Water Purification – Really?

Unless folks really object to the taste of chlorine dioxide at Philmont, the pills work fine and do not fail.

That being said, I love my Gravity Works but it does weigh more than chlorine dioxide pills, and it can fail. I had to replace a filter after taking water three times from a very small, warm pond at 9500 feet in the Sierra Nevada earlier this summer. I suspect that what Ryan Jordan would call biofilms clogged the little hollow tubes. No amount of back flushing would clear the filter. So I replaced the filter.

As to the zip lock on the dirty bag, seems to work fine on my 2012 model.

I only used one Gatorade pack a day at Philmont (if that), and drank treated water the rest of the trek and never noticed a taste or aftertaste from the chlorine dioxide tabs. But I rarely had to drink immediately after waiting for the treatment to finish.