First Use of My LifeStraw

For years now i’ve hauled around a LifeStraw in my hiking packs, always an essential worst case scenario item.  Until the other day I happily never needed it, it was just for peace of mind.  I’ve gotten tempted over the years to just dip it into a spring and try it out, but didn’t, always fearing some bacteria in the water would make me sick.  Unfortunately I’ve watched so much of the Naked & Afraid TV series where someone is fed up being dehydrated and decides to risk drinking the local water from a creek or lake, and most of the time the outcome is vomiting, cramping and fever within 48 hours.  With that image always stuck in my mind, the LifeStraw hadn’t been used because what if it misses something?

So this all changes the other day as I set out on a planned 4.4 mile hike.  But I’m a dumbass who doesn’t read the map I have correctly, and suddenly I’m way, WAY farther out than I want to be, and even when I figure that out I don’t quite grasp how far out into the wilderness I am, or how screwed I am.  I’d taken a simple 32oz of water in a Nalgene, and it wasn’t going to cut it!  I’m 1000 feet below the summit of a mountain that I have to get up, miles from safety, and there’s a creek flowing by.  So I dunk the Nalgene bottle in the creek, upping my portable water volume once again, and break out the LifeStraw after years of avoiding it.  It was hydrate, or probably suffer.  Worth the risk now.

I kept the instructions for use in my pack.  That was a simple matter of taking a few quick sips to get it going.  So I sipped, spit, repeated a bit, and then took my first swallow.  The water was a little earthy tasting, and it came through the LifeStraw faster than I imagined something like that would.  I’ve always thought it’d be a struggle to get fluid through the membrane, but it wasn’t.  10 minutes later I felt so much better.  This was expected.  I made it off the trail to safety eventually.  Went to bed that night wondering if I’d wake up with any ailments.  I did not.  I’m writing this just over 72 hours later and still feel fine.  So I’ve learned to use it, and I didn’t die.

Now I’m reading the storage instructions.  Apparently the membrane stays moist between uses and it needs a saline solution to stay in best shape, and should be used in less than a month again to stay decent.  Or if not to be used for 3+ months a bleach solution should be used.  As I write this I already know I’m hoping to never have to get into that situation again, but it is still the time of year I hike most, so I’m going to attempt to suck a little bleach solution into it for a day, then I’m going to go against the instructions and let it dry as much as it wants.  But here’s the kicker, water wants to stay in that membrane, so that may not be possible.  And I know for a fact I won’t use this same LifeStraw again when my hiking season kicks in again because leaving water in a membrane, viable or not, increases the weight I’m packing around.  So I’ll likely treat it as a disposable one shot item, even though if kept in shape it should server me for a long time.  I don’t mind though, because when I needed the LifeStraw, it was there, and that’s worth the cost.