 |
A fire-safe pot half full of snow, photograph by Author.
To watch a video on “Melting Snow and Ice” for
drinking water, go HERE
– Author’s Note
You
are out in the woods in the winter wilderness and your canteen is getting a
little low, you are surrounded by snow and ice, you don’t need to worry about
water, right? Right?
Well
yes and no. All that snow and ice is
just as pure as the source it came from, which might not be that pure. You should always disinfect any water you
melt out of snow or ice.
You
must turn all that snow and ice into liquid water to disinfect it. If there is plenty of fuel and you can get a
fire started or have a stove, and you have a pot that can withstand the fire,
boiling your water to disinfect it might be your best option. Don’t forget, during winter treks warm drinks
can help you maintain your core body temperature.
For more information on how long to boil your
water to disinfect it, read “Water Disinfection: When is boiled, boiled
enough…?”, HERE.
But,
before you boil it, first you must melt that snow and ice! Did you know that, since snow is such a good
insulator, if you just put a pot of snow over a fire or on a stove you will either
scorch the pot, giving the resulting water an awful smell and a burnt taste, or
you will melt a hole in the bottom of your thin-walled cook pot!
To
avoid burning the bottom of your pot, you need to “prime” the pot with
some liquid water before you put it on the stove or fire to boil. You should always put a small amount of water
into the pot as “seed” water, it acts as a barrier between the heat
source, the pot, and the snow or ice. The article “How to Melt Snow...” recommends putting
a cup (8 ounces or 237 ml) of water into a two-liter (68 ounce) pot and
bringing it to a boil, before you add snow or ice to the pot. Other sources recommend adding about an inch
(2.5 cm) water to the pot and bringing it to a boil before you start adding
snow or ice.
 |
A picture of my fire-safe pot, setting by the fire, photograph by the Author.
If
you don’t have any liquid water to “prime” the pot, something you can do
with a fire, but not with a stove is, you can put your pot full of snow and ice
near the fire1 so that the pot and the ice slowly warm up and then
as the pot slowly fills with water, add more ice or compacted chunks of snow to
your “seed” water, stirring occasionally, until you have enough water to
“prime” your pot so that you can put it over the fire to boil.
But
what if you don’t have a fire-safe pot to melt your snow or ice in? The United States Military Manual, Survival
FM 21-76 has the following suggestions regarding how to melt snow and
ice. You could use your body heat to
melt the snow, by placing the snow or ice in a plastic waterbag between your
layers of clothing. This is a slow
process, and it might chill you and put you at risk for hypothermia, but it
could be used if you don’t have a way to make fire or are on the move. Additionally, they suggested that you could
put the snow or ice in a cloth bag, such as a Millbank water pre-filtration
bag, and then hang the bag near (but not over) the fire, above a container to
catch the resulting melt water. In both
cases, if you don’t have a fire-safe pot that can withstand the heat of a fire
or stove, you will have to use UV, mechanical or chemical means2 to
disinfect your water. For more on this
read, “True or False, You Should Drink Water From The Spring Where Horses
Drink? ©”, HERE.
 |
A Ziploc® bag of snow, that you could put inside your coat, photograph by the Author.
 |
A cloth bag in front of a fire, used to melt water, hanging on a tripod. Photograph by the Author.
Remember
in a short-term survival situation it is better to drink suspect water, than
not drink any at all. As Peter
Kummerfeldt teaches, “A doctor can fix giardia, but he can’t fix dead”,
or “doctors can cure a lot of things, but they can’t cure dead”, I have
echoed this survival refrain since I first heard it in 2005. When worst comes to worst, and you are facing
dehydration, drinking actually or potentially infected water is better than not
drinking any water at all.
Not
all snow and ice are created equal, and all things being equal, you should use
ice, old granular snow and last of all, fresh, new, fluffy snow in that order
when you are trying to make melt water.
 |
An excerpt from How To Survive On Land And Sea, 1956, by Frank C. and John J. Craighead, page 43.
The
reason for this is that the denser the snow or ice you put into your pot the
more water it contains and the more that you will have to drink when it is
fully melted. Ice, which is the densest
of all, is almost all water. Old granular
snow, which is basically small pellets of irregularly shaped ice, is less dense
than ice, but more dense than new snow, it contains more water than new snow,
but less than ice. New-fallen snow is
the least dense and contains the least amount of water.
Additionally,
ice has the least amount of dead air trapped between the individual pieces. Old, granular snow still has a significant
amount of dead air space surrounding the individual crystals, even if you pack
it. New fallen, fluffy snow is, well...fluffy,
and it has the most dead air space trapped around the individual crystals of
snow. The reason why this is important
is that this dead air space is what makes snow such a great insulator and why
it can burn your pot!
 |
The author’s firepan, photograph by the Author.
I
built my fire on a firepan, which you can see in the picture above, as I was putting
out my fire. Originally, my firepan was
the base of a broiler tray from an old toaster oven that I re-purposed after it
broke several years ago.
There are two reasons and the first
is that when you use a firepan, it does less damage to the ground below;
particularly, since in this case the firepan is resting on a bed of
gravel. It is always a good idea to
leave as small a footprint as possible, when you wander through the woods.
The second, and more important reason
in this case, is that if the ground is wet or you are in a low spot where the
water table is close to the surface, as the fire grows it warms up the moisture
in the ground below and draws the resulting water vapor upwards, this can make
it difficult to keep the fire going. I
built this fire on a gravel bank, along a frozen creek and the water table was only
inches below it. Plus, there was a lot
of wind-blown snow and ice mixed in with the gravel. None of this would have been good for my fire,
so I put a firepan down and built my fire on top of it.
 |
The soggy, cold remains of my fire. Don’t forget to put your fire out when you are done. If you don’t feel any heat coming up from the charcoal and the ashes, then it is out. Photograph by the Author.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE.
Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 Survival
FM 21-76 recommends this, especially if you are using improvised pot.
2 For
and excellent article on emergency disinfection of drinking water, read the
EPAs “Ground Water and Drinking Water: Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water”,
HERE.
Sources
Department
of the Army, Headquarters; Survival FM 21-76,
March 1986, [Washington, DC], pages 5-2 to 5-3 and 15-15 to 15-16
Craighead,
Frank C., and Craighead, John J.; How To Survive On Land And Sea,
[United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD, 1956], page 43
Lewicky,
Andy; “How To Melt Snow For Water”, May 17, 2008, http://www.sierradescents.com/2008/05/how-to-melt-snow-for-water.html,
accessed January 23, 2021
Nesbitt,
Paul H., Pond, Alonzo W., Allen, William H.; A Pilot’s Survival Guide,
[Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1978], pages 130-131
Schimdt, David; “Winter Camping Skills: Melt
Water”, October 29, 2010, updated February 14, 2017, [© 2021 Pocket Outdoor
Media Inc.], https://www.backpacker.com/skills/winter-camping-skills-melt-water, accessed January 23, 2021
Werner,
Philip; “How to Melt Snow…Without Burning a Hole in Your Cooking Pot”, [©
Copyright 2007-2020, SectionHiker.com and Fells Press LLC], https://sectionhiker.com/how-to-melt-snow-without-burning-a-hole-in-your-cooking-pot/,
accessed July 29, 2020
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