[pct-l] Can one not use snow?

[Steel-Eye]

Good afternoon,

Nice, clean snow can be a useful source of water however I won't stoop to 
offering the old admonishment, "Don't eat yellow snow."  The biggest problem 
with snow is that it requires quite a bit of heat energy to melt the stuff. 
It's onerous in terms of precious fuel if you stop to fire-up the stove, and 
it seems to take forever to just let it melt in the drinking bottle.

One common use I find is to scrape a few hand-fulls into a 1/2 to 3/4th 
bottle of water just to cool it down and improve drinkability.   If you 
don't have sufficient water in the jug the snow will make it into a 
difficult-to-drink slush until it all melts.

So, if I'm walking on snowpack why do I want nice cool water?  This time of 
year it could easily be hot walking over snow, and with reflection we get 
baked on all sides.  Fine, then just peal off the clothes and enjoy the 
sunshine with a bit of a cool breeze.  Maybe, but it's not uncommon to be 
sweating hard struggling over snow while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. 
It's just not fair, huh?

Steel-Eye


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "OMullis" <omullis at aircanopy.net>
To: <pct-l at backcountry.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 12:51 PM
Subject: [pct-l] Can one not use snow?


>I was reading a trail journal where the hiker said the trail and streams
> were obscured by snow, so it was harder to locate water sources... just 
> got
> me wondering why/if one couldn't use snow as a water source.
>
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