Water At Wildcat

Wild Cat Water - water water everywhere and not a drop to drink? Sorta.

A few people commented or sent messages regarding the water situation at Wild Cat Hollow in southeast, Ohio, for which there is a surprising amount of confusion based on responses to a post I made in a hiking group asking about it.

There are quite a few streams which are running at Wild Cat right now, thanks to all the Spring rains.  I would imagine that in summer/fall most of these streams would be dry.  I carried 3 liters of water with me, just in case when I went, and I ended up filtering twice for more.  

HEAVY METALS: I didn't know this when I first started planning my trip, but southern Ohio used to be KNOWN for mines of all sorts.  And while most of them are closed, the runoffs from the mines have tainted a lot of the water sources with heavy metals.  This means that if you're going to filter water, you need to MAKE SURE you're filter will filter heavy metals (along with all the other icks in the water).  Really, this is important.  Heavy metal poisoning is a THING.  And while there I saw a number of folks using the wrong types of filters. 

If you don't want to mess with filtering water, or taking a chance the streams might be dry, then there's another option - caching water.  There's several roads that traverse Wayne National Forest (where Wild Cat is) and it's easy enough to stash a couple gallons of water.  Make sure they're sealed gallon jugs, and put your name on it/initials, and "cached water" so people don't toss it.  The downside is navigating those back roads to find a cache location, but if you use All Trails, you'll be able to find where road meets trail fairly easily.

Lastly, people wanted to know what filter I use - it's the LifeStraw Flex with Gravity Bag Water Filter by @lifestraw.  It's hella light, acts as a back up water bag, and yes, it exceeds the NSF 53 standard for reduction of lead and other heavy metals and NSF 42 for chlorine. 

What water filter do you use?