"Sawyer squeeze has been incredibly slow and a huge hassle for me on the trips I've taken it on now. I badly wanted to like it, but I just can't get it to filter a usable amount of water in anything close to a reasonable amount of time."
Plus one on what Billy Ray says re poisoning water. Iodine is so vile you may ask yourself into the first day what on earth you were thinking.
I can tell you a few things about the saywers, I did a fair amount of testing on this a while back after noting the unacceptably slow flow of the sawyer squeeze mini. The mini is much slower than the stnadard size. I decided the weight difference is not worth how much more time it took me to filter water, in fact, I started finding that I was doing more water per stop to avoid the longer stops, which led me to carrying more water, which defeated the weight advantage totally. So in the future, I'm going to carry the full size squeeze with the full sized syringe on all trips where I am going to use water from nature primarily, and the mini just as a backup where most water comes from piped in sources, like in point reyes.
I think a large majority of slowdowns of squeezes comes from not bringing the syringe, the solution there is to stop thinking of the syringe as extra weight, and start thinking of it as part of the filter.
Other things to check are flow rate before the trip starts, prime it, use it a few times, with good water. Also remember, hard tap water will clog it if stored over time, so use the vinegar and hot water method now and then before storing it, and shake it pretty dry.
Note that the mini is great for inline filtering, since you can just suck the water through it, that always works fine, and if you are willing to apply compression levels on the squeeze bags high enough you can increase flow rates, but I'm not personally willing to do that, I believe that's a chief cause of bag failures, even though most people won't post that fact since they are sort of embarrassed about that.
To me, you should be getting a pretty good flow rate from the standard sized squeeze, which is a bit over 3 ounces shaken out after filtering, using a moderate pressure on the bag, If you are using the mini, it simply has smaller openings (I tried ripping out the intake tube to create a larger opening but it didn't make much difference in flow rate), and it has fewer tubules.
Don't give up on the squeeze, not having to drink poisoned water is totally worth it, and being able to stop at streams and drink your fill inline mode is something so awesome that I honestly have no idea why anyone would voluntarily skip that.
In terms of freezing the squeeze, just remember, a sock around the squeeze then in your sleeping bag, it can't freeze, unless you did, but you'd be basically dead at that point so that would not be an issue.
If I can make one suggestion, avoid the thing of trying ultralight stuff for the most part, you can get a very good light weight kit around 12-15 pounds, including everything but water/food.
Some light gear is a clear compromise, here's the stuff I found technically superior in every way to my old heavy gear:
1. sawyer squeeze – I would use this in any circumstance and wish I'd always had it.
2. alcohol stove/screen/stand / ti cook pot
3. good sleeping bag, like western mountaineering, feathered friends
4. trekking poles. Love them, wish I'd switched decades ago. Realized I would never switch to not using them, so also switched to a trekking pole supported tent after a few trips.
5. All lawson / zpacks cordage, it's all great, super light, and stronger than you would believe. Note that cordage < 1.5 mm does not hold all knots, particularly not sliding knots.
6. All stuff sacks, can be as light as you want, and always use the super thin cordarge plus tiny cord locks is all you need to hold most bags closed in your backpack. That was the first thing I swapped out, first just the cord/cord locks, then I just dumped all my old heavy stuff sacks, they do not benefit you at all, and it's an easy way to drop ounces right away. Note that good sleeping bags and tents come with ul stuff sacks already.
Stuff that is very close but not quite as good as the old heavy gear:
1. thermarest prolite pad – a bit thinner than heavier thermarest, but good enough if you are fairly light. Hated the neoair, that one you will either love or hate, to me it was the worst pad I had ever used in my life, and the first pad ever to make me actually miss my old 3/8" pad. So be aware some gear people swear by depends on subjective factors.
2. a small footprint tent, like tarptent notch, mostly because it's so small I can now always find a flat spot no matter what. For solo use, the tarptent rainbow is so huge inside that I actually ended up not using it because it felt silly big to me, so I switched to the notch. Note that the actual footprint of these tents is the inner part, not the outer, since you can put the outer over small bushes etc without squishing them.
3. Light backpack, bonus points for diy design so it is exactly what I want, minus points because the straps are so damned hard to get right, lol. At 18-20 oounces though I'm good.
4. polycryo ground sheet. Stronger than you'd believe, though I find that the hardware store version is not nearly as solid as the version gossamer gear sells, but it's good enough. One roll is probably close to a lifetime supply of it. I was very skeptical of this stuff, but it works. Never could reconcile the concept fo light gear with tyvek, which isn't water proof and is as heavy as my old coated 70d home made ground cloth.
5. 1/8" or 3/16" evazote/plastazote pads. Sit pads, under mattress pads, whatever, love these.
Gear that is just plain cool/awesome, even if not quite as durable as heavy stuff:
1. ti trowels, love my big dig, lawson now has one too.
2. ti tent stakes, never found any terrain so far where they haven't held, closest was volcanic sand/ash in 3 sisters one night on one tieout, but 2 in a v held that through a major hail storm. You'll see people talk about msr groundhogs, my suspicion is that extra holding power is needed for tarp ridgeline etc.
3. ul tea strainer I made, at a few grams, love it.
If you make 12 pounds your rough target weight, plus camera / bear canister, you'd be astounded at what you can bring along.
I also used to do 50-55 pound backpacking, though I never actually swore it off, I just kind of didn't do it anymore, then started looking at lighter gear, which is a learning curve.
The one advice I would give is to skip buying low end sleeping bags, they never are what they say they are, and in the end, you pay more because you had to dump them to get a good one, so just get a good one to start. I got both my wm bags here on gear swap, but be VERY careful buying all puffy gear here, make sure the stuff is almost not used, a few nights at most, otherwise you may regret trying to save the money with used.
