How to Find Water in the Wild

Your guide to locating and filtering water in the great outdoors with LifeSaver®

Learning to source and purify water in the wild is essential for anyone planning a multi-day or wild camping trip. Recommended water intake is 6-8 glasses of water a day¹ – approximately 1.2 litres. The weight of water in kilograms is equal to its volume in litres. This means if you carry enough water for one person to stay hydrated for a day when exploring the great outdoors, you would be carrying an additional 1.2kg of weight with you. That is before you’ve even thought about water for cooking. Over a multi-day trip this quickly adds up. Rather than lug heavy water from home, it’s much more convenient to be able to source it on the go. However, finding water isn’t always easy, so here are some tips which could help if you find yourself struggling:

• Use your senses. Whilst you may not be able to see water, it could be within earshot. Try standing perfectly still and listening intently, you may hear running water even if it’s a great distance away.
• Most rivers begin high up in the mountains and hills, so if you travel parallel to these natural formations you should eventually hit water.
• Certain animals and insects will lead you to water.
  • Bees are a sure sign of water as you will rarely find a hive of wild bees more than 3-4 miles from a fresh water source. If you can locate the bee hive, sit for a while and watch the bees to see where their flight path is leading.
  • Wild pigeons and finches are also a reliable indicator of a nearby water source. Being grain and seed eaters they spend the day feeding and then, as dusk approaches, make for a waterhole. Once they’ve drank their fill, they fly back to their nesting places. If they are flying low and swift they are flying to water, but if their flight is from tree to tree and slow, they are returning from drinking. The direction of water can then be discovered by observing the birds’ manner of flight.
• If you’ve found water, flowing water is preferable, such as in a stream or river. Moving water is not conducive to the growth of algae which can contaminate water by producing dangerous toxins.
• If no flowing water is available, look for calm water such as a lake or reservoir without a lot of sediment or silt.

LifeSaver Liberty

The LifeSaver Liberty comes with a 5ft scavenger hose to allow you to easily reach most water sources. This means there’s no need to get your hands or the bottle wet, protecting you from waterborne contaminants. The scavenger hose also has a mesh pre-filter, on the collection end that drops into the water. This helps keep out sediment and larger debris, stopping it from coming up the hose and into the purifier, which could clog the filter.

The portable Liberty bottle removes a minimum of 99.99% of dangerous viruses, bacteria and cysts from water. It is also the world’s only filtration solution which doubles up as a fast, in-line filter. This means that you can either drink directly from it, or fill other containers with purified water. This and the fact its high-capacity filter can purify 2,000 litres of water before it needs replacing, makes it ideal for wild camping trips with friends or family, as well as solo adventures. So once you’ve successfully located your water source, you can let the Liberty bottle’s advanced technology take the hard-work out of purifying it.

For added peace of mind, all LifeSaver® products feature the company’s FailSafe technology eliminating any guesswork and the risk of mistakenly drinking unfiltered water.

References:

¹ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/water-drinks-nutrition/