Hydration & Water Purification

When you’re out in the mountains, water is never just water. It’s energy, judgement, comfort, warmth and, at times, the difference between a strong day and a slow, miserable stumble back to the car. The trouble is that staying properly hydrated is only half the battle. You also need to know where to find water, when it’s safe to drink, and how to make use of resources that the hills give you. This is a look at both sides of the problem: hydration and water purification, and why getting them right matters far more than many walkers realise.

---

When I started hiking one of my customers told me that he’d been drinking stream water for over 60 years out in the hills and ‘it never did him any harm’.

Well, that’s as maybe, but I prefer to be sure that the water I’m drinking is clean. There’s not always a crystal clear stream running past you is there? Coming down off doing the 8 Wainwright on my Skiddaw Massif hike one winter I was so thirsty I drank from a pigs’ trough!

How did I live to tell the tale? More later.

First, let’s look at why we need water, hydration, and what happens if we don’t drink enough (dehydration).

Hydration – Dehydration

Water is a nutrient essential for life and health. The European Food Safety Authority recommend a man takes in 2.5 litres of water a day and a woman 2 litres, 20% or so of that will come from food. Your age, sex, body mass, etc. play a big part in what you specifically need of course, not to mention your physical activities, like climbing mountains!

Dehydration is simply this – your body is not getting the fluid it needs. In its mildest form, it can affect your short-term memory, arithmetic efficiency, motor speed and attention. It can also affect your short-term memory 😉 I get bad headaches when I’ve not drunk enough and get physically sluggish.

Dr Lawerence Armstrong took on the job of charting the colour of peoples urine, which gives us a good indication of how much our body needs fluid. Findings of his study may be very interesting but you don’t need a chart to tell you that if your pee is any darker than pale, your body is in need of water. Another more obvious sign that you need some water is that you feel thirsty.

Some signs that you need hydrating:

• Dry, sticky mouth
• Dark yellow or brown urine
• Constipation
• Few or no tears when crying
• Headache
• Increased thirst
• Muscle tiredness
• Sleepiness or tiredness

So, listen to your body and keep a tab on what you drink.

Water Purification

Water Filters

Drinking From Streams

Why not just drink straight from the beck?

On day one of the Coast to Coast I got to Nannycatch Beck a mile or so before Ennerdale Bridge and drank a load of filtered water, I was very thirsty after crossing over Dent Hill. We found this dead sheep a couple of hundred metres upstream! This was a great opportunity to drill home what I’d taught my clients also doing the walk.

There were the bones of another in a beck deeper into the Lakes a couple of days later!

Water Bottle Filters

There are a number of water filter bottles available like Water-To-Go and Lifestraw. You can even get the Bobble in supermarkets now. I had a Water-To-Go when it first came out and refused to move on to the Sawyer for about a year, it did the job well (although made a horrible noise when drinking from it) but when I started camping with it, I didn’t have the option to filter water into a pan so I had to move on.

Water purification tablets and UV pens

I’ve discussed water purification tablets and pens but I honestly don’t think they’re worth talking about much in the context of hiking generally or being out for days on end. Tablets don’t taste nice and I just can’t get myself to trust a UV pen. If you disagree please let me know in the comments below.

My Water Purification System

So my system now, and for getting on for 9 years, comprises:

• Sawyer Squeeze filter
• 2x 1L squeeze bags (or 1 if I’m just out for the day)

The whole system only weighs 174g, rolls up small and fits in the side of the bag where a bottle would be.

If I have to carry water, let’s say there’s 5 miles in between water sources, I carry water in the pouch and drink as needed, no bottle.

The Squeeze is guaranteed to be able to filter more water than you would ever drink in your whole lifetime so as long as you flush it out when you get home, you should only ever need to buy one.

Flushing it out, by the way, means using the plunger (that you get with the filter) to push water back through the filter. This also pushes any ‘bits’ that have gotten in that would clog it.

Using The Sawyer Filter

The 1L bag goes in the stream to collect ‘unclean’ water, the filter screws onto the bag and you squeeze the bag. The water coming out of the filter is clean. You either drink it straight from the filter, it goes in a bottle for later or in your pan for cooking. Very simple.

Water Sources

It’s very handy to mark on your map or route potential water sources. The water is not always there remember, early one summer I did a 34km walk (my Blencathra 9) and marked 11 sources on the map, only 4 of them were reliable.

The two tarns on the map and the frozen puddles I’d seen in the Winter were nowhere to be seen in the warmth of May. Sometimes little pools on an OS map just don’t even exist in the real world! Harvey maps apparently only mark permanent pools!

Clogging your water filter!

If you’re following one of my Wainwright Routes you’ll see that I tag the water sources in with a blue marker. On this Extended Netherbeck Round you may have a drink from Nether Beck at Overbeck Bridge, but you’ll get nothing over Yewbarrow. You may have marked the tarn to pick up water after you come down Stirrup Crag but it’s full of peat and although you can filter it, and I have, you will eventually clog the Sawyer, you’ll wish you had a Millbank bag or a spare sock. You’ll survive. There’s a trickle coming down by the path up to Red Pike but you’re not to know that looking at the map.

Planning your hikes or wild camping around water

Continuing the Extended Netherbeck Round route (above) – If you’re thirsty on Little Scoat Fell after a waterless excursion to Pillar you’ll need to drop to Scoat Tarn where you’ll have enough water for a lifetime but you’re still dropping 17 contours to do it (170m). Do you chance the beck coming off Scoat Fell? Do you carry on to Haycock and realise you have 200 metres to descend? Planning is essential for an expedition.

Don’t rely on a small blue line on a map. If it has a name, it usually exist all year round, this goes for rivers and tarns. If in doubt, plan to camp by a tarn (there’s nearly 200 of them), you can always change the plan if you find a stream and it benefits you. Start sensible, getting dehydrated can ruin your trip. I know this only too well, learned the hard way, a number of times. That’s why I wrote this article, so you don’t have to.

If you want to discuss this subject or come out on a Wild Camping Workshop or Expedition, where you’ll find out exactly how to plan and execute a one or two day trip in the wild, please get in touch or take a look at our wild camping page… Just sayin’.

That’s pretty much it, if this has been helpful please comment and feel free to share.

Please subscribe and you’ll be notified whenever a new blog is published.

Now, Food…