Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
I used to carry a filter backpacking. Now I use a Steripen. There are several models. I use the Adventurer. It's light and small enough to even carry on brevets. Stick it in a water bottle and stir. So simple. 3.8 oz. with batteries.
An interesting side note: My wife and I do a lot of hiking on the Washington portion of the PCT in September. That means that we see many thru-hikers and not only that, but they're the successful ones. Many of them quit treating or filtering water soon after they started, never got sick. So I don't know . . . Is that whole filter your water thing just marketing? Seized upon and publicized by the marketing community? That said, I treat water from lakes or which originates in lakes or nearby snowfields. I just dip from small mountain streams. I've been doing that for 58 years, but that's here, in the Olympics and Cascades.
I bought a Steripen as a backup option for my Iceland trip. Since I planned to be in remote areas for a significant amount of time, I expected to be away from tap water. Never used it, but having it meant I did not have to worry about water sources that much. Before my trip, my research said that you can drink the water unfiltered where you can't see sheep, but you can almost always see sheep. Thus I decided to bring a water treatment device as a backup.
Backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, I have been filtering or boiling my water for many decades. National Park Service on Isle Royale bluntly say boil or filter, advise against UV (such as the Steripen) and chemical treatment because they have not been proven against a moose parasite that is prevalent in the water there. And since most of my kayaking and all of my canoeing are in areas with moose that carry that parasite, I stick to filter or boil for those areas. But I carry a one ounce bottle of Chlorine Bleach as a backup wherever I go.
Summer of 2019, backpacked for two weeks on the Northern Minnesota Superior Hiking Trail. I brought an MSR filter (the fourth filter I have bought over the years) and it did not work well at all. I asked the other hikers on the trail what they were using, they all (yes, 100 percent of them) were using a Sawyer filter. So, I bought a Sawyer and a couple Evernew bladders that will thread on to it.
Planned to use the Sawyer this year, but with Covid decided to stay home. I really thought that a backpacking trip this year would be perfect social distancing, but when I started hearing about how crowded campsites were everywhere, I decided to stay home. Thus, can't report on the Sawyer yet. But the dozens of backpackers I met that thought very highly of them suggests something quite possitive. One person on this forum had a terrible time with a Sawyer, but it sounded to me like he did not backflush it properly. Sawyer website has a couple short videos, one shows how to backflush.
Hopefully the Sawyer works as well as planned. And if I travel where there are no moose, I might try that Steripen that I have yet to use.