Tips for filling up a Sawyer Mini Bag

Bring a scoop. I use a Mountain House Pro Pack sized bag. You can also use a dollar store water bladder. With either one, it stows easy enough by rolling it up with your dirty water bag.

I've used a chopped down PET bottle before but don't personally care for the unnecessary bulk.

Cut the bottom of the bag and use it as a scoop. You have to let gravity do the work. You can punch some holes in it and let it hang.

I use the bottom half of a cheap bottled water bottle. This holds around 8 oz when full, but it's small enough to fit into small pools at seeps. I flex the top into a spout while pouring. I think it's around 0.5 oz, maybe less.

I also use a cutoff water bottle. The filter stores inside it in a little stuff sack when not in use. One of those little screened fuel filters makes pouring into my Evernew bag hassle free, and prefilters some of the junk out of the water. It goes into the mouth of the cutoff water bottle over the filter.

See….I knew I would find some great solutions here! Thank you! I think that I might use a cut off bottle, could come in handy for something else, you never know…..and using it to store it is also a great idea! Off to rummage through the neighbors recycling bin.

Your cookpot, a water bottle, a ziplock. No need to bring anything extra really.

I love the empty mountain house bag scoop idea. Perfect sized, and holds it shape….however it smells like food. I washed it with soap first, then soaked it in bleach, and ran it through the dishwasher…still has a faint food smell. I'm sure chompy bears would love it. What am I doing wrong?

A 9" x 9" square of heavy-duty aluminum foil is a versatile thing. You can fashion a scoop in any needed shape (supported by your hand), or even more usefully in the high country, I've used it to form a funnel to fill a water bottle from the smallest drip off a melting snow patch. It can double as a pot lid and/or a windscreen around a stove or small campfire. I keep it folded with with a similar piece of wax paper which makes an excellent emergency fire-starting aid.

I use a quart or gallon freezer bag and store the filter & min bag inside of it. The cap on the mini protects it from cross contamination.

Thank you for more great ideas. I would be weary using my cook pot (which is really my drinking cup as well) b/c I would be worried of contamination.

I do like the idea of the zip lock….I always have an extra one in my pack. I don't know why these things never occurred to me before…..it takes a village to raise a backpacker……

Flimsy bag difficult to manage in stream, for example

Cut-off water bottle is better as others said

I put marks at 1/2 cup, 1 cup, 1 1/2 cup, and 2 cups

Good Steripen treatment container too

Get an Evernew bag, take your Sawyer bag and cut the top off (straight across) and use that as a scoop.

I used a freezer Ziploc (small or medium size) on 5 trips this summer, fetching water from streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Rather than pour out of the top of the Ziploc, cut a small corner off one of the bottom corners. Fill it and water pours out in a nice narrow stream and it's easy to fill the water bladder. Works great. A light, small-sized option. If you lose it, you've got another somewhere in your pack.

A significant benefit of pouring out of a bottom corner is that you prevent stuff floating in the water (bugs!) from getting into your filter bag and filter. Just refill the Ziploc before it completely empties.

ziploc: nice idea! cause I always feel like I have way too many used ziplocs by the end of the trip. a way to put my trash to use.

I use the bottom of a roasted peanut jar.. a bit less flimsy than a water bottle and i use it as a bit of a shell for my filter when i put it back in the pack. 2 years ago I did the Long Trail during one of the driest summers they ever had, so we were getting creative in some small pools. I find using a scoop better 90% of the time unless it is a very fast flowing stream.

Erica if you ever want to do a gear comparison i'd be game.

I use the bottom two folds of a cut off 2 liter platy bag. It is flimsy but doubles as a kitchen sink (even though I haven't actually used it like that). It packs down small, usually I roll the empty dirty bladder with the cut off bag around the mini and rubber band to secure. Neat tidy package and easily packable. I also found a use for it when water is just barely a trickle. You can hold down one end flat to catch the water and fold the other end creating a chute if that makes sense. You can direct the water right into your dirty bladder. Much faster than trying to scoop a sip of water at a time.

I use my Nalgene Wide-Mouth Cantene. It is 2 oz and can hold up to 48 oz of water. This is what I was using with my steri-pen. My 'process' is to collect water in the Nalgene and pour it into the sawyer bag and filter as I go along.

Try an empty yogurt cup.

This past weekend while camping at a very shallow pond in the Whites I was able to fill my 2L Evernew bladder easily on its own. I dragged the bladder across the waters surface and was able to get it 95% full in about 45 seconds. This would work fine in all but the smallest pools. Typically the springs and rivers I've encountered have a nice falling spout of water and I can just simply hold the bladder below, so this was good practice.

-jake

Edit: I'll use my cook pot if the pool of water is smaller than two lengths of the bladder.

I use a Platypus 1.8L wide mouth as my collector bag. You can fill it literally in a couple of seconds in both deep and shallow water. My sawyer has short pieces of hose with connection fittings attached at each end. I roll the Platy to push the water into the sawyer bag or a Gatorade bottle. I Can also just drink from the platy through a hose and bite valve with the sawyer connected inline. Using the platy with the wide mouth also allows me to treat the water with the steripen easily if necessary. Mostly its the quick filling that I like about this set up and the fact that the bag being pressurized is much stronger than the sawyer bags; and its also versatile.

Derrick