Water filters

My water filter connected to a water bottle. Notice the bottle cap at the right.
Click to enlarge.

Back when I was a sea cadet I took a survival at sea course. During that course some statistics came up that I admit to vaguely remembering. They went something like a person can survive with out food for close to a month. The same person can survive without water for around a week and if they drink salt water then they will last three or four days. These memories could be wrong and they should be double-checked if their accuracy is important for your endeavour.

What is known is that running out of water at any time during a bicycle tour really sucks! Few things are worst then having a dry mouth, parched lips and feeling a burning need for water while your body overheats from lack of proper hydration. A number of studies in books and on the web have pointed out how little you need be suffering from a lack of water before your body really starts feeling the effects.

A similar problem is what happens when you drink poor quality or polluted water. You can experience misery in many terrible ways including the "runs", stomach cramps, sickness and of course unplanned bowel movements. Just the kind of adventure you always wanted to experience during a bicycle touring adventure eh?

While all of these are things that could be inadvertantly experienced I suspect that they are much more problematic when stealth camping where a water supply of known quality might not always be available.

Now that I've talked about all of the above I will admit that so far I have carried enough water on tour to not yet run out and I have also been lucky enough to not seem to find bad water supplies that cause severe effects. I have unfortunately experienced the joys of a quick run into the woods when nature calls. (grin).

For my Round Lake Huron tour I decided to invest in a water filter. My thinking was that I would be doing some stealth camping especially in the more remote sections of my tour and I wanted to make sure that I had sufficient water supplies of as good quality water as possible.

The water filter I selected will screw directly to the top of the wide mouth Nalogene water bottles that I use making refilling easy. The Nalogene bottles also have a handy cap that's easy to drink from while protecting the part that goes in my mouth from contact with road debris.

It is very possible to tour without a water filter and in fact I have experienced at least ten tours without having one along including my trip around Lake Erie.

The water filter does indeed add weight to the load but it also gives me piece of mind. I heard many stories about "beaver fever" from Cross Canada cyclists who knew someone or experienced firsthand the effects of running out of water in a remote area and replenishing by drinking water directly from the nearby lakes, rivers and streams. With the water filter I wasn't worried about drinking water if I had run out at any time during my adventure and that's a great position to be in while experiencing a great bicycle tour!

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