Water purification

One of the things I really love about the Berg and other places in SA is being able to drink straight out of the mountain streams. Large parts of North America have issues with "beaver fever" (Giardia), and you generally should avoid drinking out of streams, except if you know that a particular stream is free from contamination, and up in the high alpine it is generally not an issue, but seems to be area dependent. I have used chemical treatment up until now, but am growing weary of it and have been looking into filtration. There are several options and pros and cons which I am still looking into. I did recently pick up one neat little piece of gear that I will test soon. It is the closest I can get to drinking directly out of the streams. It is called the Life Straw. I have the basic model since in the mountains of Canada generally all I need to worry about is Giardia. There are models which also take care of viral and chemical contamination. Sometimes tannin is an issue here too.

Thanks to hollow fibre filtration technology we can now have mechanisms which depend on a sucking action or gravity, instead of a hand pump. It does require frequent backwashing though. The basic Life Straw is also not a complete solution as you cannot get treated water into a container - but for now it is a great consolation!

lifestraw.com/

Used my LifeStraw on a trip recently. It works well for the simple contraption that it is, and it only weighs about 30g. I used it to drink out of streams below the alpine belt. I tend to drink untreated water from smaller streams high up in the alpine, and so far this has worked for me. The theory with this is that there are less animals around to contaminate the water up there.

Provided the approach trail through the forests has flowing streams along the way, having the LifeStraw means you don't have to carry much water on you. I have some tablets as a back-up if I need to carry treated water with me. Hopefully this strategy will prove effective - remains to be seen.

There are some practical issues with the LifeStraw however. Firstly, unless you scoop water with a cup and drink from that, you have to pretty much lie on the ground to drink directly from the streams. Often this means lying on wet, cold and even icy surfaces. The other issue is that it may not be frozen, especially when the filter is wet, as this can crack it. I had to sleep with it in my sleeping bag since it was definitely below zero where we were camping. This would be an issue with any type of filter probably.