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A water filter lets you fill up from a creek, a lake or a rainwater tank and drink on the spot, instead of hauling every litre from the car. Most of what's here is bottles you fill and drink from as normal, with a few gravity bags for camp. Pack one with the rest of our hiking gear on any walk where the next tap is a long way off.
A water filter bottle is an ordinary water bottle with a cartridge inside, so the water gets treated as you drink rather than in a separate step. On the survival bottle the filter sits inside the straw and works on the way up. The tactical bottle goes the other way: you press the top section down and the water passes through the filter, and the filter unit lifts out so the outer container can scoop from shallow water. Sizes run from 500 ml to a litre.
Inside, most cartridges pair a hollow fibre ultrafiltration membrane, which holds back grit and fine sediment, with activated carbon for cleaner tasting water. Some stack two stages, others three or four. On the rugged bottle and the screw cap bottle the cartridge lifts out and gets replaced on its own, so a spent filter doesn't mean a new bottle. The outdoor bottle's clear body shows the water level and the state of the cartridge. With a source you really don't trust, boil it as well.
Gravity filters need no pump or batteries. You hang the bag from a tree or pole and let the water run through. The camping model has a 10 L bag, enough for a group of three to five, and the backpacking one has a 3 L reservoir and a syringe for pushing clean water back through the membrane when the flow slows. The hiking gravity filter holds three litres at 132 g and opens wide along a slide-lock top bar to scoop from a stream.
The folding bottle rolls flat into a side pocket when it's empty, handy on long trips with few water points. On frosty alpine nights, keep any filter with a membrane inside your sleeping bag, because ice can damage the fibres. Filling up often means crouching on wet rock at the edge of a creek, and our walking sticks make that easier on the knees.
