Water bottles and Water treatment

Water is very important to walkers. You can go a week without food (if you must) but water, no. Life gets uncomfortable very quickly if you haven't any. Still, a lot of tosh is talked about hydration. We are bullied into believing that you need to drink gallons of the stuff to stay healthy, and it simply isn't true. Your body can very easily get used to either drinking lots, or not drinking very much. If you don't believe me, perhaps you will believe The Times. I long ago decided to get used to not drinking very much, and now I find a litre a day is more than sufficient to carry. I will normally drink more.. perhaps two litres or so per day.. but much of it will be at breakfast or overnight, ie it will be supplied by a refuge or wherever I'm staying, or by the water source I try to camp near. Overnight camping without a water source I avoid so far as I can.
If it is very hot - so that you are sweating even when walking on level ground or downhill - then you will need more; water lost that way must be replaced.

I am also not a fan of bladders and similar "hydration systems." Without exception they add weight, and also are hard to keep bacteria free. If you prefer to use them, fine, each to their own.

I use simple plastic bottles of 1/2litre or 3/4litre size. Ordinary water bottles, Evian say, are very light but they are not really strong enough. If they split, life can get difficult. What I did was go to my local supermarket and look through all the drinks sold there, and just bought some bottles of juice or whatever, that were a suitable size and shape and looked robust. Two 75cl bottles and two 50cl bottles together weighed under 100g. That gives 2 1/2litres capacity which was more than enough for me. I used them throughout my 55 day trip and had no problems at all.

So far as water sources are concerned, I ranked them (in the Pyrenees, anyway) as follows:

- first, a spring or source. The water comes straight out of the ground, it is crystal clear, and always very cold. Condensation forms on the bottle as soon as you fill it. It tastes fantastic. I never bothered to treat it in any way. Sources are found in most parts of the Pyrenees and always great to see.
- second, human-provided sources, such as water fountains at refuges, in villages etc. Some of them say the water is untreated, but they were generally reliable and I didn't treat it either.
- third, running water, above about 2,000m, ie streams. With these you must look around you, are there any animals or animal droppings? Where is the water coming from, snow melt or what? A lake? Occasionally I decided to trust them, but most of the time the water needed treating, however clear it might look. You never know if there is a dead animal somewhere upstream, and it is amazing how high up even sheep and horses can get, never mind izard , marmots etc.
- fourth, standing water of any kind, pools and lakes. I always treated it. It doesn't have to stand still for long before interesting things grow in it, and breed. Almost all lakes are fed by something and it is usually worth finding a feed coming in and using that instead.
- finally turbid water, or any water that is not completely clear. Avoid wherever possible. Usually not difficult to do that. Good water is seldom hard to find in the Pyrenees and I only once or twice ran short.

For water treatment, I carried a Steripen Freedom purifier. This has been brilliant. Mine has worked flawlessly. It only weighs about 80g or the same as just 80ml water. Best of all, it recharges from a standard usb cable so the external battery I brought to keep the phone topped up would recharge it too. Actually I never needed to do that - it supposedly treats 40 x 1/2l lots of water, but I never got to the point where it ran out - but it was comforting knowing that it would always work if needed.
I am not completely sure exactly how the Steripen works. As I understand it, ultraviolet irradiation renders anything nasty in the water sterile, so it cannot reproduce. I don't know how they can be so certain it has done its job every time, but I can say that it has always worked for me. I only had one stomach problem in the Pyrenees and that came from restaurant food.
I also carried a few coffee filters for use if the water was visibly contaminated. I only needed to use them two or three times, just as well as they were rather slow. The steripen itself is quick, 48 seconds per treatment and you are done.
Ideally you need a wide-mouthed water container to use the Steripen in. What I did was to cut the top half off a 2pint plastic milk container. It even had a 1/2 litre mark on it. I carried it in a side pocket of the rucksack, with water bottles fitted into it. It only weighed 10g or so. Scoop water up in it from the source, Steripen it, and pour it into the bottle, easy peasy. I always treated the Steripen carefully, wiped it dry after use etc., and it never let me down.

The black cloud is tadpoles...

... which panic and froth the water if you get close to them. Would you drink this water? You bet, if there is nothing better available, but I did treat and filter it first!