Water, Water Everywhere... My Backcountry Water Treatment Dissertation

 

"Water, water everywhere / Nor any drop to drink" - an oft quoted excerpt from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, expresses the desperation of a ship's crew adrift at sea, surrounded by salt water but out of clean drinking water, and without a breeze to blow them to land.  The poem is much deeper and darker than that, but the quote comes to my mind when I think about drinking water during backpacking.

This will probably be my most controversial post to date - simply because people are generally passionate in believing that whatever method they've chosen is the best and everyone else who does something differently is loco.  I will describe to you how I gather and treat water in the backcountry currently, as well as methods I've used and discarded in the past.  It's really easy to argue about water treatment methods, which ones work, which are the best, etc.  Everyone has their own preference, this post is about mine.

April Showers

Instead of a single specific topic, I thought I'd share a few short updates on my life that probably won't ever make it into a full article.  Here's the quick rundown: (1)Tarpon Fishing in the Florida Keys, (2) Progress (or lack of) on my backpacking teepee, (3) Teaching my daughter how to tie flies, (4) My bum knees, (5) Memorial Day weekend camping, (6) Going west, young man

Let's dive in, shall we?

Benchmade Griptilian Custom Knife - First Look

I recently found myself in the market for an almost every-day carry knife.  Most days I still carry the small folding knife that I bought myself with store credit that I earned working as a counselor-in-training at a Boy Scout camp a long, long time ago.  It's a great knife - sentimental, well-loved, and still in great shape.  The knife that I'll someday hand down to my son.

I somehow talked myself into having a second option available for those days when I might want to carry something a little more substantial.  I did my research, laid hands on lots of options, and in the end chose a Benchmade Griptilian.  One of the things I really liked about the Griptilian is that it is a part of Benchmade's custom knife program, meaning that you can get it customized from the factory more-or-less the way you want it, for a small premium over the MSRP of the standard Griptilian.