Water Filters/Systems on the trail

[Kat]

I'll give a +1 to the 4 liter Platypus gravity filter Syncrofly posted the link to.  Been using this for a few years, it works great for 2 people and I've taken it on solo trips too just because it is so low effort. Fill the bag, hang it on a branch or rock start another chore come back in a few minutes it's done. Pretty darn quickly too particularly when the filter is new. You can easily interrupt it in the middle of filtering and get some water sooner or just filter right into your bottle or mouth.  They offer a 2 liter version now too I think.


The one drawback I've found is you must backwash regularly to keep the filter working for a longer period of time. I've toyed with the idea of adding a prefilter as mentioned by Syncrofly but it adds a bit of weight so I haven't.  Backwash just means leaving a bit of water in the "clean" bag and hanging the filter upside down so it drains back thru.