Hey all,

I know there are a couple of members here that live in Hawaii, and a couple of members with medical background, I'm hoping they can give me some feedback. As you can probably guess by the title, I have a question regarding the water safety while hiking. I am thinking of hiking the Kalalau trail in a couple weeks, most likely going to do it as a long day hike, but might think about camping. I was reading the websites and they were warning about Leptospriosis, which could be transmitted through contact with the water. The questions I have is:

1) Will a standard backpacking water filter protect me enough, or should I also use chemical disinfectants?

2) How serious, and how common, is this infection? The websites say it can be trasmitted through the mucous membranes or cuts, but how likely is that possibility?

3) Anything I can do to protect myself before hand? Antibiotics, medications, etc?


Thanks.

We did a daytrip on the Kalalau trail when we were vacationing at the Princeville on Kauai. What an awesome hike, just amazing views. We were there in February last year, and rain was a major issue for about an hour on that trip, I thought my wife was going to slide all the way to the ocean at one point.

Since we were only doing a day hike, we brought all our water with us, I think my son and wife had 2 one-liter Nalgene bottles each, and I carried that plus 3 quart bottles of Gatorade. (Me thinking I'm super-dad, I humped all the extra gear, drinks, bivy bags, lunch, ... what a deal that was, am I a dope or what?)

Anyway, if we were going to overnight, we would have needed a permit, which we didn't have. To do that, water would be an issue, and I was told NOT to drink the water, due to the lepto bacteria that you mentioned. I was told that you MUST boil the water out there, the filters can't get that bacteria apparently. Even though we had about 9 liters of liquid between the three of us, it was virtually all gone by the time we came back from the day hike, you do get a workout going up and down that trail along the coast.

I am jealous. You are in for a real treat, that's one of the most beautiful trails I have ever hiked. It can be challenging, especially if you get the usual afternoon rain. We came back off the trail glad to be climbing into a rental Trailblazer, instead of a car we own. I think the seats were covered with that red dirt which was all over our boots and pants.

Have a great time!

From the CDC"
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/leptospirosis_g.htm

Given it's a bacterium, that's between 5-15 microns in length, your standard water filters should deal with it just fine. If I recall, a lot of "good" filters get down to 0.2 microns, so you're golden.

Anyway, to summarize: symptoms start about a week later: fever, jaundice, "flu-like." Treatment is simple: doxycycine or a penicillin drug. I guess you could ask your doctor about getting the antibiotic before the trip, but personally I wouldn't give it to you (it just helps create resistant organisms). It's transmitted through breaks in the skin and mucous membranes. So, keep untreated water out of your mouth, eyes, nose, and don't pee/poop in the water. Keep your scrapes out of the water. It's carried in the urine of many animals.

Info from "Medical Microbiology, 3rd Ed."

Careful. I'm no expert on lepto so take this with a grain of salt, but I just looked it up and although they may be 5-15 microns in length, they're only 0.1-0.3 microns in diameter. The look like long, thin strings. They also have internal flagellae that allow them to twist and burrow into tissue, so they can actually burrow their way through the pores of a filter.
Here's a link to the lepto brochure by the Hawaii Deptartment of Health. They suggest boiling or chemical treatment since filters may not be effective.

Yes, we were clearly told to boil water when we were out there. It was a year ago, but, at the time I had seen multiple references to this on some hiking sites. I'll try to locate a couple specific ones.

So it's the skinny immature buggers that'll get you. Great... Does anyone even make filters smaller than that? I know in microbiology labs they can get really fine filters, but commercial?

I imagine UV treatments would work too, although they don't mention it either way.

Have fun out there. Boil or treat your water. Clean your scrapes. And you should probably be ok.

I have mucked through many streams in Hawaii, have gotten water in my eyes, mouth and cuts, and knock on wood, no problems.

Be careful, but enjoy being out.

I have even eaten prawns caught in our fresh water streams. Cooked of course.

Rules of thumb are to always boil or treat the water and to thoroughly cook anything caught in fresh water. Most things caught in the ocean can be eaten raw.

Thanks for all the responses. There's been a change of plans, I'm still going to Hawaii, but not going to be hiking the Kalalau trail, at least not this trip. But after reading about it, it's definitely going to be on my list of things to do on the next trip.

Aloha DTG,

When are you going to be in Hawaii? We will be going camping again in a couple of weeks.