Every time I see a photo of Tom Hardy as Mad Max in the recent “reboot”, at least in those apparently few scenes in which he’s not playing a hood ornament, he seems to have a bundle of clear tubing strapped to the shoulder strap of his pack, and I’m reminded again that I should write this.
I haven’t seen the movie. I gather that Mad Max plays a distinctly second-fiddle position to the Charlise Theron character. Even if it is a good movie that’s just a bit too PC for me to be interested. I’ve had enough of tearing down every single possible male role model or positively-portrayed male character, thanks. A LOT of the stuff coming out these days that does that is well written, well acted and well produced, entertaining stuff… but propaganda is still propaganda no matter how well it’s done, and I hate to support the trend of removing any positive depictions of my own gender even in tiny ways.
Anyway, he’s got this bundle of clear tubing with something clear plastic that is not quite tubing on the end. Given the context of the first Mad Max films, I suppose it may be for siphoning gasoline.
Not really what this is about, this is about water.
This is an odd survival item in that I’ve never had any use for it in an urban or suburban or even rural environment, only in the woods and mountains, but for there I find it indispensable. I never go out for more than a day hike without at least six feet of aquarium tubing, preferably eight or nine feet, and I’ve used it for more decades than I care to count.
Water, of course, is the highest priority out there after keeping your body heat regulated.
Paradoxically, it can be harder to find water in lush woods that get plenty of rain than it is in barren-rock mountains, and even harder to take advantage of it. Where there is a lot of bare rock there are usually rain pockets that hold water for some time. In the lush woods there’s plenty of water, but all the other life there, plant and animal, is competing with you for what there is and soaking it up as fast as possible. Up along the ridges and on slopes water, especially clean water, tends to appear in tiny springs and rivulets.
There’s a lot more water in the valleys, but I wouldn’t recommend it for several reasons. There tend to be human habitations upstream or even commercial and industrial facilities upstream of valley water that pollute it. The water in valleys of course comes from all those tiny springs and trickling springs on the slopes, and you generally don’t know where it’s been or what’s been dumped into it on the way down. Even more important is that they ARE valleys, and trying to travel in valleys is universally, around the world, much harder than traveling along ridge lines, leading to the mountaineer’s principle of “never lose elevation unnecessarily”… thus the original meaning of the word “highway”.
Out there, what goes down must come up, or at least YOU must, if you are going to keep traveling. You CAN’T go down to the easy sources of water continually, you’ll end up spending most of each day descending to get water and ascending again to the trail or ridgeline where you can make headway.
If you’re traveling in the woods, at elevation, far enough out that water doesn’t come from pipes anymore, the great majority of your water will come from small sources… usually very small, just trickles. Small sources of water in the woods are not deep sources. How do you fill your containers?
Yes, once in a long while you’ll have water flowing over a little cliff or overhang in perfect Hollywood style, but that’s rare. The old Boy Scout manuals talk about digging a depression for the water to pool in, but again, we’re trying to get somewhere, not start an engineering project. Those old Boy Scouts carried shovels and set up campsites for days and weeks. Even if you had a shovel, after digging you’d have to wait for all the stirred-up silt, mud and debris to settle out before you can use the water, and you’re looking at a huge time-sink. Also, if you’re in New England or someplace like it I defy you to dig even a moderate hole, big enough for a canteen, without hitting huge rocks. The approach is impractical for a traveler far more often than it’s practical.
So, you have a trickle of water coming out of the ground or traveling along the ground somewhere, maybe only a quarter of an inch deep. Again, without a lot of digging, how do you get it into your containers? Yes, sometimes you can get the edge of a cup into it and get the cup maybe half-filled, if you’re lucky, then transfer each half-cup to your main containers, but you’re going to spend a LOT of time and effort that way. Not that it’s not worth it if it’s your only option.
Most of the time, in most circumstances, aquarium tubing solves the problem. The basic idea is that you set up a siphon. There has to be at least some slope for this to work, but if there were NO slope the water wouldn’t be running, would it? Still, that’s one reason that longer lengths of tube often work better than shorter lengths. The longer the siphon, the further downhill it goes, and the faster the flow.
Basically all you have to do is drape the tubing downhill from the most accessible or deepest spot to collect clean water, and get one end of it underwater. I usually find a spot where the trickle is going over rock to avoid sucking up dirt, and anchor the end of the tubing underwater by putting a small rock on top of it. Then the water will start flowing through the tubing, possibly needing a little encouragement to start, but at the far end, a few feet downstream, you’ve got a constant flow of water coming out of the tube. Probably not fast, but constant. You’d be surprised how little time it really takes for even a small continual flow to fill containers.. if you don’t have to watch it. Just shove the tube into a canteen or whatever and go do something else for a bit. It hardly matters if it overflows, but you’ll probably have more than one container waiting to be filled, so you don’t want to forget about it for too long.
The newer, blue silicone aquarium tubing tends to be softer and easier to pack compactly than the older transparent tubing, but of course that means it’s easier to inadvertently pinch the tubing closed, especially when you’re anchoring one end underwater… and it tends to be pretty bright blue, which is a problem in the woods, especially in crisis scenarios. I’m not sure which I prefer.
Update: We live in an age of availability. I see that there are now several sources of white silicone available, and I even found it in black on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Airline-Aquariums-Terrariums-Hydroponics/dp/B01HBSU9EA
Also, there is another use for it that I should mention. Some sort of tube can be invaluable for firestarting and maintenance, and in this role the heat-resistant properties of silicone (varies by formulation, but is typically cited as 400-500 degrees F) makes it much more desirable. Probably the most convenient thing is to have a short length of metal tubing inserted in the end (both to reduce the diameter, about 1/8″ seems optimum) and to keep you from having to stick your fingers into hot spots, but in a pinch, for starting a small fire, it could be used on its own.
In a real emergency, silicone’s legendary resistance to chemicals is an advantage in siphoning fuel as well… though I’d be highly reluctant to use it for drinking water after that, given that it won’t actually absorb the fuel it might be salvageable if you set it up as a siphon in a creek and let fresh water run through it overnight- or for days.
All in all, given these factors, I have to say that silicone is now the clear choice.
The lack of ability to easily get water from very small sources made some of my early backpacking and real-woods camping trips a lot more miserable than they needed to be. Since I learned that lesson, long ago, the tubing has been one of my highest-priority items to pack. In the real wilderness it serves much the same role that the silcock key serves in urban, suburban and rural environments. Water is crucial wherever you are, no matter how much we take it for granted as long as it’s plentiful.
– Robert the Wombat