Water filter recommendation?

[Midwest Ed]

but, I drink from "The Lady" in carefully selected spots. She has never treated me bad

I understand you did not suggest that others follow this example but I want to make the following point:

It is almost certain the chances of contracting a tapeworm parasite are greater if drinking untreated (boiled or filtered) water from inland sources vs. Lake Superior water. But untreated (again, boiled or filtered) water drawn from Lake Superior surrounding Isle Royale cannot be guaranteed safe from tapeworm eggs.

The most important point to make here it that just because you do not fall ill in the hours or days following drinking means absolutely nothing. When you ingest live tapeworm eggs you are playing a stand-in role of the moose in the symbiotic cycle. The tape worm eggs will lodge in capillaries in your blood system (typically the lungs or brain) and can take years or decades to manifest in outward symptoms in the form of cysts.

p.s. one would need to ingest one of these cysts to develop an intestinal tapeworm.

Ed

[jrwiesz]

Midwest Ed.
I understand that.

Also, for your consideration, is the fact that, in todays food chain of modern industrial farming, humans ingest animal and plant products that are mass produced by those industrial farms; decades down the road, one is susceptible to, and may succumb to, many different forms of cancer, auto-immune diseases, neurological disorders, etc.
I would think that it is also possible, to contract or ingest these tapeworm eggs/cysts by eating fish or aquatic plants from these infested waters.

It's all a crap shoot, and nobody gets out of here alive.

[eddy_line]

Just returned from 6 days kayaking inland lakes on IR, outfitted with a Katadyn Hiker Pro. On the second evening, while drawing water from offshore in Lake Ritchie, I inadvertantly released the input hose, complete with float, screen, weight, etc. Lesson learned is that the "quick-connect" fittings can also be "quick-disconnect." I think that the assembly would barely float, but with wind and waves, we never saw it again. I will test this theory when the $12 replacement assembly arrives.

Our group of 3 guys had planned backups for filters and stoves, so it was not a problem. Given the clarity of water, I did continue to use the filter by immersing the input opening in the water. I just disassembled and cleaned the unit, and found very little evidence of silt, etc. in the inner screen and filter. This was acceptable at IR and probably BWCA, especially when you can get out from shore, but would probably not work well in many other situations.

The solution will obviously include being more cautious, confirming that the hose assembly will float, and maybe adding a brightly-colored eyeglass strap.

OBTW, the Katadyn Hiker Pro pumped relatively easily and quickly. I am pleased with its performance, and now also pleased with the customer service from Katadyn.

[Backpacker534]

My buddies and I just spent a week hiking at Grand Island and paddling/fishing Beaver Lake & Little Beaver Lake in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore a month ago. My buddy and I have used the Pur Hiker water filter for years and it has always done a great job for us. However, on this trip, one of the guys brought along an MSR HyperFlow Microfilter ( http://cascadedesigns.com/msr/water-tre ... er/product ) that blew me away. The only complaint we have had with the Pur filter is that it takes so many pumps to fill a normal 32oz nalgene bottle (even with a new filter and everything in top working order). When we saw our buddies getting a killer amount of water filtered in a short time we asked to use their filter to check it out. We did a comparison and found that the water flow rate for the MSR filter was about 4 times better than the Pur filter. We counted 80-81 pumps to fill a 32 oz bottle with the Pur as opposed to 20-21 pumps with the MSR. And, the Pur filter required much more effort which usually meant that after filling two or three bottles, I would pass the filter to my buddy to pump while I held the bottles. With the MSR filter I had no fatigue problems even after filling four or five bottles. I was very impressed! Our buddy said he did a lot of research before finally deciding to purchase the MSR filter. I've checked around and it is $99 on the MSR website and on Amazon.

The MSR filters down to 0.2 microns and will supposedly filter about 1000 liters before needing a filter/cartridge replacement and it is made right here in the USA. The only thing that the Pur filter has which I didn't notice on the MSR is a carbon pre-filter. It does have a fine-screened pre-filter but I don't know if there is any carbon in it. We have filtered water from some pretty stagnant and murky-looking sources over the years and the water has had virtually no after-taste whatsoever and I'm sure that is due much to the carbon pre-filter.

[mikehauptman]

I just got back from hiking down the Greenstone from Rock Harbor to Windigo. The weather was great and the bugs were not bad. We took 2 packs of those Citronella coils you get at outdoor stores and burned 4 of them in the middle of the campsite each afternoon and evening and were practically bug free.

We had 2 filters with us this time, the First Need and the Katadyn Pro Hiker. We were using the Pro Hiker and kept the First Need in reserve. When we got to Hatchet lake I noticed that after filtering with the Pro Hiker the water still had a green tint and had a slight after taste. I got out the First Need as a comparison and after filtering the water from the First Need, the water was very clear and tasted better than what was coming out of the Pro Hiker.

Looking at the specs for each filter I noticed that the First Need goes down to 0.1 microns and the Pro Hiker goes only down to 0.3. I guess that's the difference.

I did get to fly my kite on Mt Siskiwit.

Mike

[eddy_line]

Revisiting the issue of the lost input hose for the Katadyn Hiker Pro:

Since it is the "input" hose that is at risk, there is really no need to utilize the quick disconnect, so I'll just connect this hose directly to the pump.

The "output" hose needs to be kept cleaner, stored in its separate plastic bag, so the quick disconnect does have some value. There is much less risk of losing this hose since it is used inside the boat, and it does not have the attached prefilter and weight.

FYI, kudos to the Katadyn service department; replacement part arrived within 48 hours.

[Ernest T Bass]

This is an excerpt from a response I gave to another person regarding the Sawyer water filtering system and my experience with it. I thought I would add it to other threads regarding water/filtration. Hope this is helpful.

I have a Sawyer Point One Squeeze System that I purchased on Amazon last spring. It consists of the cartridge filter and three bags (32, 16, and 12 ounces). My wife and I made our first visit to IR last September. We each had an empty 32 oz Gatorade bottle that we used to carry and drink filtered water.
We did the Feldtmann Lake loop from Windigo. I thought the Sawyer system worked extremely well, and I plan to stick with this in the future. The system itself weighs about 3 ounces, I can't see how you can get much lighter than this. You just want to be careful in filling your bottle to not drip unfiltered water into the filtered water. The only problem I encountered was a little water tended to leak out of the cartridge when in my pack (there is a plastic cap that you can replace on the spout tip, but the end that screws on the bags still remains open and can leak). I plan to solve this by carrying the filter in a mini ziplock bag. We carried unfiltered water in the Sawyer bags with the caps that come with the bags, and filtered what we needed as we went. We also had some Mio (concentrated flavoring liquid) with us, which was really nice.
I did have a Sea to Summit camp sink, which I used to carry all the filtering equipment and water bags inside my pack. I also used it to get water initially, before transferring it into the bags (to fill the bags, I used a small plastic glass that my wife brought from the hotel we stayed at before coming over on the Voyageur II). This cracked and subsequently needed a duct tape fix.
For our next trip, I am leaving the S-t-S sink at home, replacing it with 2 or 3 two gallon ziplock bags, which will save a lot of weight. I plan to snip the corner off a smaller ziplock bag to use as a funnel in transferring water from the big ziplocks to the Sawyer bags. I do know that a few people have had problems with the Sawyer bags leaking. I found that they will flow water through the filter by gravity alone. I did squeeze them, but did so rather gently. It does not take much pressure to filter a reasonable amount of water pretty quickly. Personally, I think the system rocks and I plan to stick with this for some time to come.

Happy trails!

ETB