Originally Posted by
AlexanderLS
My bad.
Point remains, water filters may or may not work.
In a survival situation I would set up solar stills. Short of distilling the water, there is a risk.
To the op,
here is a list of waterborne diseases you can catch if your filter is not good enough. I caught dysentery after testing a water filter from ebay, not fun, wouldn't do it again. It's just not worth the risk if you are only going 60 miles.
Stream/creek/river water in the U.S. is no cleaner than any other country.
They don't go out and pre filter natural water sources. Hep A isn't even really the worse thing you can get. Most the waterborne diseases will go away on their own but some will be quite unpleasant.
I'm curious about how common Hep A would be in surface waters in the areas that the OP wants to ride. I suspect its a pretty low risk, but I really don't know.
Giardia is the one I have heard most about from stream water, and there are filters that supposedly will remove the giardia parasite from water. There are also other options like chemical disinfectants and ultraviolet devices like Steripen.