How to Find Water in the Desert

"Hi. I'm Mike Meyers with Zion Wilderness Survival School for Expert Village. You've been out here hiking for four or five hours, you've found yourself lost, and you have this problem. Very, very critical problem. In the desert, water is your number one need. Unfortunately, it's one of the most difficult things to find. And, you need to know a few ways of locating water if there is any. You may walk around for hours and find nothing doing all the right things. There are signs of water in the desert. Signs can be bees, flies. Both of these insects seldom venture more than a hundred or two hundred yards from some water source. It may be water in a small depression in the rocks. It may be a creek. It may be a seep where water is seeping out into small, muddy puddles. But, insects are a pretty good sign. If you see a gathering of birds, especially different types of birds, in an area, another good sign that water is nearby. If you go to the base of large rock faces or mountain ranges, often the low areas right at the foot of those mountains or hills contain water in the ground if not in a stream. So, you need to, to start looking around you for possible signs of water. As you're walking, constantly pay attention. Look for the, the creek beds. Even though they're dry, they are all running in the same direction. They're going to a single place which is going to be a stream or a lake or some sort of water source. So, if you follow these dry creek beds down, downward, down hill, eventually, hopefully, they will reach a water source. Around here, I mentioned earlier when talking about shelters and campsites, that this ravine comes down into a narrows right below us here and it exits to the north. Just to the north of us is a good half mile long string of cottonwood trees. And, cottonwood trees are probably the very best sign of water in the desert especially when you see a long string of them because that indicates a river or a creek. Cottonwood trees drink up to two hundred gallons of water a day. So, that means there's a lot of water in the ground down there and probably a stream."