How to Find Water: 5 Ways to Collect Safe Drinking Water

Many freshwater sources contain harmful contaminants, bacteria, and waterborne organisms, making such water unsafe to drink. These contaminants can make you sick or even kill you in a wilderness survival situation in which you are miles from a doctor or medical facility.

Finding a fresh water supply from a mountain stream or underground water reservoir is preferable. These water sources might be safer than many alternatives; however, it’s a wise precaution to always purify water before drinking it when you find a source in the wilderness.

Running out of water while in the wilderness could become a life-threatening scenario if you’re unable to find a new source. Here are five methods for finding water you can then purify and drink:

1. 1. Collect rainwater. Precipitation in most rural areas, far from highly polluted cities, can provide a significant amount of drinking water. Look for places where rainwater collects in natural aquifers (stores of groundwater just below the earth’s surface) or build your own rainwater collection system using a tarp and a sediment filtration system.
   
2. 2. Follow signs of green vegetation or wildlife. Desert plants, cacti, and shrubs are great vessels of water conservation. Seek out groupings of such plants or follow animal tracks to find water in dry, arid climates.
3. 3. Melt snow and ice. Boiling water from ice or snow will remove the most harmful contaminants and bacteria while also protecting you from hypothermia. Be advised that eating snow or ice can dramatically drop your body temperature, putting you at risk in a cold-weather survival situation.
4. 4. Search for signs of water underground. Lost caving and spelunking enthusiasts have survived for multiple days by licking cave walls to take in moisture. Small amounts of moisture and condensation can collect on stalactites or in crevices in the rockface of a cave, providing a stranded person enough pure water to survive for a few days.
5. 5. Trap condensation from plants. Water helps vegetation move nutrients throughout its plant structures. Then, through the process of transpiration, plants release the excess water into the atmosphere. Tie a plastic bag around the limb or branch of a small bush to trap this released moisture and supplement your drinking water supply.

In certain situations, it’s possible to collect and distill enough safe drinking water to survive by crafting a solar still (condensation trap) from a plastic sheet and a water bottle. As moisture from the ground evaporates, it collects on the sheet, then trickles into the vessel. The sun facilitates evaporation and causes impurities (including salt) to remain behind after the vapor-to-condensation process. To make your own rudimentary solar still, follow these steps:

• Dig a hole. It is unsafe to drink groundwater near the coast because nearby seawater may have contaminated local surface water. Seawater, or salt water, is toxic due to its high salt content. A solar still can help you to collect fresh water or to desalinate salt water, depending on where you choose to construct your still. Use your hands or a shovel to dig a hole roughly two to three feet down into moist sand or mud (for example, in a dry river bed) until you see water rising from the hole's floor.
• Establish a collection point. Place the water bottle or container at the center and drape a piece of plastic over the hole. You can place weights around the perimeter of the plastic sheet to hold it in place and add a small weight of sand on top of the plastic above the collection point.
• Form a tight seal around the edges of your solar still. Create a sealed, greenhouse-like structure above the groundwater source to allow the heat from the sun to evaporate the water below. Water droplets will condensate and collect on the underside of the plastic. These droplets will then run toward the central, low point of the plastic and drip into your collection container. If you are desalinating salt water, the amount of salt this process removes largely depends on the strength of the sun.

Certain outdoor activities carry an elevated risk of serious injury. Wilderness scenarios require extensive survival gear, including but not limited to food, water, maps, protective clothing, and first aid, along with mental and physical fortitude. This article is for educational and informational purposes and is not a substitute for hard skills and expertise.

Prepare for any outdoor journey by grabbing a MasterClass Annual Membership and committing Jessie Krebs’s wilderness survival course to memory. As a former United States Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape instructor, Jessie can teach you everything you need to know about packing for a trip (neon is the new black), purifying water, foraging (crickets: the other white meat), starting a fire, and signaling for help (forget SOS).