"This water tastes like cow shit!" 

Really, it did. Much of the water we found this weekend in Kananaskis Country (that is in Alberta, Canada for those of you who might now know, and not pronounced "Can-an-ass-kiss", but rather Kana-nas-kis")" had this distinct odour and taste of cattle. You know when you are hiking and you stumble upon a spot in the trees where cows have been hanging out for a while, and you get this very distinct stable smell? That's what all the water was like, except for what we found higher on the slopes.

We had embarked on a brief backcountry trip to look for sheep, starting off on our bikes, pulling our gear in carts. Maybe against our better judgement. The springs floods have ravaged the trail system in the backcountry, bridges have been washed out and many creek beds have turned into miniature canyons. We quickly found out, and left our bikes and carts after not much more than 3 miles and a few very onerous creek crossings.

(Look for the human figure right of centre on the photo for an indication of the size of this wash-out of what used to be an easy ankle deep ford)

After the massive rock and landslides of the spring the creeks seem to have chosen different paths, and it will take a few years for things to settle down, and new permanent flow beds will be created (until the next big flood). So over large areas, water is now flowing over what used to be an old mining road, created creeks where used to be brush, spread out over large flat areas undoubtedly a precursor of the next swamp, and so on.

So lots of contact of water with the dirty top layer, where it used to run through relatively clean and inert rock. Would this be the reason the water tasted and smelled so bad? I would imagine that any cow excrement that would have been present in the area has been washed away with the tonnes of rock, soil and debris and can hardly be the cause of the malodorous fluid that used to be clean mountain water. But possibly, picking up and dissolving all sorts of surface material provides a similar smell and taste sensation?

(One of the many easy creek crossings)

Has anybody out there experienced anything similar? Or would this be specific to the area; maybe sour gas seepage somewhere, that dissolved into the water? I'm curious, please chime in if you have any ideas or knowledge on this topic.