can I'll find those cactus pics...they may be on an external hard drive or thumb drive somewhere....Lisa switched my O.S. from XP to Vista while I was out of town working and backed up all my pics first.

I'll also try to get up to North Chickamauga creek to take some pictures that people unfamiliar with this area find confusing. In one section there is white water that is twenty-five feet wide and two feet deep then just downstream it ALL goes underground except in a flood and all you see on top is a big "dry" stream bed full of big sandstones....then another mile or two down stream the water is back above ground again. That's not the only creek like that here...just the biggest and longest.