Rabies? Reporting? WTF?

I'm a little bewildered at the moment. It's not rabies, no one else is talking about it, and frankly it's getting a little creepy. New happenings:

• I have been trying to go back and find the articles that first brought the whole rabies thing to my attention. There was a site for both Estes Park and Lyons, but both have been down for a while. I've been looking for other media coverage without much luck. I'm actually finding my internet service to be all around kind of spotty.
  
• I mentioned the rabies thing to a nurse friend who works at Exempla, and he kind of laughed about it and said rabies can't possibly have set in that fast. If something was wrong with them, he said, it was not rabies. Then he told me something kind of quietly (we were at the Buckhorn Exchange) that had been bugging him. He had seen a few patients brought in earlier showing showing the same symptoms as they reported for that kid in Lyons. They were, for the most part, incoherent and dazed, but he said he heard one of the patients mumble something like "hungry" over and over.
• Another friend called me last night to tell me what happened a few blocks away from 16th St. close to the Curtis Hotel. She said some guy was hopped up on something and stumbling around groping at people, and looked really pale and sick. He got violent with one person, so she called 911, who responded that they were already aware of it. Police showed up and wrestled the guy to the ground, restrained him and took him away, but not before he bit a finger off from one of the officers. The description she gave me of the crazy guy reminded me of the descriptions my friend at Exempla gave me.

So.... Ok. Rabies? Seriously? I don't think so. Why isn't this being talked about on 9News? I mean, I know they take a ham-fisted approach to journalism, but surely they'e heard about this.

I know I probably don't have much of a readership yet, but is anyone else in Denver getting word of this??

Water in the backcountry

Going to be in the woods for a few days? Got that 6-pack of bottled water ready to go in your backpack? Ready to get dehydrated and cut your trip short?

A typical person needs to take in around 2.5 liters of liquid every day to replace fluids lost to sweat, breathing, and going to the bathroom. Around 20% of that comes from food. The remaining amount (~2 liters) comes from liquid intake. Assuming you've got 1-liter bottles in a 6-pack, you've got 3 days of water. If we're talking about being outdoors, where you'll have a lot of increased activity, and (in my case) at high altitudes, the needed amount of water will sky-rocket. Let's assume an hour of exercise per day (you are outdoors, right?), a reasonable weight of 150lb., and a warm environment. This handy dandy calculator says such a person would need ~3 liters every day. I'm at 170lbs, so I need about 3.2. I'm also at high altitudes, so let's factor in another half liter for 3.7. That's more than 3 bottles of water / day.

For an extended stay in the backcountry, you probably won't want to carry all of that water with you. You do, after all, need space and strength for food, camping supplies, clothes, etc. The only option you really have is to learn how to purify water. Why purification? How about a nice helping of giardia-infested water that gives you really messy digestion problems? Giardia is increasingly common in many parts of the world, and unless you've got a nice microscope with you, you can't tell if the water you found in a pond or river carries it. And, yes, it does live in flowing water, too.

So, what to do? Fear not, there are several companies out there that make water purification chemicals. There are also ways of using heat to kill the organisms living in your water. We'll talk about iodine first.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Have thyroid problems? Alergic to seafood? Iodine may not be your prefered solution. Consult your doctor before trying it.

For purification via iodine, carry a 2% iodine tincture with you. You can find this in some first aid kits and drug stores. Make sure you're carrying it in a dark bottle, as exposure to light will lessen its effectiveness. To kill most organisms in 20-degree Celsius (~68 Farenheit) water, add 5 drops of your iodine solution to every quart (.95 liters) of water, if the water is clear. If the water is murky, use 10 drops. Once added and thoroughly mixed, let it sit for 30 minutes. If the water is colder than 40 Farenheit (10 Celsius), make it an hour, as a lack of heat inhibits all chemical reactions.

Sounds easy, huh? It is! Of course, it's not as thorough as boiling the water for a minute. Boiling can be inconvenient, requiring fuel for heat, a suitable container (you should have a pot, though), and the time to put it all together and start a fire. Boiling will kill everything living in that water, though, unless you somehow got your water from one of those crazy undersea volcanic ecosystems. Then, maybe you're screwed, but under most circumstances you'll be fine.

I'll be giving other purification methods a go when I take a long-ish hike. I'm really interested in solar stills and other more DIY distillery methods. Not sure when that will be, though. That rabies case I posted about a while back? There have been a few more. Most recently some kid wandered out of the woods in Lyons (kind of close to where that first case was reported), and walked right out into the busy traffic of a highway. Luckily he was moving slowly and the drivers there were able to avoid him, but I heard there were a a couple of fender benders. Someone was nearby on foot and ran out into the road to collect him once it was safe to do so. She reported that he was incoherent and sickly looking, and was bleeding from his leg. Ambulances showed up soon and whisked him off to a local hospital, and the rumors are flying that there's rampant infestation of rabid animals in the area.

I hope the kid's ok. I think I'll be looking into that conceal/carry permit soon.

Post-hike at Rabbit Mountain

So, what better way to get into it than to go in unprepared?

I went to Rabbit Mountain over the weekend just to get a feel for it, and decided to hike all the way through the Little Thompson Overlook Trail. It's an easy 3-mile round-trip hike with moderate elevation change. I figured I could cut it with my normal shoes and a bottle of water.

Turns out I was about half-right. My feet are killing me. My tennis shoes don't protect against the jagged sharp rocks strewn across the paths, and I occasionally found my foot bending the wrong way around the edges of those rocks. Then, the blisters started as I got close to the end of the trail. It wasn't long before I had to change my stride to keep from agitating the blisters.

Lesson: get good hiking shoes... Done!

I grabbed these for a pretty penny from a local outdoors store that's going out of business. These shoes must be worn by the gods, and I think I made a great choice to invest in them. If all the reviews I've read are right, these should last me for years. They're also so comfortable that they hardly agitate my existing blisters. I tested them out on some sharp rock edges, and found the soles are flexible enough to remain comfortable while being firm enough to allow me to put all my weight on to a sharp edge with little or no discomfort. I've also gathered that with the right socks they are well-insulated and should be suitable for winter hiking, whenever I get around to that. These things are definitely going with me on all my outdoor excursions from now on.

On a minor note, I bought a few cheap metal latches to make it easier to carry stuff. I had my water bottle latched to a belt loop, which made it very comfortable and accessible.

And, on a weirder note: a case of human rabies was reported nearby. Apparently some camper came out of the Roosevelt National Forest in a daze. Some hikers at the trail head tried to help him, but he got violent and pursued them. They called the police, who rounded the guy up after they heavily restrained him. I think they took him to a hospital in Estes Park. The people who were attacked commented that he had a bite mark on his forearm, so they think he got too close to a rabid animal for whatever reason.

Anyway, I'm kind of considering getting a pistol and a conceal/carry license to protect against the rare dangerous animal or psycho. I hear it's pretty easy to do so in CO. Purchase of the weapon, background check, firearm safety training, and probably a reasonable fee. I've never been a fan of guns, but I'll be damned if I'm letting a rabid coyote turn me into an asshole.