Then I started reading on these forums about how overblown the water filter business was. Made sense.
I am fearful of giardia (because I had it, so it isn't extremely unlikely to ingest those critters in the High Sierra).
Fish-Man! With testimonials galore assuring us of the Shan-gri-la status of Sierra Water, one is lead to wonder:
Just what crime against the Mountain Gods did you commit???!?!? 
I confess. I've been bad. I've made negative comments about horses not being native to the Sierra and having no business up there other than to make us sick and to force overbuilding of trails.
I paid my debt to the mountain gods by exploring the 3rd world health system in this country:
I'll never forget the runaround to find somebody to get me antibiotics in Manteca on a weekend, or the $276 at the urgent care (which my insurance never covered - "not an authorized provider") to tell the nurse what my problem was, but first being forced to watch a blasting TV with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the waiting room for several hours, so i could spent 10 minutes with a nurse telling her what I had. She sends me to the lab across town that had already closed for the weekend while I was in their waiting room, so I went back for another waiting room session to insist on the prescription without lab report. More ridiculous TV for 2 hours in the waiting room while being ignored. Eventually another brief chat with the nurse, and $15 later I left Walgreens with 15 pills of Metronidazole (gotta get that stuff prescribed pre-hike from now on). 2 more days of apparently unchanged symptoms followed - and those are some symptoms - before I could leave town. Spent enough on the hotel to buy me water filters for the rest of my hiking days.
It felt like I was somewhere in Honduras.
