Sick after 3-day backpacking trip - coincidence?

I am reasonably certain that the timing of this was just a coincidence, but just in case it's not, I thought I'd throw this out there.

From Tuesday through Thursday, I did a 2 night trip the Rt. 4 trailhead on Saddleback to the Rt. 27 parking lot after the Crockers. Took me just over 2 hours to drive home, and about 2 hours after that, I started feeling tired and nauseous. About 2 hours after that, the nausea materialized into...well, you get the picture. 3 rounds of that over the next several hours, and I couldn't even keep water down, which was too bad because I was so dehydrated.

I spent yesterday with a headache and fever, drinking water and half-strength gatorade, and by evening, fell well enough to risk a bowl of weak noodle soup, which stayed down. Today I've been able to eat normal food, though I'm still really fatigued. I don't have much of an appetite, but could eat if I wanted to.

Now, this seems like a straightforward case of gastroenteritis, but might it be somehow related to my hike? I filtered all of my water with a Katadyn Hiker, and can't think of anything else I could have been exposed to. No tick bites I can locate, etc. Just wondering though.

Chris

It may have been a bug that could have been caught nearly anywhere - including at work the day before - but it also sounds like food poisoning.

As culprits, I would think about everything I had eaten and where I had eaten it. Maybe you stopped for a meal for snack to or from the trail?
It doesn't take much. One food preparer not washing their hands; one tiny bit of food that wasn't refrigerated properly.

A friend of mine got spectacularly sick the day after she returned from a camping trip two weeks ago. The cause, she is certain, was some hummus that had sat one day too long in a tepid cooler. She really, really regretted eating it instead of throwing it out.

Would leaving gatorade in one of your water bottles overnight (i.e unrefrigerated) and then drinking the remainder the next day count as "potential spoilage"? Does that stuff even go bad? Or perhaps there was something bad in that sandwich I bought in Stratton. Lag time between sandwich and getting sick was about 4 hours...

csprague said:

Does that stuff even go bad?

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Oh yeah it does! HikerBob learned that mistake once and the consequences were the same.

Brian

csprague said:

Would leaving gatorade in one of your water bottles overnight (i.e unrefrigerated) and then drinking the remainder the next day count as "potential spoilage"? Does that stuff even go bad? Or perhaps there was something bad in that sandwich I bought in Stratton. Lag time between sandwich and getting sick was about 4 hours...

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The main components of electrolyte drinks are water, salt, and sugar. (Oh yes, and hype... ) Sounds like a good growth medium for bacteria to me...

Don't forget that hygiene on the trail is often lax. Does everyone wash their hands (or at least use alcohol-based hand sanitizer) after each visit to the woods and every time before touching food?

Of course, all food that you ate is suspect. And water filters can fail, become contaminated, or a contaminated inlet hose can contaminate an outlet (particularly in storage). Add in the time delay between exposure and the onset of symptoms and it can be pretty hard to figure out the cause.

Good to hear that you are recovering.

Doug

Oh Yeah Ditto

When we lived in NYS we had a cottage on the St Lawrence River. One time we stopped for a snack on our way up from Syracuse. A couple of hours after we arrived Carol became unbelievably ill- similar to your symptoms. She couldn't get out of bed other than to..... for at least the next 24 hours. The only thing we could trace it to was the eggs we both had. I never got sick though.

Cruise Ship Disease

As a counselor for a 4H camp one summer I led a group of kids from the camp to an overnight group site in a neighboring state forest. We spent one night there and hiked back the next morning.

Early in the a.m. of the following morning I awoke with violent nausea. As I was worshipping at the porcelain altar the phone rang. (Mind you it was about 2 a.m.) My wife answered the phone to find that the camp director was calling to ask what I had fed the kids on the campout. In nearly every cabin all over camp a similar phenomenon was developing. Campers were tumbling out of their bunks and rushing off or sometimes merely hurling on their lower bunkmates.

The camp infirmary was full. An investigation by the board of health turned up the following facts: not everyone who got sick had eaten the same food, not everyone who ate all of the same things as those who'd gotten sick got sick themselves, the water from the group site well was tested and found to be free of pathogens. The only commonality of the incident was that everyone who'd gotten sick had drunk from the same water bottle(s) (2 liter recycled soda bottles that were shared by the group).

The main suspect therefore was a virus delivered to the eventual sufferers by the shared water bottles. This was confirmed over the next week or two as the illness ran through the camp mostly among the, by then, tired and exhausted staff.

I'm not saying every case of backcountry related gastroenteritis is viral but it shouldn't be overlooked. Here is a link to a description of an increasingly common phenomenon, cruise ship disease. The conditions aboard a cruise ship are not unlike those of a summer camp.

Phil

bcskier said:

The main suspect therefore was a virus delivered to the eventual sufferers by the shared water bottles. This was confirmed over the next week or two as the illness ran through the camp mostly among the, by then, tired and exhausted staff.

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And it is possible that the original source of the pathogen was one of the campers or staff who might have been an asymptomatic carrier.

Doug

Interesting...should I mention that I did this trip solo and had both lean-to sites entirely to myself both nights? I saw a few people (mostly SoBos) in passing, but those encounters were very brief. There were those two NoBo hitch-hikers that I drove into Stratton, and spent about 5 minutes in the car with. *shrugs*

I'm feeling mostly fine now, so no worries I guess.

csprague said:

Now, this seems like a straightforward case of gastroenteritis, but might it be somehow related to my hike? I filtered all of my water with a Katadyn Hiker, and can't think of anything else I could have been exposed to.

Chris

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You used a filter, but did you add a disinfectant? If not, then some waterborne bacteria and viruses undoubtedly passed through the filter. Just a thought.

Food poisoning has already been suggested and I agree with the earlier poster. I had a similar experience a couple of years ago on a trip to Yosemite. I figured out it may have been food poisoning from some fish I ate at a local restaurant before heading into the park. Your symptoms sound a lot like mine. I was fine a couple of days later, but it definitely ruined the trip for me.

Water Bottle "mung" frequently is a culprit. Many folks rinse out their water bottles after a hike, but a bacterial deposit can hide in the threads or molding marks inside the cap. Once the colony gets established, it can survive for quite awhile between uses. It usually shows up as a trace of black in the threads if looked at with a bright light. A good scrubbing with hot soapy water usually gets it, but a subsequent soaking with clorox is recomended.

Any tomato's in that sandwich?

Yes, and I'd thought of that, but it seems pretty unlikely. I suppose at this point it doesn't matter, as I'm 100% better and now it's just an icky memory.

Thanks for all the replies. Now, if this repeats itself after my next overnight, then I'll have to start taking a closer look at my stuff!

Chris

There are many ways to get sick in the woods (and not in the woods)

One of the interesting "lessons" from my NOLS course was the part on staying healthy. They recounted that many expeditions to climb peaks are stopped by illness vs physical ability or weather and in many cases it's avoidable.

The lessons included:
1) thorough hand washing with soap after deficating
2) always pour food out of the back into your hand - never reach into the bag. (a separate study of thru hikers gorp bags showed high percentage with high fecal bacteria count)
3) share of absolutely nothing (including water bottles, cups, utencils, pens, knives, compasses, etc.

They were surprisingingly less vigilent on water purification.

Following these directives gave very impressive proof when one person in my cook group got a cold. We did group cooking and slept 4 people in a tent and she was the only one to get the cold. No one else caught it. Impressed me and proved that germs can be thwarted with vigilance.

Of course food illness can occur if bugs are given the opportunity to grow.

John H Swanson said:

The lessons included:
1) thorough hand washing with soap after deficating
2) always pour food out of the back into your hand - never reach into the bag. (a separate study of thru hikers gorp bags showed high percentage with high fecal bacteria count)
3) share of absolutely nothing (including water bottles, cups, utencils, pens, knives, compasses, etc.

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The human hand is a major vector in the spread of many pathogens.

One might add:
4) wash hands before touching or preparing food.

Doug

John H Swanson said:

They were surprisingingly less vigilent on water purification.

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I think many times backcountry illness is attributed to bad water when the real culprit was poor hygiene.

bcskier said:

I think many times backcountry illness is attributed to bad water when the real culprit was poor hygiene.

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Agreed.

I did my AT backpacking from 78-89. This was the time of transition concerning water purity. Giardia was newly hyped. Purification transitioned during this period. Often many people drank without purifying. Some used halazone or bleach drops. Then later filtering became preferred and other chemical options such as potagua and iodine tincture were more often used.

In the beginning I evaluated each water source for risk based on size of watershed and likelihood of contamination based on possible sources. Human presence was a big factor. I frequently drank from sources without purification and didn't get sick.

I still use this evaluation of my water sources. One hiking companion made a humorous statement to support the need to do this. "You can filter the stream coming out of the farm field and it will still be cow piss and pesticide"

The industry drove the hype for the need to purify. People would stare with wide eyed amazement if you drank without purifying. Everybody bought and needed to filter get rid of giardia. To some extent this is true as no water source is certain to be pure. However there were still many people drinking from many of the same sources without treatment and not getting sick.

I still drink from untreated water sources when I feel the risk is low. There was a cold spring pouring out of the rock at the base of the north side of mullen mountain, as well as a small feeder steam cascading down the side of a steep ridge that formed the Allen Brook ravine. Two memorable events where the water was so nice and tasty.

On the other hand, I have traveled to Nepal, China, India, Mexico, and a number of other developing countries where avoiding illness such as thyphoid and disentary requires vigilance. This includes not only ensuring purity of both food and water, but also general sanitation. Try living in a country with 1 billion people and only the top 1% can afford toilet paper. Consuming only pure drinking water is the easy part.