[pct-l] Not treating water

[David Ellzey]

I agree with this, treating water definitely should fall in the HYOH category. It is essentially a risk assessment issue and everyone has different levels of comfort there.

BigToe

-----Original Message-----
From: pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net [mailto:pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net] On Behalf Of Matt Geis
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 2:39 PM
To: pct-l at backcountry.net
Subject: Re: [pct-l] Not treating water

Late coming into this thread, but one point I don't see is the following:

Regardless of whether you'll get sick, how comfortable will you be knowing you're drinking untreated water?

One group will drink untreated water, and know that if they catch something they have themselves to blame, and hike on.
Another group will drink the water, and spend their entire hike worrying that perhaps they're going to get sick.

If I were one of the second group (I'm not, but for the sake of argument here...), I'd treat all my water, so I could enjoy my hike.  I realized this was maybe the best reason to treat or not treat after a talk on-trail with a guy who basically said "yeah, I know it's probably perfectly safe, but years ago in Central America I nearly died from a waterborne parasite, so this just gives me peace of mind and allows me to not worry about what might or might not happen." 

The logic worked for him, and even though I was doing my own thing, it made perfect sense to me too.

Iron Chef


      
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