Sweetwater Microfilter VS Katadyn Hiker?

My MSR Sweetwater has served me well, but I switched to the Sawyer Squeeze and love it. It is lighter, simpler, and reportedly has much longer filter life. The omly drawback is that the bottles/bladders are hard to fill from a shallow source. Easy enough to work around that though, by carrying one of their bladders with the top cut off to scoop up water and fill another bladder.

Neither is my answer.

The MSR SweetWater Microfilter is rated at 0.2 microns (nominal).

The Katadyn Hiker Pro is rated at 0.3 microns (nominal).

As I have documented in my article on the Sawyer Squeeze, “the CDC confirms that in order to properly filter Cryptosporidium, Giardia (the two biggest issues we face as hikers) you must have a filter that can do at least 1.0 Micron Absolute”.

I highly recommend everybody do their research on the difference between “absolute” and “nominal” when it comes to micron level filtering.

–Abela

John Abela for the win!

Between the Sawyer filter, aquamira, and UV systems I am amazed that anyone bothers with pumps anymore, especially LW/UL folks.

I am a little skeptical of the pore size rating. 0.2 and 0.3 only have one sig fig. Personally, I chose the Hiker because I have 3 Camelbaks.

"The omly drawback is that the bottles/bladders are hard to fill from a shallow source. Easy enough to work around that though, by carrying one of their bladders with the top cut off to scoop up water and fill another bladder."

More about this issue would be helpful. Almost every trip, I have to resort to seeps or shallow pools on at least one occasion. No problem with a pump filter, but scooping with two bladders would be a real pain, and often impossible.

I have been using a Sweetwater Walkabout for over ten years. Brushing it out after use every one or two days keeps the pumping easy, not as easy as a Hiker, but not difficult. It takes 60-70 strokes to fill a liter bottle, certainly more than the Hiker. I had Giardia twice, but not since using the Walkabout. It is several ounces lighter than the Hiker. I have replaced the cartridges every year, but didn't really have to – they were not worn down to the screening that shows when to replace. The brush is a flabby thing, doesn't involve any scraping, and is quick and easy to use. For me, it is much easier to use than fooling around with backflushing. There is a prefilter on the tube that goes into the water source, and I've never had a problem with silt, as I did with a Pur product used before with water holes high on the CDT. When the Walkabout was discontinued by MSR after purchasing Sweetwater, I bought a bunch a cartridges cheap, but have used only a few of them. The filter design also keeps the inlet and outlet tubes separated when packing it away.

It sounds from Roger's article that the pressure needed to operated the larger Sweetwater has become enormous. Nothing like that with the original Walkabout and the lever operated Sweetwaters I saw being used by other hikers in the past. And some posters are even having serious issues with the Hiker, now also. Sad.

The UV lights and chemicals don't appeal to me with all the palpable cooties still in the water. But I do carry some iodine tabs for emergencies.

New technology would be nice if it had a pump and tube to go into seeps and shallow pools, and a very simple backflushing system if that were necessary. I can wait.
Maybe Sawyer will come out with something.

I use half of a plastic peanut bottle to scoop (bit tougher than water bottles). i think it is a bit easier than a soft sided scoop. my Squeeze also nests inside of it

One of the items I carry is the lower half of a 2-quart, plastic milk bottle. It's squarish, quite light, about the diameter of a Nalgene and usually sits wrapped around either my larger med kit or my stove/pots kit. The reason for these extra grams in the pack is that it's super convenient for:

–scooping water
–collecting water from streams
–decanting water
–kitchen pitcher

When my Hiker Pro jammed up on this last trip and I needed to fill Platy bottles w/o wanting to dunk them, this made the job easy. Now, I have some Platys stained by iodine, but them's the breaks.

Now, I have some Platys stained by iodine

I know the feeling. All of my Evernew water bags (except my dirty water one) have become orange from Emergen-C (Joint Health), which I usually drink two or three of per hiking day.