1/13/25-Monday-Day 38 “Filtration and Flooding”
The plan for today is to get out on the water! After breakfast I get out and inflate one of our packrafts so that Heather can do some paddling around on the turquoise water we are camped on. I put the raft in the water and take a quick test run just a bit downstream to make sure that the flow isn’t too strong to paddle against coming back upstream. It isn’t in the least.
After returning to shore I hand the raft off to Heather and after a couple pics she paddles away while I tend to the water filtration system that Mark has assembled to gather water for our campers from the stream. It’s quite the setup that he has put together, using a gravity fed Sawyer to pre-filter any sediment we fill up 3gal corny kegs one at a time which are then pressurized with an air compressor to push the water first through a 5 micron carbon filter, then a .2 micron ceramic filter and finally directly into our campers fresh water tank. It is a bit of a process, hauling water from the stream 2 gallons at a time and waiting for the gravity filter to do its thing but it’s free, we have the time and most importantly we don’t have to worry about tracking down a purificada and hoping that they have a hose!
About 30 minutes after departing, Heather returns in her packraft. Completely soaked and the raft FULL of water with her phone in her mouth as she paddles. After snapping a couple of pics (and making sure that she’s ok!) I get her and the boat on shore and can’t wait to hear the story behind the flooded raft. It seems as she was taking pictures in front of a small waterfall her boat got pulled into the undertow of the fall where it proceeded to absolutely swamp both her and the raft. After I flip the raft to empty it of any excess water, undaunted by the experience she returns to the stream although I’m sure a bit more cautious this time!
Adam Olterman
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