[pct-l] Re(pct-l)Giardia on the trail

All right, I will join the crowd in confessing.  We hike a Sierra Nevada
section of some 300 miles every August, and we quit filtering our water
in 97.  Since we hike with llamas we can tank up a water supply of 10
liters once a day and carry it all day.  So we find the best possible
water source, fill up and travel on.  We fussed with water filters for
35 days in 96 (while backpacking) and got heartily sick of them.  We
realized that we had been hiking for some 15 years before water filters
were invented, following some basic principles for finding safe drinking
water, and had never gotten sick during those years (1970-1985).  We
considered the possibility that the risk of giardia is somewhat
overstated in order to sell water filters, and decided to return to the
practices we followed in those days of yore.  We took some encouragement
from Jardine's book in trying this course.  The upshot is that we have
not yet been sick.  We figure that we are either immune to symptoms or
we're going to be.  We theorize that any local water supply has its
population of bugs which the local inhabitants adjust to.  If you travel
somewhere else, beware.  We think we have spent enough time in the
Sierra Nevada high country in recent years to gain immunity.  We have
spoken to several horse packers who spend every summer of their lives in
the backcountry, never filter water, and scoff at the very notion of
doing so.
Marion Davison

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