Thenaturalmedic Adventures
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Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Essential Backcountry Water Filtration: Your First Line of Defense
Note: Audio Only. Please see YouTube for the Video Version.
Craig introduces his countdown of the 10 essential items for backpacking, starting with the most critical: water filtration in the wilderness. We explore why even pristine-looking mountain streams require treatment before drinking and demonstrate how to use the Platypus water filter system effectively.
• Water is our body's most essential need in the wilderness
• Beautiful streams often contain invisible harmful organisms
• Never drink wild water without proper treatment first
• The Platypus water filter works similarly to the Sawyer filter series
• Using dedicated "dirty" and "clean" water containers prevents cross-contamination
• Water filtration technology similar to medical dialysis
• Proper filtration prevents illness from Giardia and other waterborne pathogens
• Simple demonstration of collecting and filtering stream water
Watch for more videos in this essential backpacking series and subscribe so you don't miss them!
Hey everybody, this is Craig the Natural Medic. A couple of weeks ago I did a video about what I carry in my backpack Not just 10 essentials, but kind of you know all the things I wanted to talk. Do kind of a reverse countdown. Talk about the 10 essentials I've talked about them in the past, but this way I can talk about them a little more in depth with each one as I go through the one to ten countdown. Number one I wouldn't necessarily rank all of these in a certain order. I would do this more on the lines of what's the most important thing? Probably the thing our body needs the most.
Speaker 1:It is water, and if you're in the wild you see a beautiful stream like this. We're in the Plata Mountains here outside of the Durango Colorado northwest of there, and there's Centennial Hesperus Peaks. Sharks tooth that area. If you're familiar with that, the water looks cool and inviting. However, there's probably things in there, unseen to the eye, that could cause you harm. So you don't want to drink wild water without treating it first, and one way you can do that is use a water filter.
Speaker 1:This is the platypus water filter. The name is escaping me at the time, but I'll add it in post. This is the c-knot water collection bag. The beautiful thing about the Platypus is it's the same size as the Sawyer series, the Squeeze, the Micro, the Mini, all those, but I just like it better myself. It has a cap that screws on and it has a marked place right here. It says dirty, this is the dirty water. And then it has a snap cap at the top that opens up and that's where the clean water comes out. Okay, I recently used this on my backpacking trip to the Bandelier National Monument down further south in New Mexico and it worked great. Didn't get sick. I've never gotten sick from wild water because I've always filtered it.
Speaker 1:You can attach the Sawyer's, the Platypus, etc. To a standard one liter water bottle, like a Smart Water or something like that, but it's much easier, at least for me. My brain sometimes gets a little confused what's a dirty water bottle? What's a clean water bottle? So why not just have this as my dirty water collection bag? I'll show you how this works. These are really cheap, made by a company called Seenock, out of Oregon, new York, out of Portland. I've been using this guy for a long time. Generally speaking, you want to try to get flowing water, which is no problem here. The water is beautifully flowing. Hopefully you can hear me. Okay, there's a little pool right here. There's a little pool right here that I can get to. You see me, okay, I can scoop this water up just like this. Probably not going to get a full water bag, but you get the idea.
Speaker 1:Once you have your water in here, this is all dirty water. I'm going to need to filter it. You have the slidey thing the technical term, the slidey thing. You put the slidey thing on there. I've rigged it so it's a little more user-friendly. It did just have a hole right there which is kind of small for your fingers to grip, so I put a little carabiner on it. So it's a little bit modified.
Speaker 1:Turn it upside down. You unscrew this part. The filter was in my pocket. We're going to unscrew this cap. We're going to save it. I'm going to set it over here on the side so we don't forget it.
Speaker 1:It keeps that end free of dirt and stuff like that. You don't really want dirt in there. That makes it harder to filter and all you do is screw it on. Ta-da, now that you screwed it on, you can flip it back upside down, open the hatch and you've got the clean water. The clean water comes out.
Speaker 1:There's lots of filters in there, similar to dialysis, where people are getting their blood filtered out for impurities because they have kidney failure or some other ailment where they can't efficiently do that. The technology is similar. There's a bunch of little tubules in here that catches all that bad stuff giardia and other baddies that will make you sick and it gets caught in the filter and voila clean water, dirty water in clean water out. So you definitely want to make sure that you filter that water, whether you're going to be cooking with it, drinking it, etc. In the wild, so you don't get sick. So what do you think about that Pretty simple apparatus to operate Like this type of video? There's going to be more coming out. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss them. And until next time, watch one of these videos over here. Alright, thanks so much for watching and we'll see you out on the trail. Bye, bye.
