Took me 4 days to figure out why my water filter kept clogging on the Appalachian Trail

Everyone says to backflush your filter after every trip but nobody mentions you need to pre-filter glacial silt out of streams before it even hits the cartridge. Spent four days near the White Mountains in New Hampshire dealing with a slow squeeze before a ranger finally told me. Has anyone else run into this issue with mountain streams?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew6467d ago

...and honestly that's the kind of thing the gear companies don't want to admit because it would hurt sales of their fancy filters. I was out in the Sierra last summer and learned this the hard way - my Sawyer started clogging after like two liters from this one silty creek. What I ended up doing was carrying an old clean bandana and wrapping it around the intake with a rubber band. Worked way better than I expected (caught a ton of grit) and I just rinsed it out whenever I filled up. The ranger who told you was probably saving you a lot of headaches down the road.

dakotal167d ago

I read a study a few years back that said something like 30-40% of backpackers ditch their filters early because of clogging issues like this. Seems like the industry focuses on flow rate specs in clean water and ignores the real world. That bandana trick sounds way more practical than carrying spare filters or trying to backflush with dirty hands. I bet the ranger sees this exact problem every season and just wants people to stop wasting their trips.