Joan wrote and excellent article about this topic! Of course, I’m biased. 🙂 https://pmags.com/thoughts-on-hiking-solo

Ha! 🙂 Too true at times..isn’t it!

Isn’t this the part where we should start calling each other liars? 🙂

Thanks for the kind words. We’ll just have to agree that hygiene and sanitation are very important and should never be neglected. 🙂

You probably won’t be surprised however, that I respectfully disagree with this statement: “There is increasing consensus that sanitation is more important than water treatment for preventing GI illnesses in the backcountry.”

Here’s how the CDC responded to Dr. Welch “Although the advice to universally filter and disinfect backcountry drinking water to prevent disease has been debated, the health consequences of ignoring that standard water treatment advice have been documented…”

To the best of my knowledge, only one peer-reviewed paper has compared water treatment and hygiene and it found water treatment to be more important. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934302014948

There have been multiple CDC verified outbreaks of waterborne giardiasis in the backcountry [outbreaks represent less than 1% of cases,] but to the best of my knowledge there has never been a single CDC verified case, let alone outbreak, due to poor backcountry hygiene. I do think your advice to pay attention to hand hygiene is good, however. NOLS has an unbeatable record of GI hygiene by stressing water treatment, dish-washing and good hygiene.

I put together a list of scientific papers related to backcountry water here:
http://bucktrack.com/water.html

Awesome! Enjoy!