Drinking Water Troubles
The Yukon River flows out of Atlin Lake, located close to the border of the British Colombia and Yukon Territories. Our race starts in the town of Whitehorse at river mile 40 or so, and the water is absolutely gorgeous. I was a little intimidated the first time I saw what we would be paddling on, the current rips through this section. It slows down and speeds up throughout the race, but it remains relatively clear until the confluence of the White River, where it becomes laden with silt.
Now, I grew up going to a camp that used iodine tablets to treat water. Plop one of those tablets in your Nalgene, ask your counselor seventeen times if it has been twenty minutes yet, and boom, you're good to go. All of the places I went, Boundary Waters, Quetico, various Canadian rivers, Wyoming, they all had beautiful clear water. Sometimes you'd get some questionable chunks floating around, but you just pretended it was protein and it everything was fine.
Everyone has their various preferences. Filters are awesome but take up time and space. They can be tricky if you're trying to keep your feet dry too. Aquamira is a two part system that some people swear by because there's no weird flavor, but it's a bit more spendy. I personally have never used it. You can also resort to boiling if you're really desperate, have access to snow, or have lots of time and want some good tasting water.
Our biggest problem is the silt that the White River brings in to the Yukon. It's a glacial fed river, and for anyone that has visited or worked on a glacier knows that the silt is sometimes referred to as glacial flour. Yes, the consistency of cooking flour. It gets everywhere: zippers, tent poles, hair, clothes, etc.. It overwhelms any filtration system almost instantly. So what do we do? Each of us will have three individual gallon jugs, so that's a lot of water to deal with. Right now we aren't sure what is going to work best, but after some research, we've decided to bring coffee filters and alum in addition to our chemical treatment (iodine). Ideally the coffee filters will get enough silt out to make the water palatable and not leave a chalky residue. The alum is pretty neat option, although it takes a bit more time and patience that we may not have out there. The underlined words will take you to a short video of how it works (skip to 1:00 if the beginning is boring). Alum causes flocculation, or the clumping of particles, and eventually the silt settles to the bottom of whatever container it's in. Let us know if you have any suggestions, otherwise we'll find out what works best on the river!
