Not a drop to drink

How much water should you carry with you on the trail or on the run? It depends. If you’re moderately to highly active, you need between 1.5 and 2.5 liters of water per day. That’s just drinking water, too, not including what you’ll want for cooking, cleaning, etc. Now, water’s heavy, weighing almost 8 ½ pounds per gallon. Carrying that weight gets real old real fast on a hike, trust me. It’s much better to carry just a liter bottle, hike near water sources and have treatment methods to hand.

Toil and Trouble
These days, you can get all kinds of fancy filtration systems – UV wands, straws with filters, pumps with filters, drip-filter bottles, etc. The problem with all those, though, is that they either have a ton of parts, or don’t give you any indication as to when they’ve stopped working. Chlorine droplets are another method people like to use, and it’s very effective. Personally, I never could get the dosage right and always ended up throwing it out because it tasted terrible. I’ve since learned that you can add chlorine a few drops at a time to filtered water (cloth-filtered, not charcoal, though there are instructions for making your own charcoal filters if you want to be really hardcore), shake it, let it sit a while, and give it a sniff test. If you can’t smell chlorine, it’s still hazardous. The reason being that there were more microbes than chlorine molecules in the water, so the chlorine was completely used up. You want the opposite, so if there’s a faint chlorine odor to the water, the microbes are all dead and it’s safe to drink (and probably tastes a lot better, too). I think I’ll stick to boiling, though. Some people complain about the flat taste of boiled water, but all you have to do is shake it up to take care of that.

It’s not like water just falls from the sky
So it hasn’t rained in a while, and you’re thirsty. Find a stick with three prongs, like the letter Y. The short prongs should be about six to eight inches long, while the long one should be about two feet long. Hold the stick by the short prongs and turn in a circle. While you’re turning in the circle, look for a waterfall, garden hose, or car wash, because you have a better chance of finding water that way than relying on the dowsing bullshit. If you’re serious about finding water, walk downhill; you’ll find it eventually. Know why? Because water flows downhill (unless you’re in a Doc Savage novel).

Another neat way of collecting water is called a solar still, and there are several variations. Look it up, I’m not going to explain it all here. Not only does it generate water, but as the name implies, the water you get from it is pure.

Basically, if you’re not in the desert, you have no excuse for not having enough water. And if you are in the desert, you can still find water. Run across a dry riverbed? Dig down at the outside bank for a better chance to find damp soil or even pockets of water. See a tree or animals in the distance? Chances are, there’s water nearby. You might even have dew on the ground in the morning. To quote Heathers: "Lick it up, baby." Darker patches on a sandstone cliff may indicate water. Lava and limestone are porous, and may contain hidden pools. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, either.

Oh, and if it’s winter, or you’re above a snowline, remember that it’s about a ten-to-one ratio of snow to water. So if you plan to melt snow down to fill your liter bottle, you’ll need ten bottle’s worth of snow.

So after a hard day’s work of finding a clear route, building a shelter, starting a fire, and collecting water, you’ve probably worked up an appetite. What’s for dinner?