Ask crash about hiking the Appalachian Trail

[crash]

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Great thread crash and thanks for answering my earlier questions.

Did you ever get sick along the way? If so, how bad was it and did you keep going or stop for a few days?

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I never got sick from drinking bad water, I did get the flu once. (I could tell it was the normal flu and not a stomach thing b/c I didn't get the [censored].) I holed up in a hostel in Maine for a day to recover, then took it easy for a while.

All the books say to purify your water. The trail goes near farmland, and so there's cow crap runoff into the streams. Also, ponds and streams obviously have critters like beavers in them. One thing to watch out for is giardia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardia

This gives you the trots and worse. I purified my water, and I never got the trots. I've read that many people can have giardia and show no symptoms, though. I find it hard to believe that I could drink from so many streams and never get a stray drop of unpurified water in my mouth.

I recommend chlorine water treatment, it's easy and your water tastes just like city water. Aquamira drops, or chlorine tablets (notice I'm not talking about plain bleach). I don't like iodine, I found it to taste bad. Plus if I'm not mistaken, iodine doesn't kill cypto, another stomach bug.

See

http://friends.backcountry.net/m_factor/watertreat.html

for more details, or get a hiking magazine that reviews water treatment systems.