[pct-l] Water - it finally caught up with me

[Cosmic Cat]

I got sick three times in 2006. Two could be traced back to a 'bad water
decision' the day before and the third was obvious human contamination.

The first was the day after climbing up Mission Creek at the beginning of CA
section C. I continuously drank untreated water from Mission Creek all day
long. In retrospect this was really silly. The next day I was weak and
unsettled, but the following day I was fine.

The second was at Hiker Heaven. Some kind of bug was ripping through hikers.
It typically involved fever and puke and lasted from one to three days. I
think that at least 8 hikers got sick in the short time I was there. My
advice is to use hand sanitizer at a trail angel. My personal suspicion was
the bathroom hand towel in the trailer. I realized that too often I was just
rinsing my hands and then drying them on the towel and wondered how many
other people were doing the same. I left with a group of four and within 7
miles of walking we were down to two as the others got sick and had to turn
back.

The third was the worst. Somewhere north of I-80 I drank from something that
kind of looked like a spring but was really just some swamp drainage. That
night I woke up with a fever. The fever and diarrhea plagued me for about
five days, three of which were on the trail. I can't describe how difficult
it is to keep a 20+ mile pace under those conditions. Above all was the
despair of reduced mileage when I was way behind schedule (early August in
the Sierra City area). Adding to the despair was the uncertainty of how long
it would take for the sickness to go away. But one morning, I woke up, felt
great and immediately went back to 30 mile days.

Throughout the hike I carried Aqua Mira. My overall strategy was to treat
questionable sources. I can sort of say this worked as my sicknesses had a
weak correlation with specific places where I obviously should have treated
and didn't. All through the High Sierras I think I treated exactly once. I
generally never treated spring water and almost always treated lakes. At the
end of the trip, I think that gone through about 2(4) bottles of Aqua Mira.

I was sick for about 8 days out of my 130 day trip. It could have been a lot
worse. I believe that on the next hike I will have a similar strategy to the
last, but be just a bit more conservative when considering whether a source
is 'questionable' or not. Ultimately I feel that getting sick was a result
of laziness. I didn't want to bother to stop and add treatment. I wanted to
keep walking.

Goodness

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Eric Lee <saintgimp at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Tortoise wrote:
> >
> What causes you to think your illness was due to contaminated water instead
> of something you ate, either on the trail or afterward?
> >
>
> Of course it *could* have been anything.  That's the problem with the whole
> topic of water quality: it's very difficult to be totally certain about
> cause and effect in any one case and the only way to really study this
> stuff
> is to look at statistical aggregates.
>
> While not officially diagnosed, I know my symptoms were consistent with e
> coli.  E coli has an incubation period of 2-8 days, with the average being
> 3-4.  I started my section hike on Saturday evening, finished in Ashland on
> the following Friday afternoon, and was sick by Sunday.
>
> I hiked alone and didn't share food with anyone in either direction while I
> was out.  I ate a no-cook diet of non-perishable foods (nuts, dried fruit,
> commercially-prepared jerky, energy bars, etc.).  It's pretty unlikely that
> this was the source.  I ate prepared food at the Seiad Valley café, which
> could have been the source, but it was all well-cooked so I don't consider
> that to be terribly likely either.  I ate at a couple of different places
> in
> Ashland afterwards but that was probably too close to the time I got sick
> to
> be the source.
>
> I know that livestock often contaminate water supplies with e coli.  I know
> that the majority of the trail I walked this year ran through free-range
> livestock areas.  Finally, I know that while I usually treated my water
> this
> year, I didn't do it all the time and I knowingly took some risks.  This is
> by far the most likely transmission route but it's impossible to say for
> sure.
>
> Eric
>
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