I was out in the Gila this pass weekend and we camped close to a dried up stream. Well it rained hard all night and the stream started to fill back up but the water looked more like chocolate milk then it did water. It wasn't thick like mud just brown from the dirt being dissolved in the water I assume. It was actually pretty cool seeing the stream start to flow down hill in front of us. Anyhow if this was your closest water source what would you do?
This was my situation:
We were 2 miles from the middle fork river which was our plan to to hike to then eat breakfast but it rained hard and my friends tent leaked getting everything of his soaked so we had to get back to the vehicle and not risk staying another night. On the trail heading back it would be 6 miles till we would hit the west fork river and we didn't have much water to start with. So one of my friends decided to try and filter the water from the stream. Well it quickly clogged his filter. We filled a gallon zip-lock bag with the water and waited to see if the dirt would settle on the bottom but it didn't seem to happen fast enough(I think we waited like 5 minutes) and decided it wasn't going to work. I had micropur tablets but none of them wanted to drink that dark colored water or the chemical taste. I have used the tablets before on clear water on a previous trip but knew if I had to wait 4 hours to drink we could be at the river by then.

On our hike back we ran into another stream created by the rain runoff but it was a bit clearer do to it being on solid rock but the filter was already clogged so we only got a 32oz bottle filled by pumping. I finally decided hell with it and dumped my bottle in the "clearer" water and got as much filled (not very deep) and dropped in a tablet. Since it wasn't even half full the tablet left a pretty strong smell.

Anyhow when we reached the west fork river we cleaned the ceramic disk a bit and were able to pump 2 more bottles of water for the rest of the hike back to the cars. I finished filling up my bottle I had dumped in the stream with the filtered water to help with the strong smell and finally drank it.

How would more experienced hikers handle a situation like this?