[FlyDoctor]

Originally Posted by Riparian

So is the contamination and resulting disease from too many people ****ing in the woods?

Well, unless you believe that it just spontaneously appeared all over the country in the matter of a decade or so then yes. When I was a kid I remember the US population hitting 200 million now its over 300 million--you can't put that many people out there without also increasing the potential for all kinds of pollution and diseases to spread. The growth of the environmental movement starting in the late 1960s put lots of folks out into the woods hiking and camping and doing their stuff everywhere. Now even if they don't do their business right in a spring or stream, a mouse or chipmunk could come along and pick out a few juicy corn kernals and then head for the closest water source for a drink and in the process contaminate it. Now bring in a fox or bear or coyote or deer drinking from that spring and then it wanders on down the trail to another spring for a drink and bingo in a few weeks all the springs in the area are contaminated. After a fwe years its not safe to drink in any spring in the state, and so on. That's my story and I'm sticking to it--Larry

[gmfishe]

I live next to the Park and have been drinking water from the springs and feeder streams, where there is no trails or settlements, for over 50 years with no problems yet.....I guess when you grow up drinking mountian water you are not affected like people that have always drank treated water........I have to admit that I pick my places now more than I did when I was younger.

[sekod]

I carry an MSR Sweetwater filter with me on the streams. Fill my nalgene bottle whenever I'm thirsty, then mix in Kool-aid single packs. Use chlorine drops now too, after a week of viral misery following a trip to S. Mills when I used the filter but not drops. (I suspect it was from the rains and multitude of horses on the trails that weekend).

[Rog 1]

I grew up watching my grandfather dip water from whatever stream he was fishing in the Smokies with a collapsible cup...still have the cup...naturally I followed his example....great tasting water and I never got sick...but then along came the backpacking explosion and lazy campers along with an increase in the hogs wallowing in the creek bottoms...now I am extremely careful where I get my water....I know that there is a spring along the road up the Middle Prong of LR at Tremont that has a plastic pipe ....will still drink that water....can remember several rifle barrel springs thru the mountains way back when....another of life's simple pleasures gone with the advancement of "civilization"