Originally Posted By: MDinana
Denis, hot weather, is, what, like 20 celcius? smile
I kid, I kid.

Absolutely, we've seen high twenties ... even got into the low thirties a couple times! That's hot for here smile

Originally Posted By: MDinana
water wise, I count 6 lakes, a river and 2 creeks on that map. Don't know the scale, but since it's a loop, I'd assume it's a fairly large scale map. Still, those lakes didn't get there by magic.

For scale, my book lists trail 100 as 10.5 km. I haven't been there, so I don't know for sure how easy the water access is, but I'd lean towards them being dehydrated simply because they didn't drink enough as opposed to not having access to water. That's just a guess though.

As an aside, I took to heart Chris Townsend's caution in The Backpacker's Handbook about treating water. His caution was that insisting that you treat all your water, while not making sure you drink enough water, was worse than simply drinking untreated water to start with. This was based on his experience running into people who wouldn't drink untreated water, but wouldn't filter enough to meet their body's needs (possibly due to effort?).
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Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck. Roald Amundsen