Filter for silty water/desert hikes

You can use a bandana, paper or metal mesh coffee filter, a camping brand prefilter, or a fuel filter as your prefilter.

Use the chlorine drops after filtration.

I personally use a liter bottle cut in half. The bottom is my scooper. It works well for seeps. The top part is my funnel. I can stuff my bandana in it as a prefilter. I use a water bag filter, so the prefiltered water gets dumped in the top water bag of the filter system. It could be better, but cutting a bottle in half is good enough for me right now.

A bandanna won't work to strain out silt that can clog a filter. Silt is material with a particle diameter between 2 and 50 micrometers. A micrometer is 1/1000 of a millimeter. It takes a pretty fine filtering medium to get fine silt out of water and a bandanna is not that fine.

My preference, when confronted with silty water, is to either let it settle out, this can take a while, or to use a double dose of Aqua Mira or Micropur on the cloudy water or to just boil it. Sure, the silt can make your mashed potatoes look funny but a little grit is good for your gizzard.