Water quality

[ffinmich]

Hello
Heading off to IR in about a week. 2nd trip there, first time I will be using water filter. I am going to use Miniworks EX and to be a little safer will also treat with Katadyn water purifier tablets. So has anyone heard of any problems with filtering water from lake Ritchie, Chickenbone, Hatchet, Desor.
Thanks

[mikehauptman]

Go to the Water Fliter reccomendations topic in Gears and supplies for info on water and filters.

http://isleroyaleforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=446

Hatchet Lake is notorious for clogging filters so use a prefilter.

Mike

[Vandy]

I wrapped coffee filters around my inlet hose in June and didn't have any issues with clogging.

[blackdog51]

I have used a PUR Hiker for years and have had no problems. It has a prefilter on the intake hose. I've even filtered water from some yucky looking low spots.

My opinion is the simpler the better when it comes to water filters. If it has too many moving parts they are more likely to fail in the field. I saw this happen to a young woman on IR and it ruined her plans...

[pkerl]

I use the Katadyn Vario and have had no problems; just did 52 miles on Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota and drank everything from marsh puddles, streams, and rivers. I have never used tablets or other supplements other than coffee or propel packs for flavor/energy. Just a suggestion from experience; not a sales pitch.

[jerry]

pkeri, Which part of the Superior Hiking Trail that you covered would you suggest one to do?

[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