hikermor: I'm still with you. I can think of times in my life when I had NO water, I was seriously dehydrated, and I would have killed just to be anywhere near a crystal clear running stream. Hard to believe he did not drink that water. Ohhhhh well.

On a different note ... something else I would have done. I would have wasted no time in breaking into the cabin. The story records that he had already suffered from exposure from strong winds, and that later he was worried about an approaching storm. Good shelter is just too important to mess around with. Getting into that cabin would have been a top priority for me once I discovered it. After that ... you can get a fire going, warm up, and things are gonna' seem a whole lot better.

Pete