Water Treatment

CAVEAT: I haven't done the trail… But if you know the water sources are reasonably clear and OK tasting — then a Steripen will work very well in treating all biological baddies from viruses to bacteria to protozoa cysts. You can carry a small quantity of chemicals as backup. I would recommend Micropur (or Aquamira) tablets over liquids — for ease of use.

With Steripen, you will need at least one wide mouth canteen/bottle. You CANNOT use Steripen with narrow mouths like Platypus.

As for the taste of AquaMira drops or tablets — it's SUBJECTIVE. Some people can't taste anything at all — some actually prefer the "fresh" taste of treated water — while others like me perceive a noticeable "swimming pool" taste and don't care for it. YMMV.

One more thought: I think your decision will be at least partly determined by the gear you already have. For example, do you already have a bunch of Platypus and corresponding hydration tube? If so, you might want to do it "my" way:

1. treat water with household bleach (chlorine) – 5 drops per liter – wait 20 minutes (you can continue hiking, etc.). The role of chlorine is to kill the small, easy to kill stuff like bacteria and viruses.

2. drink water through AquaMira Frontier Pro filter — which can be used inline or attached at the end (it comes with its own removable bite valve) — or even as gravity feed. The role of this cheap, compact, lightweight filter is to (1) block the bigger stuff like protozoa cysts which would take chemicals a very long time to treat, (2) clarify wateer, and (3) improve water taste. I am pretty sensitive to chlorine taste (as stated above) — but the filter removes all traces.

IIRC the water sources in Rainier tend to be pretty clean re: particulates. I would think that chemical treatment would work well. Sure, use a coarse filter if you want- the Frontier Pro is handy, as Ben said. Like him I tend to favor the tablets over the drops when I use chemicals. One annoyance with the tablets is what to do if you top up a bottle and need to treat 1/3 of a liter or whatnot. It's easy to end up with "over-medicated" pool water when you try to cut the tablets to size.

"I used a sawyer squeeze for the trip"

There's been a bunch of recent threads where, with some resistance, it's finally been more or less noted that the mini is very slow, something that is self evident when you use both.

I don't see how poison drops can be considered faster since they take like 20 minutes before you can drink, whereas with a sawyer regular squeeze, not the mini, you are done pretty fast. And of course, you can drink directly from the squeeze, which takes no time at all, at the stream / water source.

The somewhat faddish jump from the squeeze regular, that is not prone to being slow, to the mini, which is, for a perceived but actually non existent (because I found I was carrying more water to avoid frequent water stops that took so long) weight advantage here at bpl I would put into the realm of stupid light, speaking for myself anyway, I felt stupid for bringing the mini and waiting so long to filter water when I had a perfectly good squeeze regular at home. Inline, and gravity, the mini is fine, for at source filtering it's too slow unless you apply a huge amount of pressure on the bag to force the water through.

I hiked the Wonderland last September. There are a handful of rivers that are milky with glacial till but you'll find a clear water source a few minutes away so you won't have to deal with that. All of the water I drank was clear and I didn't even bother pre filtering with a bandana.

In my opinion, the water tastes so great, I think adding chemicals to it is borderline criminal. I used a Sawyer mini but would bring a squeeze for the reasons mentioned above or a steripen.

Edit to add, there's no need to carry more than 1l at any given time with the exception of Cowlitz divide where you'll want to carry at least two and maybe three liters depending on the temps. I always have the capability to carry a gallon of water. Most of the camps are a short walk from a reliable water source, Devils dream might be an exception.

The drops are an inexpensive and overall excellent approach. In my experience, few people taste aqua mira drops after treatment (I don't). I suspect that at least some of those who do have some sort of self-induced feeling that they should be smelling/tasting something, and/or that they smelled the chemicals when they're in the little cap for the five minute pre-application mixing. You do smell it then (if you choose to hold it to your nose).

"IIRC the water sources in Rainier tend to be pretty clean re: particulates. I would think that chemical treatment would work well."

In fact, the vast majority of water sources you'll run into anywhere work just fine for chemicals (and indeed I recall no problems on the Wonderland trail). I used to carry a small little mesh (like insect bug netting but a little finer) to put over the bottle opening as a pre-filter. The one time I can remember that I actually wanted this, it was horribly slow trying to get the water into the bottle due to the nature of what I was trying to filter out. So I stopped carrying it.

Filling from a cattle watering trough or the like with any sort of sediment on top? Just make sure the bottle opening is below the surface. It is helpful to have a bottle that doesn't have too-o tiny of an opening. A gatorade bottle fills fast, but a soda pop bottle isn't bad, just a bit slower (less fun on very cold mornings I guess).

Part of this is just experience; getting creative at times to figure out how to get the cleanest water you can into your bottle for treatment, without too much time or effort required. Knowing that tannens aren't a problem. Letting silty water sit overnight to (very much depending on the nature of the silt) hope that some will settle out if you don't have another source.
Just generally having a sense for when a little more effort will obtain a better and/or easier spot to fill from.