Annapurna Trek

We have treated our water with the Pristine and we liked the taste better this way than the taste of water boiled.
Warning, the fruits and others foods have to be washed with boiled water. We fill our bottles "Nalgene" before going to bed and leaved them outside our tent to cool down overnight.
Desinfect your hands very often with an alcool product.

yvon said:

We have treated our water with the Pristine and we liked the taste better this way than the taste of water boiled.
Warning, the fruits and others foods have to be washed with boiled water. We fill our bottles "Nalgene" before going to bed and leaved them outside our tent to cool down overnight.
Desinfect your hands very often with an alcool product.

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Thanks Yvon.
Is this the Pristine that you used?
https://www.pristinewatertreatment.com/cart/index.cfm?ProductID=1&do=detail
I have not seen it for sale in my neighborhood, but it looks like I can order it direct from Canada.

Does the water taste ok?

Thanks for mentioning the fruit. I'll plan on washing all of it in boiling water.

Nadine said:

Thanks Yvon.
Is this the Pristine that you used?
https://www.pristinewatertreatment.com/cart/index.cfm?ProductID=1&do=detail
I have not seen it for sale in my neighborhood, but it looks like I can order it direct from Canada.

Does the water taste ok?

Thanks for mentioning the fruit. I'll plan on washing all of it in boiling water.

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It is exactly that product. And the water taste nothing, and no chemical after taste. (you understand my english)

Nadine said:

What about electricity and recharging camera batteries?

Nadine

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In the Loj or tea house, we saw possibility to recharge battery for a small fee (in our trek to Everest base camp). Me, I made test for my camera to know how many power pack I need for the photos I will take (1500). And I bring all the power packs I need for my camera for three weeks. I charge them all, before I leave Katmandu. If you look to much you photos on you LCD, you use more power on your battery, think about that. During the night, I put them in my sleeping bag. Because it was very cold during the night.

Nadine said:

Is this the Pristine that you used?
https://www.pristinewatertreatment.com/cart/index.cfm?ProductID=1&do=detail
I have not seen it for sale in my neighborhood, but it looks like I can order it direct from Canada.

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According to the web page, it is a 2-solution chlorine dioxide system.

Probably very similar to Aqua Mira. (There are also table versions available.)

Requires 4hr contact time for giardia and crypto cysts.

The only quick and fully reliable systems that I know of are filtering followed by >=1ppm iodine (to kill viruses) or boiling.

Doug

yvon said:

During the night, I put them in my sleeping bag. Because it was very cold during the night.

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It isn't necessary to keep batteries warm in storage, only when using them. Keeping a warm spare in your pocket should be enough.

And a weak cold battery may give you some more shots if you rewarm it.

As they say in the ER, it is only dead if it is warm and dead...

Doug

If your camera takes AA rechargeable batteries go for a few sets of Enloops or other long lasting ones. They will hold their charge for the three weeks when not in use. Regular NiMH will lose some charge when not in use. If your camera has an optical view finder turn off the LCD and just use the viewfinder to shoot.

David Metsky said:

If your camera takes AA rechargeable batteries go for a few sets of Enloops or other long lasting ones. They will hold their charge for the three weeks when not in use. Regular NiMH will lose some charge when not in use. If your camera has an optical view finder turn off the LCD and just use the viewfinder to shoot.

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I'm not sure it is a terribly big issue over three weeks. Certainly would be over longer intervals. Don't forget that the initial capacity of the charge retention NiMHs is ~2000 mAh compared to the regular NiMHs at 2500-2800 mAh. And you will have to bring a charger.

You might be better off by simply bringing an adequate supply of lithium primary AA cells. (Which also have the advantage of being light and relatively unaffected by the cold.)

Note: Alkalines would be a poor choice for a camera. And purchasing batteries in the third world is not a good idea (used batteries are often sold as new).

If your camera requires lithium-ion rechargable batteries, then you will have to bring a spare or two and a charger.

Doug

Pristine takes only 20 minutes before you can drink the water.
Several agencies, who have done trek in Nepal for several years, recommand this product. On our trek, everybody have use Pristine, and nobody have been sick.

yvon said:

Pristine takes only 20 minutes before you can drink the water. Several agencies, who have done trek in Nepal for several years, recommand this product. On our trek, everybody have use Pristine, and nobody have been sick.

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Yes, that is a standard contact time for chlorine dioxide (ClO2). It kills bacteria, but it is not long enough (4 hrs) to kill cysts (crypto and giardia).

Both iodine and ClO2 are good at killing both viruses and bacteria, but are much slower to kill parasitic cysts. Boiling kills all three.

Iodine is a time tested method that, combined with filtration, kills or removes all pathogens. It, however, leaves a taste that some find unpleasant--thus commercial tour companies would have incentive to use a method that leaves less taste (eg ClO2). I don't have any authoritative references that rank iodine vs ClO2 for safety.

In the USA and Canadian hiking areas, viruses (and likely cysts) are not much of a problem if one exercises reasonable care in choosing one's water source. (It appears that one is more likely to get crypto or giardia from other hikers than from drinking water.) However, in the third world, one should protect against all three forms of pathogen in drinking water.

Medicine for Mountaineering by James A. Wilkerson is an authoritative reference with a good section on water purification. (Latest edition is 2001.) It covers boiling, filtration, iodine, and chlorine (bleach), but not the newer ClO2 or UV systems. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_dioxide appears to be a reasonable reference on ClO2.)

So, ClO2 (from any of a number of suppliers) is probably a reasonable method of purification in Nepal as is iodine or boiling. However, with ClO2 or iodine, some may prefer to add filtering to eliminate cysts as well.

Doug

Yvon, votre Anglais est meilleur que mon français

I looked for Pristine at Eastern Mountain Sports in New Hampshire yesterday but couldn't find any. I'm going to order some from the web site soon. I'll buy enough for 60 liters, that's 3.5 liters a day for 17 days. Do I need more? How much water did you drink a day?

According to my Trekking Annapurna Guide there are 16 Ozination water stations along the traditional route which sell the purified water to trekkers at a nominal fee. This was set up in order to curtail trekkers from purchasing bottled water which creates a lot of plastic trash, and to preserve precious fuel which needs to be used to boil water.

Between the Pristine and the ozinated water I should be all set I hope.

I'll plan on turning off the LED screen on my camera and just shooting with the viewfinder. I have 3 lithium ion Cannon batteries, I may purchase two more for the trip. I'll bring the charger for them just in case I stay at a tea house that has electricity. By the sounds of it, electricity in the Annapurna region is more common than I thought.

Nadine said:

I'll plan on turning off the LED screen on my camera and just shooting with the viewfinder. I have 3 lithium ion Cannon batteries, I may purchase two more for the trip. I'll bring the charger for them just in case I stay at a tea house that has electricity. By the sounds of it, electricity in the Annapurna region is more common than I thought.

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Lithium ion batteries should hold charge adequately for a three week trip. And the Canon chargers are small, light, and easy to carry.

BTW, the batteries will hold their charge better if kept cooler when not in use. I suggest that you only keep the battery in the camera warm and at most one spare if the weather is cold.

Doug

DougPaul said:

Lithium ion batteries should hold charge adequately for a three week trip. And the Canon chargers are small, light, and easy to carry.

BTW, the batteries will hold their charge better if kept cooler when not in use. I suggest that you only keep the battery in the camera warm and at most one spare if the weather is cold.

Doug

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I'll have to figure out how many pix I can take using one battery. I'll also have to stock up on a couple of extra SD memory cards. Keeping the batteries cool should pose no problem

I like the way the the wall plug folds in on the Cannon charger. Much easier to pack this way.

Nadine said:

How much water did you drink a day?

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According to the recommendations, we need to drink 4 to 6 liters of water per day. Nobody in our group has managed to drink more than 3-4 litres / day. This includes: the wake-up tea, tea at the breakfast, the water we drink during the day, hot fruit juice in the afternoon (made with powder and water), tea before dinner, soup at every meal and tea at dinner.
We had 2 bottles of 1 liter Nalgene each person. We have put, 6 drops of each solutions of Pristine in every liter of water.

Nadine said:

I'll have to figure out how many pix I can take using one battery. I'll also have to stock up on a couple of extra SD memory cards. Keeping the batteries cool should pose no problem

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Imaging resource generally includes battery life in their reviews: http://www.imaging-resource.com/MFR1.HTM?view=Canon_reviews . It might also be in the manual. (These ratings apply to new batteries--older ones might have a shorter lifetime.)

BTW, lithium ion batteries (rechargable) are intermediate between lithium primary batteries (non-rechargable) and alkaline batteries in their performance when cold.

I like the way the the wall plug folds in on the Cannon charger. Much easier to pack this way.

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Me too--a nice compact design that is relatively immune to damage in storage/transport. You might even consider a 2nd charger and a cube tap.

Doug

Nadine said:

I'll also have to stock up on a couple of extra SD memory cards. Keeping the batteries cool should pose no problem

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This could help you to made your calculation.

QUALITY OF FILES
Even if it takes more space on a memory card, always saved the photos in the best quality and largest format, for 6 mega pixels 3008 x 2000 "JPG Fine." This is to get the best quality in your photos. And if you want to crop the image a little, you'll still have a good quality. The dimensions of the photo depend on what you want done. If this is to put them on a website this is not the same thing if we want to have them printed in large format or a smaller format. To print a 6 X 4 inches. good quality, the final file should be 1800 x 1200 for a minimum resolution of 300 dots per inch.

MEMORY CARDS
To find out the number of memory cards that you need, we must first determine how many photos we going to do averages per day. Me my calculation was 28 days to travel about 50 photos per day, therefore 1400 photos. The files for a camera 6 mega pixel JPG took an average (may vary depending on the brand of camera) 3 mo. and RAW files to take 6 megs. So on a 1 gigabyte card can be put approximately 300 photos in JPG Fine. So the calculation made by mode of file you want to use. You can save all your photos in JPG Fine.
So for 1500 photos (with 6MP camera) in JPG you will need 4.2 GB of memory card.

Too bad you can not read the french. Because I have a website on our trek with a lot of informations from the beginning, preparation, photos and my daily journal.

Annie and Yvon / Trek to Everest base camp

I believe that AquaMira and Pristine are basically the same thing. Mix two chemicals, wait 5 minutes, dump into water, wait 15-20 minutes and drink. AquaMira seems to be the more readily available brand in the US. ClO2 is also available in tablet form. The tables come in individual foil sealed packets, making them ideal as backup in your first aid kit, since the shelf-life is long and you don't waste 48 tablets if you need two (like the iodine tablet bottles). The tablets are a bit stronger tasting than the liquid and are not easy to scale to different container sizes (one tablet for one liter). BackpackingLight.com also sells a version of liquid ClO2 that doesn't require mixing. Very convenient and even less taste than AquaMira, but the dose is 1 ml per liter and the bottle doesn't last very long. I'd consider an ideal system to be a filter just fine enough to remove cysts and then ClO2 to kill bacteria and viruses. I've used the Sweetwater prefilter, which may remove a fraction of they cysts.

yvon said:

This could help you to made your calculation.

QUALITY OF FILES
Even if it takes more space on a memory card, always saved the photos in the best quality and largest format, for 6 mega pixels 3008 x 2000 "JPG Fine." This is to get the best quality in your photos.

MEMORY CARDS
To find out the number of memory cards that you need, we must first determine how many photos we going to do averages per day.
So for 1500 photos (with 6MP camera) in JPG you will need 4.2 GB of memory card.

Too bad you can not read the french. Because I have a website on our trek with a lot of informations from the beginning, preparation, photos and my daily journal.

Annie and Yvon / Trek to Everest base camp

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I did some calculating with my 8 mega pixel camera and in order to save 900 pictures at the superfine (best)quality I need 32 gigabytes of memory cards. I will probably get several smaller cards, maybe 5 GB each instead of one big card.

I looked at your pictures, they are magnificent!
I'm planning to bring a lightweight tripod, maybe one of those small twisty ones, a Gorilla Pod.

Parce que mon français n'est pas très bonne, I enlisted the help of Google to translate your web page. Thank you for providing so much information. You obviously spent a lot of time putting it all together. It sounds like Annie really battled with altitude sickness. I'm glad you both were able to descend without further complications. All in all, you seemed to have a wonderful trip.

I am going with the the hopes of completing the Annapurna circuit, but if I develop altitude sickness and have to descend, I'm OK with that too. Either way, like you and Annie, I will make the most of my trip to the Himalayas