Water on Main Range Circuit

[Gulliver3]

Hi All
Will be doing the circuit out of Guthega next week and am interested to check out the water situation particularly at Pounds Creek Flats. From Wild Walks notes it is recommended to load up at the Snowy River before starting up. Has anyone been up that way recently and is it a situation of treat everything in this area?
Phil

[Wollemi]

I think there are two reasons for treating everything in the area;

- the soils are poorly drained mineral soils; there is little humus for faecal attachment and interaction with which to break down. So body wastes migrate down with the aspect of a hillside, across a slope, into minor creeks.
- the other is many inexperienced 'bushwalkers' crap anywhere. A dry depression that has been defecated into, holds many 10's of litres of rainwater next week.

Excepting water taken from rapids, I do treat the water in The Main Range. I have had ~15hr gastro a few times in KNP, up high, too. Perhaps consider carrying out your faeces, double bagging with shopping bags - although a Field Officer once insisted I take the packages home and flush them down the toilet.

Easier to digest (!) is the fact that you can easily treat water with 4 to 6 drops of betadine per litre. Put the cap on loosely and invert to treat the threads, too.

Hmm... I have had a few trips where I didn't ever wash anything, from hands to cutlery and dishes, staying in 'dirty' Kosciusko huts and went home well. Other ski and bushwalking trips I have regularly used hand disinfectant and carefully washed cutlery and pots, only to have stomach cramps and diarrhea before getting back to the car.

[Stew63]

Just came back within the hour from hiking the Main Range Circuit with my 14yr old. I was a bit dubious about the warnings (re. water and Giadia) but I boiled everything anyway. (It's a real hassle - I'm going to invest in a Steripen) Yesterday however, I drank the water straight from WIlkinson's Creek and I'm fine today. I've drunk the water from the Main Range sources for years and never had a problem - don't have worms or anything growing inside me! I guess there's a lot more people hiking/impacting the Main Range these days though.

Wolli... Is that Betadine treament just the regular liquid antiseptic Betadine that you buy for the FA kit? Does it change the taste of the water at all?

Wollemi I remember my first overseas surf trip to Bali in the early 80s (when it was awesome). I was the only one on the trip that took all the vaccinations, that took anti-this and anti-that tablets etc. Despite eating at the same places as everyone else - guess who was the only one in our travelling group that got violently ill within 36hours? Me! Took me weeks to recover after the initial 72hour 'period of hell' when I first came down with it.

[davidmorr]

While some things will produce bad effects within hours of eating them, others will take a week or two for the symptoms to appear. Giardia is one of them.

Which is good in a sense as you will be back home in a comfortable environment while you are sick instead of it spoiling your trip.