Polar Pure iodine water disinfectant.
Iodine crystals, sold in drugstores, are a long-lasting alternative to tablets. These can be held in solution and small amounts poured into water bottles when required, though you need to be sure no undissolved crystals enter the drinking water. Polar Pure (3 ounces dry weight; more, of course, when the crystals are in solution) contains iodine crystals, thermometer (to check water temperature—cold water needs more of the solution), and instructions, and will purify 2,000 quarts of water. It’s safer to use than crystals alone, since there’s a filter cone inside the bottle that prevents the crystals from accidentally falling into your drinking water. However, it’s heavier than crystals or tablets, and you have to carry a glass container with liquid in it. I used it for a while, before I discovered chlorine dioxide.
Aquamira chlorine dioxide water purification.
Chlorine dioxide is meant to kill everything, including Cryptosporidium. It’s lightweight, easy to use, and in my opinion the best way of treating water. Despite the name, it doesn’t kill bugs with chlorine or leave chlorine in the water. When activated, chlorine dioxide releases highly active concentrated oxygen into the water, and it’s this that kills bugs. Treated water tastes fresh, with no aftertaste. The treatment comes in two tiny plastic bottles, one containing stabilized chlorine dioxide, the other an activator (5 percent food-grade phosphoric acid), plus a small mixing cap. The weight is 2.8 ounces, and it will purify 120 quarts. To use the treatment you put seven drops from each bottle in the mixing cap for each quart of water, wait five minutes before adding it to the water to be treated, and then wait another fifteen minutes before using the water. (Double the time and dose for cold or cloudy water and if Cryptosporidium is suspected—though how you suspect it I’ve no idea.) Rather than waiting fifteen or thirty minutes each time you fill up with water, you can simply wait five, add the drops to the water, and then hike on with it in your pack. There are two brands of chlorine dioxide, Aquamira and Pristine, though they seem to be effectively the same. I used Aquamira on the Arizona Trail, when I drank from some really murky cattle ponds at times, and stayed healthy.
Katadyn also offers a chlorine dioxide treatment called MP1 Emergency Drinking Water Tablets. These don’t require the use of an activator, which would make them easier to use than Aquamira. You just add one tablet to a quart of water and wait fifteen minutes to kill bacteria and viruses and thirty to kill protozoans. That’s if the water is clear and at 68°F (20°C). If the water is dirty and the temperature 40°F (5°C), it takes four hours to kill Cryptosporidium. The times remain the same for other bugs. I haven’t used MP1 Tablets, but they’re lightweight and easy to use and so worth considering. There are thirty tablets in a pack.
The latest method of chemical treatment is the MSR MIOX Purifier, which is unlike anything else. This battery-operated Purifier is a flashlight-like tube measuring 1 inch by 7 inches. To use it you add salt to the unit followed by a tiny amount (¼ teaspoon) of water. You shake the salt and water to create a brine solution and press a button. This sends a small electrical charge through the solution creating a chemical reaction (electrolysis) that produces a “cocktail” of mixed oxidants (MIOX) that when added to untreated water kills any bugs. One dose will purify up to a gallon of water. The whole procedure only takes a few minutes but, as with other purification treatments, you then have to wait to be sure it has worked; thirty minutes for most bugs and a long four hours for Cryptosporidium. Purity-indicator strips show the water has been purified. Although there is a strong smell of brine when the solution is added to the water, there is no aftertaste. The MIOX runs off two CR-123 lithium camera batteries and will purify more than two hundred liters on one set. The tube weighs 2.2 ounces without batteries and the whole kit, which includes batteries, salt, purity-indicator strips, instructions, and stuff sack, 8 ounces. It’s fairly easy to use, though you have to be careful to follow the sequence of actions correctly. I’d certainly rather use it than most filters, as it seems much more foolproof.
The unique MIOX Purifier works by creating a cocktail of mixed oxidants that kills all bugs.
Lightweight, compact water filters (from left): First Need DeLuxe, MSR MiniWorks, Katadyn Hiker, Sweetwater Guardian.
FILTERS Filtration is the high-tech way to treat water and the most common method, though it’s not my favorite. Indeed, though I’ve tested several pump filters over the years, including models from MSR, Sweetwater Guardian, First Need, and Katadyn, I’ve never taken one backpacking. In my opinion they’re all too heavy, too complicated, too inefficient, and too unreliable. I’m unhappy about the need to keep them clean and use them correctly, too. I found this difficult at home; it must be much harder when you’re tired, cold, and thirsty at the end of a long day on the trail, yet it’s essential if filters are to be effective. I’ve seen people handling filters with dirty hands, letting the outlet tube dangle in the dirt, allowing water still to be filtered to splash over the filter, and storing filters unwrapped in the pack: I definitely felt safer drinking straight creek water than their filtered supply. Filters can be hard to pump and clog very easily. Carrying a replacement cartridge or a chemical disinfectant as a backup is advisable. Cleaning filters is necessary, too, which means carrying cleaning items on a long trip. Like any piece of gear, a filter isn’t magic, despite what some users seem to think. Study the instructions carefully, practice at home, and make sure you know how to clean and store the filter properly.
The key with any filter is the pore size, since this determines what it will filter out. For Giardia and Cryptosporidium an absolute (maximum) pore size of 0.5 micron is the minimum needed; smaller pores are better, since pores may enlarge with use. Whether the filter is ceramic, carbon, or fiberglass and exactly how it works are far less important.
Filters come in three forms: bottle feed, gravity feed, and pump. The first are simple filters that substitute for the lid of a water bottle. They’re lightweight and easy to use, though you have to squeeze fairly hard to get water out. I wouldn’t want to use one if I needed large amounts of water, but for drinking from on the trail they’re all right. The tiny TFO Gatekeeper fits into a TFO or Platypus bottle, weighs a minuscule 0.5 ounce, and will filter up to 25 gallons. Other bottle filters are heavier. As an emergency backup, the Gatekeeper could be worth carrying.
Pump and gravity-feed filters are better for camp and group use. Pumping can be slow—a quart a minute is good—and surprisingly tiring, but it can be used for any amount of water. Of the pump filters I’ve tried, I most liked the Katadyn Hiker (formerly the Pur Hiker—Katadyn took over Pur), which weighs 11 ounces, has 0.3-micron pores, and has a pump rate of 1 quart per minute. The Hiker was easier to use than other models and is quite light and compact. If I carried a pump filter it would be this one.
The ULA H20 Amigo, a gravity-feed filter.
First Need DeLuxe filter/purifier fitted to a Sigg bottle.
Putting the inlet hose in a creek before filtering water.
With gravity-feed filters a bag of water is hung up with the filter unit and a hose leading into a water container below it. The first gravity filter I tried, the 15.5-ounce First Need DeLuxe, (which also has a pump option and is a purifier as well as a filter), took ten minutes to filter a quart of water. Much lighter and faster is Ultralight Adventure Equipment’s H2O Amigo, which weighs 8.5 ounces, including 0.9 ounce stuff sack. It takes about 1 minute to filter a quart, depending on how full the water bag is (it holds 1.25 gallons) and how dirty the water is. Sediment settles at the bottom of the water bag and there is a prefilter in the bag to stop larger contaminants from reaching the main filter. ULA says the filter will remove 99.8 percent of contaminants. The filter-unit life is over a hundred gallons. I prefer gravity filters to pump ones as you can do other things while the filter is working and they are generally simpler in design and easier to use. I can see one disadvantage though: you need something to hang them from. In forests this is no problem, but in deserts or above
timber-lines it could be difficult. I guess you could just hold the filter up, though this would be tiring. If I had to use a filter, the H2O Amigo is the one I would choose … as long as there were trees around.
Filters can remove bacteria, organic chemicals, and protozoans, including Giardia. They can’t remove viruses unless they also include chemical disinfection, in which case you might as well just use chemicals.
Powdered Drinks
Clear, cold mountain stream water is the most refreshing drink there is, the main reason I’m reluctant to treat water unless absolutely necessary. Aquamira doesn’t make water taste unpleasant, but the waiting time does remove some of the sparkle. If you like to flavor water, Kool-Aid, Wyler’s, and similar fruit-flavored powdered drink mixes are the traditional choice. There are three versions: those to which you add sugar, those containing sugar, and those containing artificial sweeteners. Those presweetened with sugar are the most useful—if you’re carrying the stuff, you might as well get a few extra kilocalories.
The modern alternatives to fruit-flavored sugar and chemical concoctions are powdered sports drinks like Gatorade and Gookinaid E.R.G. These contain electrolytes (potassium and sodium chloride) to replace those depleted through heavy sweating, plus carbohydrates and often much other stuff, sometimes including vitamins and minerals. While such drinks may be useful for athletes, they’re not needed for backpacking, even in desert regions. I’ve drunk them on occasion but never noticed any difference from drinking water and munching snacks, which I find more enjoyable. Such drinks have almost replaced salt tablets, which are no longer recommended because they’re too high in sodium and low in potassium. Over twenty years ago on my first desert hike across the Mojave Desert, I followed the current advice and carried salt tablets, though I never used them. Oral rehydration salts, which contain potassium as well as sodium, could be carried as an emergency item, though I’ve never done so.
Bottles, Bags, and Hydration Systems
Even where water is plentiful, you need some form of water container. In dry, hot country several may be essential, and they need to be of good quality, since a container failure could be serious. For that reason I always carry two or more containers, never just one large one. That said, it’s been many, many years since I had a container leak. Water containers used to be simple items. There were rigid ones—bottles or canteens—for carrying water and large, soft compressible water bags for camp use. Now we have hydration systems and reservoirs with drinking hoses, all made from flexible plastic, and the distinction between trail and camp containers has vanished.
Traditional rigid bottles come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and makes and in both plastic and aluminum, though the latter are becoming scarce—Sigg is one of the few remaining makes. Aluminum keeps liquids cooler in warm weather than plastic. A lacquered inside stops fruit juice or sports drinks from dissolving the aluminum and tainting the drink. Plastic bottles warm up more quickly. Food-grade ones don’t taint water. When you need to carry little water, pint bottles are adequate, but I prefer quarts for general use.
The classic aluminum bottles are the Swiss-made lacquered Sigg bottles, now called Traveler bottles. These come in half-pint, pint, and quart sizes, weighing 3, 4, and 5 ounces. Sigg bottles are durable and have screw tops with rubber seals that don’t leak—at least none of mine ever have. But they also have narrow openings, which make them hard to fill from seeps and trickles.
The big name in rigid plastic bottles is Nalgene. They come in rectangular and round shapes, in several sizes, and with narrow and wide mouths. I find the quart wide-mouth round Lexan bottle (5 ounces) the most useful, since it’s easy to fill from small trickles. Nalgene bottles are leakproof and hardwearing, unlike some cheaper bottles that leak and crack along the seams after a relatively short time. They’re made from high- and low-density polyethylene and more durable but slightly heavier Lexan polycarbonate. The Loop-Top bottles with attached caps are useful if you’re careless. (I’ve twice spent an hour or more searching for bottle caps I dropped in creeks—luckily I found them both times.)
Lighter and less expensive alternatives to the bottles found in outdoor stores are plastic soda bottles. Most of these are tough and long lasting. When I needed extra bottles for a two-week hike in the Grand Canyon, I bought two quart-size bottles of Gatorade, drank the contents the first day out, then used the bottles (3 ounces empty) for the rest of the trip. Ten years later, I’m still using them.
Many bottles have caps with valves so you can drink from them without removing the cap, often by squeezing the bottle. These are convenient if you want to drink while hiking, but I find they leak easily, so I carry them outside the pack in a mesh pocket or external bottle holder. I sometimes carry a 3-ounce polyethylene wide-mouthed GoLite bottle with a 21-ounce capacity that the company describes as a squirt bottle. (This bottle came with a tiny 50-cubic inch lumbar pack called the Quick—there are plenty of similar ones.)
Rigid bottles are heavy and bulky compared with the flexible ones that I now use for amounts larger than a quart and that can be packed flat when empty. I first tried these on the Arizona Trail; I reckoned I needed enough containers to carry three gallons, and I didn’t want to rely on just one or two, both in case of failure and because very large bottles are hard to fit in the pack. I also knew that the large water bags I had previously used in camp (see below) weren’t comfortable for carrying water. Wanting to keep the weight of the containers to a minimum, I chose Platypus bottles (made by Cascade Designs), the lightest I could find. The quart size weighs just under an ounce, the two-and-a-half-quart size 1.35 ounces. I carried four of the former and two of the latter for a total weight of 6.7 ounces and a capacity of 9 quarts. Because I wasn’t totally convinced that such thin, flimsy-seeming containers would survive long, I also carried a quart Nalgene bottle, useful for getting water out of tiny seeps and trickles, for which narrow-necked Platypus bottles are pretty useless, and a 4-quart flexible Ortlieb Water Bag (3 ounces). I’d used the last for years and knew it was tough. My concerns were unfounded, and the three Platypus bottles that did the whole trail survived intact and are still in regular use four years later, though one has started to delaminate around the neck. (I didn’t need all these containers, and I ended up putting the Ortlieb and three of the quart Platypus bottles in my running supply box.) Platypus bottles have a triple-layer laminate with food-grade polyethylene as the inner layer plus welded seams. They will stand upright when there’s water in them and are the best large flexible containers I’ve found for carrying water.
The standard Platypus bottles have a narrow neck that makes them awkward to fill in narrow streams or still water and hard to clean and dry. Big Zip Platypus reservoirs open fully at one end, which solves these problems. The zip closures add a fair bit of weight, however, and although they seem secure I don’t have the same confidence in them as in a screw-on cap. I’d prefer not to have openings at both ends, either. Other containers, such as those from Vaude and Dana Design, come with roll-down ends that clip in place. The 1-quart Platypus Big Zip weighs 3.5 ounces, the 2-quart 4.5 ounces. Nalgene, seeing the market for rigid bottles dwindling, leaped into the soft bottle fray with products they call Cantenes. These come with wide or narrow mouths. The wide-mouth 1-quart model weighs 2.1 ounces, the narrow-mouth 1.6 ounces.
On most trips I currently carry one wide-mouth rigid bottle, for ease of getting water out of shallow creeks and seeps, plus two 2.5-quart Platypus bottles. The latter are large enough that I only need to make one trip for water for camp, which minimizes impact and means I don’t have to leave camp again in stormy weather. When I started backpacking my camp water container was a collapsible water bag that held two gallons and weighed 3.5 ounces. This consisted of a double-layer flexible plastic inner bladder and a nylon cover, with a leakproof spigot and two webbing handles. All the parts were replaceable, and ripstop tape could be used for emergency repairs—and the bags did develop holes rather too frequently. Such waterbags are rar
e now, having been replaced by tougher single-skin bags that don’t need covers or two layers, though Moonbow makes one called the Camp Domo (4 ounces).
I replaced that water bag with an Ortlieb Waterbag, made from a single layer of coated nylon with welded seams. My gallon-size model weighs 3 ounces and has proved much tougher than double-layer ones. Of the other brands of water bags, the best quality and probably the most durable (but also the most expensive) are MSR’s Dromedary Bags, made from laminated Cordura nylon with brass grommets laced with webbing along each side. They hold 2, 4, 6, and 10 quarts at weights of 4.6, 5.4, 7.2, and 8.5 ounces. MSR DromLite Bags, made from lighter fabric and without grommets and webbing, come in 2-, 4-, and 6-quart sizes at weights of 3.1, 3.6, and 4.2 ounces.
Other uses of a water bag are as a portable shower and, so I’m told, as a pillow. They aren’t, however, very good for carrying water in the pack. The larger ones are especially awkward. I carried my two-gallon one full a number of times, usually strapped to the top or back of my pack, and the water sloshed around, altering the balance of the load in an unnerving way. For short distances I carried the bag in my hand by its strap. The Ortlieb bag isn’t much better; it also feels like wobbly jelly in the pack. I find Platypus bottles far more comfortable in the pack, since they’ll stand upright and behave much more like rigid bottles. Two bottles are easier to pack and to lift and pour from as well.
Hydration systems are flexible water containers (often known as bladders) with long tubes attached that dangle over your shoulder so you can drink while hiking. I’ve tried these, and I have to say I dislike sucking on a tube as I hike. I prefer to stop and take swigs from a water bottle. However, my stepdaughter uses one, and they are so popular that many packs come with sleeves for the containers. CamelBak was the first model to appear, but there are now plenty of others from Platypus, Nalgene, MSR, and more. Having quick access is a good idea, of course. I like to carry my water bottle in a mesh pocket or bottle holder on the side of the pack, where I can reach it easily.
Chris Townsend Page 40