One of the basic requirements of a long hike
is having enough liquid to drink, particularly water,
good old H2O.
I poked around on
Google
for some web pages on estimating how well hydrated we are,
didn't find any that satisfied me,
and decided,
tongue only partway in cheek,
to invent my own,
the Hiking Hydration Index (HHI).
The importance of this when hiking remote trails cannot be overstated. (How is that for a silly statement, of course it can!) We must have an official measure of how wet we are on the inside, how ready we are to suffer the searing heat for hours of hiking in places where the water available is what we carry.
The solution is a TLA.
Do you know what a TLA is?
It's a Three-Letter-Acronym,
enough to make any off-the-cuff notion sound
well thought out, technical, and official.
So I'm inventing the Hiking Hydration Index
whose TLA is HHI.
Now it has a three-letter abbreviation,
not quite an acronym,
but close enough that you should pay attention.
So there!
Here's the deal.
One buddy said the indicator of healthy hydration is
C2P2, C-squared-P-squared,
which stands for "clear and copious pee-pee."
The most available, obvious, demonstrable test on the outside
of how wet we are on the inside
is how we pee.
Because I like the movie "Spinal Tap"
I'm going to run the scale from zero to eleven.
The following notice is offered on the advice of
council:
I have no expertise in this area
other than my own hiking experience,
so none of this has any more than anecdotal value.
I am not responsible for any consequences
of taking this web page more seriously than that.
HHI Table
Eleven:
Five minutes after peeing you gotta go again.
Ten:
Clear and copious urine.
Nine:
Peeing clear every half hour.
Eight:
Peeing clear every hour or two.
Seven:
Noticeably tinted urine every couple hours.
Six:
Yellow pee after a few hours.
Five:
Yellow pee and dry mouth.
Four:
Thirsty with bright yellow urine.
Three:
Thirsty, not hungry, no urine.
Two:
Heat Exhaustion with nausea and dry skin in the heat.
One:
Heat Stroke with lapses in mental function.
Zero:
Death.
Unless you're like
that guy
on
The X Files
you really want to stay away from HHI values
lower than four.
If you go much below HHI=four,
then they might have to bring in park rangers
to identify your remains
and that could be your tombstone in the picture.
Today is 2012 February 5, Sunday,
0:51:13 Mountain Standard Time
(MST).
1175 visits to this web page.
