Essential Backcountry Water Filtration: Your First Line of Defense

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Craig introduces his countdown of the 10 essential items for backpacking, starting with the most critical: water filtration in the wilderness. We explore why even pristine-looking mountain streams require treatment before drinking and demonstrate how to use the Platypus water filter system effectively.

• Water is our body's most essential need in the wilderness
• Beautiful streams often contain invisible harmful organisms
• Never drink wild water without proper treatment first
• The Platypus water filter works similarly to the Sawyer filter series
• Using dedicated "dirty" and "clean" water containers prevents cross-contamination
• Water filtration technology similar to medical dialysis
• Proper filtration prevents illness from Giardia and other waterborne pathogens
• Simple demonstration of collecting and filtering stream water

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, this is Craig the Natural Medic.
A couple of weeks ago I did avideo about what I carry in my
backpack Not just 10 essentials,but kind of you know all the
things I wanted to talk.
Do kind of a reverse countdown.
Talk about the 10 essentialsI've talked about them in the
past, but this way I can talkabout them a little more in
depth with each one as I gothrough the one to ten countdown

(00:26):
.
Number one I wouldn'tnecessarily rank all of these in
a certain order.
I would do this more on thelines of what's the most
important thing?
Probably the thing our bodyneeds the most.
It is water, and if you're inthe wild you see a beautiful
stream like this.
We're in the Plata Mountainshere outside of the Durango

(00:47):
Colorado northwest of there, andthere's Centennial Hesperus
Peaks.
Sharks tooth that area.
If you're familiar with that,the water looks cool and
inviting.
However, there's probablythings in there, unseen to the
eye, that could cause you harm.
So you don't want to drink wildwater without treating it first

(01:07):
, and one way you can do that isuse a water filter.
This is the platypus waterfilter.
The name is escaping me at thetime, but I'll add it in post.
This is the c-knot watercollection bag.
The beautiful thing about thePlatypus is it's the same size
as the Sawyer series, theSqueeze, the Micro, the Mini,

(01:29):
all those, but I just like itbetter myself.
It has a cap that screws on andit has a marked place right
here.
It says dirty, this is thedirty water.
And then it has a snap cap atthe top that opens up and that's
where the clean water comes out.
Okay, I recently used this onmy backpacking trip to the

(01:51):
Bandelier National Monument downfurther south in New Mexico and
it worked great.
Didn't get sick.
I've never gotten sick fromwild water because I've always
filtered it.
You can attach the Sawyer's, thePlatypus, etc.
To a standard one liter waterbottle, like a Smart Water or
something like that, but it'smuch easier, at least for me.

(02:13):
My brain sometimes gets alittle confused what's a dirty
water bottle?
What's a clean water bottle?
So why not just have this as mydirty water collection bag?
I'll show you how this works.
These are really cheap, made bya company called Seenock, out
of Oregon, new York, out ofPortland.
I've been using this guy for along time.
Generally speaking, you want totry to get flowing water, which

(02:36):
is no problem here.
The water is beautifullyflowing.
Hopefully you can hear me.
Okay, there's a little poolright here.
There's a little pool righthere that I can get to.
You see me, okay, I can scoopthis water up just like this.
Probably not going to get afull water bag, but you get the

(02:56):
idea.
Once you have your water in here, this is all dirty water.
I'm going to need to filter it.
You have the slidey thing thetechnical term, the slidey thing
.
You put the slidey thing onthere.
I've rigged it so it's a littlemore user-friendly.
It did just have a hole rightthere which is kind of small for
your fingers to grip, so I puta little carabiner on it.
So it's a little bit modified.

(03:17):
Turn it upside down.
You unscrew this part.
The filter was in my pocket.
We're going to unscrew this cap.
We're going to save it.
I'm going to set it over hereon the side so we don't forget
it.
It keeps that end free of dirtand stuff like that.
You don't really want dirt inthere.
That makes it harder to filterand all you do is screw it on.
Ta-da, now that you screwed iton, you can flip it back upside

(03:41):
down, open the hatch and you'vegot the clean water.
The clean water comes out.
There's lots of filters in there, similar to dialysis, where
people are getting their bloodfiltered out for impurities
because they have kidney failureor some other ailment where
they can't efficiently do that.
The technology is similar.
There's a bunch of littletubules in here that catches all

(04:03):
that bad stuff giardia andother baddies that will make you
sick and it gets caught in thefilter and voila clean water,
dirty water in clean water out.
So you definitely want to makesure that you filter that water,
whether you're going to becooking with it, drinking it,
etc.
In the wild, so you don't getsick.

(04:24):
So what do you think about thatPretty simple apparatus to
operate Like this type of video?
There's going to be more comingout.
Make sure you subscribe so youdon't miss them.
And until next time, watch oneof these videos over here.
Alright, thanks so much forwatching and we'll see you out
on the trail.
Bye, bye.