Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting water filtering ?

wife and i want to get some kind of water filter for camping/traveling.

soooo many choices.

we'd like one that will remove the normal stuff such as mud, bacteria, worms, etc.
but also one that removes heavy metals, as we live around old mines up in the mountains, and are not sure if tailing piles along the streams and rivers would leak any.

we see some that make the water taste and smell like water and some that don't.
so of course one that does.

doesn't have to be too small, but nothing really big either.

suggestions ?

I have a Katadyn Guide and I really like it. A couple years ago while elk hunting the only water I could find was a muddy spring that kind of flowed through a meadow. I stuck the filter in and in a couple minutes had a camelbak full of clean, good tasting water. I think they work very well.

If you can prefilter the water through a cloth or something to take out the bigger chunks, your filter will last a whole lot longer.

splatter:

The kind of water filter that you get depends on how you intend to use it.

If I were buying my first water filter and I planned on using it to serve several people on a backpack trip, I would buy a Katadyn "Base Camp".

If I intended to use the filter primarily for my personal use while day hiking, I would buy a Katadyn "My Bottle Microfilter".

If I intended to use it primarily for personal use while ultralight backpacking I would buy a Katadyn "Mini".

I didn't filter fresh mountain creek water for a couple of decades and never had any problems. I didn't worry about Giardia until a friend contracted the disease and it lasted for four months. I decided that was something that I didn't want. About twenty years ago, I bought an MSR water filter. It was big and heavy and it only pumped on the down stroke so it was slow.

In 2004 I saw a friend operate his Katadyn "Hiker Pro". It's lighter and smaller than the MSR and it pumps in both directions so it's faster. I had to have one and that's the filter that I use now. BTW the Katadyn "Vario" is a Hiker Pro with a fancy design and higher price to go with it. IMO it's not worth paying extra for the Vario.

http://www.katadyn.com/usen/

Last summer, a friend brought his Katadyn "Base Camp" on a backpack trip. It uses gravity so there's no pumping and it drains through the filter faster than I could pump. It weighs about the same as the Hiker Pro and it's more compact since you roll up the bag. I haven't bought one yet, but sooner or later I will.

In a month, I will be going on a bear hunt in southeast Alaska and we will be staying in a bunk house, so we will have clean water every day. But I was thinking that I might buy a Katadyn "My Bottle Microfilter" to carry in case I wanted to drink from a stream.

KC

That's exactly what I plan on buying this spring. We pack with llamas and that would be excellent for camp water. Just fill it, hang it in a tree with an empty jug under it, and by the time camp is set up, we have fresh water. A couple empty gallon jugs are easy to carry on a saddle and weigh nothing.

I had Katadyn "bottle" model (bottle you just squeeze and filtered water comes out via tube) but I was not very happy with it. I think it's only for very light use. Now I have upgraded to Katadyn Hiker Pro and very happy so far. I use coffee filter in water input for extra filtering. Katadyn Hiker should be enough for 1-2 persons no more.

matthunter:

Using a coffee filter as a pre-filter sounds like a good idea. A Katadyn Hiker Pro is supposed to filter 200 gallons of clean water. I just had to replace the filter element on mine and I guarantee that there's no way I filtered 200 gallons.

How are you going to setup the coffee filter as a pre-filter? Maybe wrap it around the inlet end of the tube and secure with a rubber band? It might not be so easy with a Katadyn Base Camp water filter.

KC

For anybody considering the steripen, I just read an interesting review in Overland Journal that involved independent laboratory testing of filters / purifiers. They started with known contaminated water, ran it through the device, and then tested to see if the manufacturer's purification claims were true. After conversations with the makers of steripen to figure out what was going on and multiple different test methodologies, the reviewer still couldn't get it to completely purify water.

Most filters won't remove metals from water, because metals are in solution and fiber or ceramic filter elements remove particles, not solutes.

For metals you'll need a filter that has activated carbon in addition to the normal filter element.

Just re-checked the article. The steripen failed to remove or kill all bacteria in the test samples. The company claimed that even though they weren't gone, they were dead and therefore couldn't reproduce and cause sickness. So the tester then took steripen treated water and cultured it to see if the bacteria were all dead. They weren't.

Here's a link about the article:
http://www.overlandjournal.com/medi...ompletes_water_filter_and_purifier_test/

It's a really good, well researched read worth digging up a hard copy if someone wants more information on the subject.

How are you going to setup the coffee filter as a pre-filter? Maybe wrap it around the inlet end of the tube and secure with a rubber band?
KC
[/quote] Exactly, not very durable but cheap. I have found Base Camp filter quite "complicated" for float trips where you must set it up to tree for every camp again and again. Also it happened that in last float trip we didn't get much water through it due to silty water.

For the Base Camp, I'd thought about making a bag out of a tight weave cloth, then pour the water through that. It won't filter as much as a coffee filter, of course, but it should take out a lot of the bigger stuff.

I use the Katadyn (PUR back when I bought mine IIRC). Has filtered some pretty nasty water before without a problem.

I've heard that before on other forums I frequent. The conclusion was that recommendations from users may be all well and good, but it's very important that a buyer to choose a filter based on what it's needed to do. A filter should be chosen based on its specifications, otherwise a person is rolling the dice.

My own preference? MSR Miniworks EX. It's fast, pretty small, and is easy to clean & maintain. I've used it on silty, foggy water that clogged it up after two quarts, then field-cleaned it so I can filter some more. It's a bigger filter than I really like, but I'm happy with it.

I've also used a Katadyn pocket-sized filter. It was gloriously small & light, but it was slooooooow.

Neither of these filters are rated for heavy metals or chemical contaminants. Offhand, I don't know of any that are.

I don't think yoou'll fingd much on heavy metals.

MSR Mini-works EX for me.

I've been using the Khd. base camp for years now. Except for the scenario that Matthunter describes, I can't imagine wanting anything else. It is light, durable (has no moving parts to break), doesn't require any work (just hang it up and get on with whatever), works as fast as any pump I've seen, is cheaper than a lot of pump types. I did manage to clog the filter pretty good filtering stream water that was full of rain run-off silt. But though it got slow, it never stopped. Replacement filters are light and change in 5 seconds. Next trip it was necessary, we poured the water through a bandanna, let it sit to settle the silt, then poured it through the bandanna into the filter--took care of the issue. In short, I can't praise this piece of equipment enough for multi-week trips of 1-4 people.

That said, I dunno if it helps flavor (as much as say some powdered lemonaid or something might) or if it'll do anything for non-organic contaminants....

Ella

Another vote for the pur hiker. Can you be specific on what metals you want to remove? As a solvent water works pretty well on a lot of metals until you get to a rather boring list of execptions like certain metals with other polyatomic ions. If the metal content is high enough that solute is disolved and additional particles remain I would not be drinking that water regardless of what filter I could put it through in the field.

I used to have a Pur Hiker, they're made by Katadyn now.

As far as metals, if he's worried about mine tailings he's gonna have to deal with lead, cadmium, arsenic, and a few others.

Here's some of the better reading one can do about water in the backcountry...

http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/hiking_water.html