[pct-l] Water - it finally caught up with me

[Eric Lee]

Here's another data point on the water discussion.

 

I live in Washington and for the past 10 years or so I've usually not
filtered or treated my water, depending on a visual inspection of the source
and whether I knew of significant human presence upstream of my location.
When I do feel the need to take precautions I use Aqua Mira.  This has
worked fine with no problems for section-hiking all of Oregon and Washington
as well as lots of other hiking in Washington.

 

However, this year my section hike took me from the Russian Wilderness in CA
section P through to Ashland, and there is a significant livestock presence
pretty much all through that area.  I knew that livestock are bad news so I
did mostly treat my water with Aqua Mira but over the course of six days
there were probably three or four times when I chose not to for various
reasons.  Two days after finishing my section hike I got seriously ill for
about a week.  I never got it officially diagnosed but I'm pretty sure I had
e coli.  It wasn't fun.

 

That experience isn't going to drastically change the way I deal with my
water but I will take the presence of livestock more seriously in the
future.

 

Eric