[Philmont]:

Susan

As first timers this year, we debated this same issue. We finally decided to just go with Polar Pure. On our training hikes we had used both methods. While there is a little bit of taste with Polar Pure, we did not find it objectionable.

We followed Trek 22 which is all in the central and south. Every staffed camp had potable water. Many of the trail camps have a water source of either an untreated well or a stream. We did not encounter any "dirty water", although with stream water there is always something interesting in the water. There are lots of methods to get debris out of stream water without using a filter or purifier.

Each evening as the youth would plan the next day for time, route, etc., we also did a water plan to take into account our water consumption rate and take into account the 1 hour contact time to purify non-potable water. A couple of times we found ourselves leaving camp with an extra liter to make up for the treatment time for a source on the trail, but we judged that was less than carrying filters on the trail for 11 days.

We drank a lot of Polar Pure water on the trail and the 2 most objectionable water fills we had was the potable water at Cimmaroncito (sulpher taste) and Abreu (chlorine).

While we did not find the taste of the Polar Pure to be strong or objectionable, some people do. If your crew has have not trained with it and has used only filters, you may have one or more who are among those that find Polar Pure to be objectionable. Bottom line is that you want your Crew to be well hydrated. So use whichever method will work best for your crew. If you do decide to use filters, be sure to have a good method for prefiltering and have a backup filter element for each filter. You would be advised to take at least 2 filters per crew for time and redundancy. Also, Philmont will really want you to take the Polar Pure anyway.

Allen Jones

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Received on Wed Jul 7 17:18:00 2004