Thinkin' about spring

[MikeK]

I know the diehard skiers are pushing for another couple months of skiing, at least up high, but I'm already dreaming about getting on the water. I have a trip planned for mid-May and I hope the ice will be well out by then and the black flies will still be dormant.

I have one thing that's been driving me nuts with backpacking since I can remember, and that's water purification. I've tried different stuff over the years, but I prefer a filter and tabs as backup. Boiling requires me to carry more fuel or make a fire, both of which are not ideal in my mind. I also don't prefer to take chances with water, so treatment is a must.

My current rig is a MSR miniworks pump filter. Seems to do the trick. What I like is it not only purifies, but cleans the water. It gets rid of most bad taste, smells and unappealing color via the carbon element. It's also dirt simple, easy to service in the field, and relatively small and light (about 1lb).

What I don't like is it takes a long time to pump water and it clogs quickly. The water sources I use tend to be turbid, usually with a high content of suspended sand particles. Even stagnant water tends to be full of this. Literally I can get two liters of water before I need to scrub the filter element. It also takes a long time to pump two liters before the cleaning.

Since on anything but an overnight I'm using dehydrated food (I'm surrounded by water, why carry any excess?), I go through 8-10 liters a day between two people. So I'm looking for something a little better...

My ideal system would be a gravity feed from a dromedary bag into Nalgene bottle. I hate bags because some taste bad, but for the unfiltered water they are fine.

I'd love to find something that had a good pre-filter that would capture sand and could just rinse out, instead of the scrubbing like the MSR. The MSR has a foam filter in the pickup, but it isn't fine enough for sand. Also I'd like to retain something that has a carbon element to help taste. Sometimes I'm drinking swamp water, and it can be pretty foul tasting and smelling...

Any thoughts?

[lowangle al]

My ski season didn't really get started until March so I'm not ready for it to end. There is still another month or so of easily accessable skiing left but I'm leaving town for two weeks and when I get back I will have to start work.

If the lakes are thawed out when I get back I may have some time to paddle. I would love to do a spring trip where I can paddle a lake to get to skiable snow on a slide path that goes to the water. I have a place in mind but never checked it out.

[MikeK]

I'm sad to say there is still a ton of snow and I probably could be skiing... but my ski partner has kinda called it quits for the year. She has a thesis to finish.

I was happy to get out last weekend. Wasn't great and it was old groomed XC, but it was still sliding.

Problem here is all the damn rain. It's hard to predict if you are going to be skiing on ice, slush or rocks. I keep seeing posts of how great the skiing is in the High Peaks though. Feel like I'm missing out!

[connyro]

Not sure if it's what you are looking for but I use the Katadyn Base Camp Pro 10L

It works as advertised and the water does not taste bad, although I am not filtering nasty water...

[MikeK]

Something like that... I might need to engineer a system together of my own. I see I can buy inline carbon filters. I need to see if I can find the proper pre-filter to catch most of the sand and tannin we have. That way I can just flush that with unfiltered water and not have to deal with cleaning the low micron portion.

[CIMA]

I wonder if there would be some products originally developed for US military.
I mean, survival goods.

[bgregoire]

I use the Platypus GravityWorks on my canoe group expeditions. LOVE IT.

Both it and the MSR auto-flow have a little zone below the tube exit of the "dirty" reservoir to collect sand so it doesn't actually make it to the filter. If some does, it's not really a problem as you can easily backwash these and BTW, you got to do it often.

From what you say, dromedary and bottle wise, I would go with the Autoflow as I believe you can get adaptors for them. By the way, the output is several litres and its fairly fast, so I don't think filtering into a 1L bottle is very pratical with these "larger scale" water filters. Definitely beats pumping anyways.

[MikeK]

Thanks Ben. I was looking at both the MSR and the Platypus. I think either will do the trick with the added carbon filter for funky water.