Spent $120 on a proper water filter for the JMT and it saved my trip

I was going to use those cheap iodine tablets for my John Muir Trail hike last month. A buddy talked me into a Sawyer Squeeze instead. That was $120 with the bags and accessories. First day I dropped my bottle in a creek and the filter still worked fine. The tablets would have left me drinking muddy water for a week. Anyone else gone from cheap to proper filtration and noticed a big difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesseb2015d ago

Oh man, I was totally in the "iodine tablets are good enough" camp for years. Cheap, light, what's the problem right? Then I did a trip in the Sierras where the water was so silty my tablets turned the whole bottle brown and it tasted like a swimming pool. I picked up a Katadyn BeFree on clearance after that and the difference was wild. I could drink straight from murky puddles and it came out crystal clear with no nasty aftertaste. Now I look back at all those trips where I was choking down nasty chemical water and wonder why I waited so long.

charlie_fisher4514d ago

Ditched the iodine tablets after one trip where my water tasted like a chemical plant. Never looked back.