Water
From Trail-Finder -- Dedicated to getting you outside
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Water
Water is one of the most critical things you can take with you on nearly any outdoor activity. Without water, you can quickly suffer from dehydration, which can cause loss of coordination, balance, and even death. Fortunately, it's usually pretty easy to be sure you have enough.
How much water you need depends on what you're doing, the weather, and your own physiology. A good minimum, just as a starting point, is a half-liter per hour. From there, adjust based on your own experience. Just remember, it's far better to come off the trail with an extra half-liter of water than it is to have two hours of trail ahead of you with no water left in your bottle.
Take it with you
To carry water, you need some kind of water bottle. The most basic, least expensive form is plastic pop bottles, either purchased with bottled water, or refilled with your own water. These bottles are cheap (free) and readily available, and easy to drop into a coat pocket or backpack, but they're usually not the best option.
Hydration packs are now available for nearly all sports. A hydration pack consists of a soft, plastic pouch with a flexible drinking hose, contained within a nylon pack of some type. The pack may be a day pack, a waist pack, or just a protective pouch you can connect to other gear, like the top of your kayak. You can also usually buy just the plastic pouch and hose to add to an existing pack.
Hydration packs are normally available in sizes ranging up to about three liters.
Some sports also have specialty options for carrying water. Bikers, for example, routinely carry one or two water bottles of up to a liter in size bolted directly to their bike frame. Scuba divers can even get special mouthpieces to allow drinking clean water while underwater.
Other options, such as canteens, water skins, etc, still exist, and still work, but they're rarely used.
Making more
As your time in nature increases, you need to carry more water. Unfortunately, this quickly results in a lot more weight than most people want to carry. Unless you know otherwise, assume that all surface water is contaminated. Water purification can be done in three ways.
Contaminants commonly in surface water include giardia, cryptosporidium, e. coli, and various chemical and radioactive substances. None of those are things you want to drink. To reduce them, you have three basic options.
- Water filters use mechanical means to quickly and easily purify water. Water filters used for backcountry use need to be much higher quality than those used for household use. A good filter is expensive, but can make almost any water source drinkable.
- Chemical water treatments use chemicals added to the water. These are cheap, but can result in a bad tasting water. Chemical water treatments are also only useful to reduce biological contaminants, not sediment, or chemical or radioactive contaminants.
- Boiling water is time consuming, and requires that you carry the gear to boil water, such as a camp stove, fuel, and cookware. It can remove most biological contaminants, but not sediment, chemical or radioactive contaminants.
- Combination methods are also common, with chemicals being used either before, or in, water filters.
Alternatives
Nearly any liquid can be used for hydration, but other than water, the most commonly used are various sports drinks. These can be used to replace lost electrolytes, as well as for energy, since many contain large amounts of one or more sugars. If you're sweating heavily, these may make sense, although you probably don't need to drink only sports drinks. To avoid too much sugar, as much as anything else, you can try one of the following techniques.
- Dilute the sports drink with equal parts water (or more). Some do as much as four parts water to one part sports drink.
- Alternate water and sports drink, with a bottle of sports drink followed by one or more bottles of water.
- Carry both water and sports drinks. Many hydration backpacks make this easy, since there's often room for two pouches, with a water hose over one shoulder and a sports drink hose over the other. You can still dilute the sports drink, of course.
Categories: Gear | Water
