June 19th

June 19th 2015

Today will just be a short story about water filtering. Hiking today was tough, we summited some passes that make the Sierra's look like a day hike in a park. Then we spent the afternoon postholing with snowshoes up to our shoulders.... It's over and I'm spent and a little injured, there was a nice slide down a rock face that left me a little scraped up.

Back to the story.

For the last few weeks I haven't been filtering water.  It started out of Grants NM and got really easy once I left Chama NM and entered the San Juan's.  There's snow melt everywhere up here. Down in New Mexico we would just hike until we found a "piped spring". Maybe I would carry a little more water but it was worth it.  Now for the current situation. Water is almost everywhere, so much that I don't even carry it to keep my pack light. As a result I have ended up drinking a lot of yellow, dirt tasting and floatie filled water.  My stomach has been slightly more upset but I can't blame the water yet. I'm told there are lots of cows ahead so I plan to resume the filtering.  My filter is a fancy ketchup pump called the Timberline Eagle. I wrote a review on it of you're interested.  I have Aqua Mira as a back up. Most of the other hikers don't filter or carry the Sawyer Squeeze, you can buy it at Wal-Mart.

So there is a little insight to the water out here and how we get it. Water will be a problem again in Wyoming, until then it's smooth sailing.