Date: 2016-12-20
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Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

WaterBecause the whole East Coast was in a drought, water was on our minds all the time. At first we carried as much as three or four liters at a time. As we went on we found that it was a little easier to find water on the trail rather than carry it. Water is the heaviest thing you will carry with food being the second heaviest item. Buffalo and I used two methods of treating water, Aqua Mira and a Sawyer Squeeze. We changed up only because we were concerned the filter may freeze.Most of the hikers we met used the Sawyer Squeeze. The Sawyer Squeeze was easy to use and could give you water immediately. Many of the younger hikers carried them atop their Smart Water bottles and treated the water as they drank it. When they got to a water source they would ¢Camel Up¢ by drinking a liter. I found this practice to work pretty good and I could get by many hours by doing this. They would also fill their bottles back up and go many miles further. Buffalo and I drank much more water than most and used the squeeze bags to fill our Smart Water and Gatorade bottles. We found the squeeze bags to be very disappointing. They would develop a leak around the spout rendering the bag useless as dirty water would drip into the bottle of treated water. Buffalo carried the two liter bags and usually they would develop leaks quicker because you put too much pressure on them. I believe you could carry the same Sawyer Squeeze for the entire trip if you took care of it. Backflushing a Sawyer is important and keeps a filter from plugging up. Buffalo developed a way of cleaning his Sawyer that worked very well. As you backflush your filter rap it on a table or something hard and it knocks loose the dirt. It got a bunch out that might have been trapped inside instead. In the end our filters were a year old when we started the trip so it became necessary to replace them. We moved to Aqua Mira when it got cold. This also coincided with the extreme drought in the Southeast. Getting water became painstaking in tiny seeps and brooks. Gathering water using cups or sandwich bags to be put in bottles, then filtering it was a very time consuming. The drops worked, were easy to use and didn¢t have much aftertaste.Having a cup to dip out water is important. I used a plastic mac and cheese container Jeremiah gave me. I wanted to keep my real cup clean. We also carried a sandwich bag to lay in a seep. It took forever to fill up a bottle but the thing worked. It amazes me how hard we worked sometimes to load up on water only to find a stream a few miles further. We called this "Water Anxiety" or the fear of running out of water. Sometimes you just have to believe your AWOL guide or at least read between the lines. Unless something is written as a stream with a full droplet we didn't count on it. When the NOBOs quit passing us we lost a valuable asset for finding water. Guthook was great for checking water source dependability. Bu once the NOBOs dried up the latest water info also dried up. We would stop the occasional section hiker heading north and press him for water info. I was amazed how much water was left at trail crossings in New York, PA and New Jersey. It made the difference. This water dried up as we went further south and reappeared in Georgia. SOBOs are a small minority of thru hikers. Many folks don't know we're there.