My Favorite Piece of Gear Lets Me Drink Out of Puddles

“Ah, I see you’ll be trading dehydration for giardia,” my friend Charlie joked as she handed me her old water bladder’s hose. I was days away from leaving on a trip to Patagonia, and I’d been searching for a durable plastic tube to help me drink from the water-filled huecos that pock the Fitz Roy massif.

I first encountered the “alpine straw” in a photo by the American alpinist Colin Haley some eight years ago. In it, his partner Austin Siadak is climbing blocky white granite in crampons, their blue rappel rope stuck in an unseen crack above. As I took stock of the image—they are descending from an incredibly fast 10.5-hour ascent of the Afanassieff (5.10c; 1500m) on Patagonia’s Cerro Chaltén—I remember pausing on Siadak’s harness. He was dressed head-to-toe in some of the lightest climbing equipment available, carrying the minimum while climbing the longest route on the tallest mountain in the area.

And yet—there was a hose clipped to his harness?

After asking friends, I learned that the alpine straw is indeed a much beloved hack among alpine rock climbers. Water is one of the heaviest items we carry, yet the lack of it is sorely felt. Dehydration, at minimum, is uncomfortable and distracting. At its worst, it can be physically and mentally debilitating. The alpine straw, meanwhile, allows you to carry less water in your pack, yet still take advantage of the trickles and puddles you often find while climbing high above the deck.

After that brief flash of puddle-drinking clarity, I neglected the alpine straw for some time. Although it was clearly a useful tool, I wasn’t convinced that drinking large amounts of unfiltered water was a particularly good idea. I had picked up giardia from an alpine lake before, and let me tell you: a Fifty Classics of North America route is decidedly less classic when each pitch ends with a frantic squat. Aside from the potential sickness, it felt borderline foolish to start up an all-day route with barely enough water, gambling on the presence of a puddle somewhere along the way. As a result, for years after, I hiked laboriously into the mountains with too much water—while other times not nearly enough—bypassing countless subtle hydration opportunities.

Eventually, when I made plans to climb my first Grade VI alpine wall, All Along the Watchtower (5.11 C2; 900m), in the Bugaboos, I came to terms with the fact that I couldn’t possibly carry enough water to remain hydrated on that steep, sun-drenched rock climb. The night before I hiked into the mountains I remembered Haley’s photo and ran to the grocery store, looking for the longest juice box straw I could find.

A few days later, high on the mountain’s summit ridge, many hours after inevitably running out of water, I pulled out my four-inch collapsible straw and successfully diverted a few sips off of a grainy granite slab and onto my cracked lips. Although the intake was minimal, the relief of cold, fresh water after two days of haggard mouth breathing felt heavenly—I definitely didn’t care if some adventurous rodent had taken a dump on the steep ridgeline above me. As a friend of mine later joked: “Giardia is a later problem.”

In the years since discovering the alpine straw, my own model has gone through various iterations. The current version, which Charlie helped supply, is made with a repurposed water bladder’s drinking tube. I’ve added a clip-in loop with two-millimeter cord to ensure the straw is always available on my harness—even while simul-climbing!—and cut it down to 10 inches. This length allows me to take advantage of narrow pools of water (my juice box straw came up frustratingly short a few times), and can be stowed neatly on a harness by tying it into an overhand knot.

Although I have used my alpine straw numerous times without picking up some awful illness, I am still skeptical of drinking unfiltered water unnecessarily. Water-purifying tablets are cheap and easy to come by, as are bottle lids with built-in filters. When I do fill up a capella, I avoid doing so downstream of popular campsites and bivy ledges.

Over the last three seasons climbing in Patagonia, I have noticed a delightful number of huecos that dot various peaks’ summit ridgelines. These are perfect locations for alpine straw deployment: hard to access, protected from wind, and, when you haven’t lugged the water to these spectacular locations, those sips taste absolutely delicious.

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