The past few weeks I have been exper­i­ment­ing with some Sawyer water fil­tra­tion prod­ucts, includ­ing the Sawyer Squeeze Fil­ter. I was excit­ed to use these prod­ucts. I have increas­ing­ly been see­ing the Sawyer Squeeze Fil­ter out on the trail. It seems like it has been gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty among thru-hik­ers, and right­ful­ly so. It is sim­ple, light­weight, and very easy to use.

Sawyer has done a great job mak­ing the Squeeze Fil­ter adapt­able to most people’s sys­tems and for a vari­ety of loca­tions. The fil­ter comes with sev­er­al sizes of light­weight, col­lapsi­ble water stor­age con­tain­ers (sim­i­lar to Platy­pus bot­tles). As a result you can use the sys­tem on trips on the Appalachi­an Trail, where you hard­ly need to car­ry any water, and also on trips in very dry areas. Just change out the water blad­der that you car­ry by the vol­ume that you will need. Addi­tion­al­ly, they include a con­trap­tion that allows some­one to fill their hydra­tion pack with­out remov­ing it from their pack. This is a bril­liant idea and elim­i­nates one of the main rea­sons that I don’t use a hydra­tion system.

After ask­ing an employ­ee at Sawyer, I also found out that it is pos­si­ble to use the Sawyer Squeeze and still use Crys­tal Light and oth­er drink mix­es. They rec­om­mend adding the drink mix­es to the dirty water and then let­ting the mix dis­solve before the water is fil­tered. Just make sure to back flush the fil­ter with clean water before stor­age as the sug­ar can hard­en in the filter.

In addi­tion the Sawyer grav­i­ty fil­ter can be a great, light­weight option for larg­er groups since you can just hang it on a tree and let every­one fill up at will (the grav­i­ty fil­ter is def­i­nite­ly my go to option for groups with more than four people).

I must men­tion a few small gripes about the Sawyer Squeeze. The first being that it is hard to chug the water through the fil­ter sys­tem because it is released a bit slow­er than I would ordi­nar­i­ly drink. This is not a big deal and I got used to drink­ing slow­er. How­ev­er, when I am out of water and come up on a water source, I usu­al­ly add Crys­tal Light and down the liter with­in 30 sec­onds. My sec­ond small gripe is that the mouth on the water blad­ders are small and can make it a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to fill up from some water sources and seeps. You can use an extra plas­tic water bot­tle or your pot to help fill up the blad­der if need be, but it is an extra step. Also keep in mind since this is still a fil­ter sys­tem it is not good if the fil­ter has water inside and freezes.

Over­all the Sawyer Fil­ter is a con­ve­nient and easy to use fil­ter sys­tem for 3 sea­son hik­ing trips. I would not rec­om­mend it for win­ter use, but it is a quick and effi­cient sys­tem for all oth­er trips. There are many sim­i­lar­i­ties to the SteriPEN in its capabilities.

To sum it up here are the rea­sons that I like both of these treat­ment systems:

1)    There is no need to sit at the creek when the mos­qui­tos are bit­ing and pump water. You can just grab water and keep mov­ing, sav­ing time and blood loss.

2)    You also have the abil­i­ty to drink imme­di­ate­ly when you arrive at the water source, pre­vent­ing the need to car­ry addi­tion­al water. Sav­ing weight and water is one of the heav­i­est things that you will car­ry at about 2 pounds per liter.