Everytime I'm out and about on the trail and passing by a creek, river, lake, so on and so forth in the back of the backcountry, I wonder if I were to drink that water straight from the source right now, would I get giardia. For example, this last week my father and I were backpacking in the Sawtooths and were nine miles well into them with water the entire way flowing past us. The first 7 miles I wouldn't have thought once about drinking the water straight for the simple fact it was obvious horses had been on the trail and had contaminated the water with the usual horse droppings along the way. Fairly annoying in my mind but that's another subject all together.

But once we got back to the pass we would be climbing up the next day, it was more than apparent nobody but people come back this far and not that many at that. And I always wonder if back that far in, away from the vast majority of people, if giardia is such a huge problem as it is closer to the roads and first few miles of trails. I'm always tempted to do it just to see what happens. That or put it in the nalgene bottle and see what happens while I'm home and not in the middle of nowhere. And my water sources would be fairly well chosen, fed by fresh snow melt and springs.

I'm just curious as to what others thinking is on this as well as experiences. I'm more tha confident that they're numerous.