Found a deal on a Kadadyn Hiker Pro. Online reviews were good and the price was right, so it was an obvious choice. With a filter pore size of 0.2 micron, that's 5x tighter than the minimum 1.0 micron the CDC recommends to remove cryptosporidium and giardia. Sounds good to me.
But what about viruses? A 0.2 micron filter won't even slow these down, but most hiking guides say not to worry about these in developed countries. On the other hand, we're talking about the Tuxachanie trail which runs along the border of Stone and Harrison counties, so there's no telling what's in some of that water. Taking the belt-and-suspenters approach, I'll be adding in some chlorine dioxide tabs. These will eventually kill everything: viruses in 15 minutes, bacteria also in 15 minutes, giardia in 30 minutes, and finally crypto in 4 hours. That last one would be a problem, but since the filter's already handled it and the bacteria, we're back down to a highly acceptable 15 minutes. (but double that to be on the safe side) Finally and as a nice bonus, if the filter goes out, the tabs can serve alone – just at the cost of a full 4 hour wait time. Belt and suspenders, even more so when it comes to water.
Belt.
Suspenders.
This is a lot to deal with, but the surface water here in the southeast can get pretty nasty. So nasty in fact that I've never done any outdoor activities without just hauling safe water along from home. This is all new territory for me. It's good to check the specs, consult the CDC web site, and think it through ahead of time.
ps: If you doubt that this level of, well, paranoia is warranted about water, then you've never seen Upstream Color. Go watch that and you'll stick to distilled water for a while.
pps: Some more official word:
CDC's full statement on backcountry water treatment
CDC's one-pager PDF cheat sheet on the same
National Park Service's recommendations – and not surprisingly, much the same.
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