If you’ve been hiking all day, and your kids start begging for a drink, but the water ran out, you’ll be tempted to fill up your bottle by the creek.

Don’t. For real. Here’s why.

Two things - at least. The stuff you can see, like dirt, silt, and algae. And the stuff you can’t, like bacteria, viruses, and parasites that cause waterborne diseases - or at least a “hurt tummy” for the rest of the night.

According to the CDC: While the water flowing in the streams and rivers of the backcountry may look pure, it can still be contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, and other contaminants.

And just because one person drank from the stream with no issue, doesn’t mean the next will. Those with compromised immune systems are especially susceptible to infection from minor contaminants in water.

Those two concerns combined with the fact that humans can’t live more than 3-4 days without water (versus 3 weeks without food), it’s crucial you and your children learn to filter and purify your own water while out in the wild.

The stuff we’re going to show you, you can do at home, but it won’t do you any good, if you’re out in nature and an adventure goes wrong and you can’t find any water.

Before you go on any hike, sit down with your kids and look at the map. How long is the hike you’re going on? Where’s the nearest water at the trailhead? Where’s the nearest water at the farthest point of the hike?

When you collect water to filter and purify it, you want to find moving water. Stay away from stagnant water if you can. No matter what you do to it, it won’t be as good.

Look for creeks and streams. Keep an ear and eye open for them as you’re walking. If you start to hear running water, quiet the kids and have them guess where it’s coming from.

When you find your water, have them figure out which way it’s flowing. See if they can follow the path. You want to go upstream, not downstream, and high, not low, when grabbing your water. Look for a good drop spot where the water flows down off of rocks.

If you’re in the desert, ...get ready to start digging. It’s a whole thing in itself, so we’ll just link you here to learn more.

This is what you do if you have no other option. Like caveman territory. Full-on survival mode. You’ll hopefully never have to do this, but you can always fall back to letting your water sit.

Have the kids try this at home by getting some clear Tupperware. You need a container with a top wide enough that you can scoop the water out without disturbing the rest.

Grab some water from a stream, and throw a bunch of dirt and twigs into it. Have each kid take a picture of the containers. Now let them sit. Overnight is best.

In the morning, be very careful not to disturb the water. Have the kids take a picture of them again and compare them to the previous day. All the particles should have sunk to the bottom.

Now try to scoop the water off the top without disturbing the particles below. It won’t get rid of contaminants, but it will work as a oh-crap-i-need-a filter.

A huge step up from letting the water sit is to actually filter it. This is all about removing any physical objects and hazards by making the water pass through some sort of system.

There are a lot of ways you can filter it. Even just using your bandana or a t-shirt to drip the water through is a good idea.

To do it right though, you have two main options: creating a filter from nature or using a store-bought filter.

To create one from nature, grab the kids and watch this video. It’ll show you how to create a filter using a plastic bottle, sand, grass, rocks, and charcoal. Makes for a really good science experiment if you need one. Try it out with moss or cloth, and see what works best.

On the flipside, there are some really good store-bought filter systems out there. Some attach to a big roll-bag that you can hang from your campsite and let gravity do its work. Others are small handheld straws that allow you to drink straight from the creek or attach it to a water bottle. The ones we use are available on our site.

While the nature-made filter doesn’t purify the water, technology is advanced enough that some store-bought ones might. Living in 2020 does have a few perks… When researching, look for filters that protect against “99.999999% of bacteria (including E.coli, Salmonella), 99.999% of parasites (including Giardia and Cryptosporidium), 99.999% of microplastics, dirt, sand and cloudiness.”

To distill water is to get it hot enough it turns to vapor, then collecting that vapor so it condenses back into water. When the vapor rises, it leaves any contaminants behind, so the condensed water is clean and purified. No sweat, right? Get it? Hah. That was a bad one.

Anyway, this method of purifying water is really great in tropical settings where there’s plenty of water, but also plenty of heat and humidity. The sun is your friend for this one. Use that energy to heat up your water, then create something to catch it in. You want to collect it in a way that causes it to run down and drip into another container.

The process is so simple and vital, we have a Waypoint specifically for this. You can see it here: Create a Solar Still.

For out in the desert, we’ll share that link again for creating a solar still in the sand. Click here to learn more.

Similar to letting your water sit to filter it, boiling it is another great fallback. This time for purifying your water.

The only real downside is it takes up resources and energy that could be used for cooking dinner, but boiling water is the most efficient way to purify it. As long as you can build a fire and you have a metal container, you can kill off any contaminants in as little as a minute.

First things first, a plug for our Build a Campfire Waypoint: Build a Campfire.

Now that you’ve got your fire, gather your water into a tin can or whatever metal pot you have. NOTE: Only boil clear water. You’re not trying to make tea out of dirty leaves. Filter it with a bandana first if you’re in a pinch.

To get the water boiling, it helps to set your metal pot on some hot coals, then push more coals around it. You can even build a wall of rocks around that to help contain the heat and keep the wind out.

You’re looking for a rolling boil. Not little fish-eye looking bubbles on the bottom. Once it's boiling, think about your elevation. Are you below 6500 feet? A minute of boiling is enough. Above 6500? Push that out to 3 minutes.

The higher you go up in elevation, the lower the boiling point of temperature will be, so it will boil faster, but you also need to boil it longer to kill those pathogens.

This is the ultimate ease in water purification: treatment drops and tablets.

Rarely do we mention a specific brand for a specific product and tell you to buy it. But for water treatment drops, you can’t do better than the droplet bottles from Aquamira.

They make it really easy for you to kill off the big guys (Giardia and Cryptosporidium). It takes about 20 minutes, has a shelf life of 4 years, and comes in little 1oz bottles.

Drop some drops from Bottle A and Bottle B into the provided top. Let it sit for a few minutes to let science do its magic, then pour the mixture into your water. Shake it up, wait 15 more minutes, and you’re good to go. No fire, no metal pot, just drops and your water bottle.

It won’t look as impressive to your kids, and it won’t filter out dirt, but you can hike easy knowing you tossed them in your pack.

That’s what it’s all about, though, right? Knowing you and your kids can do it caveman-style and still survive, but also pulling out a filter straw or treatment drops so you can get back to that adventure real quick.

This isn’t even the full list of ways to clean your water. Next time that plant-fan in your family has a science project due, have them look into purifying water with cilantro, banana peels, and plum seeds. It’s pretty crazy what nature can do.

Drink more water!