Water Filtration System Recommendation for 7-day HST Hike

For a trip with an abundance of clear water sources, how about all three people carry a Be Free 1-liter filter? Everyone would have instant on-demand water and minimal need to carry water while hiking. And your group would have triple redundancy for water purification for very little weight penalty. Combine that with a 1 L Smartwater bottle each, and you each have 2 Liters of water to carry into any dry camps you may stay at.

Be Free plus some iodine tablets as back-up.

Or, since pretty clear water is pretty easy to find, a Sawyer Squeeze plus someone else with a Be Free or iodine tablets or Aquamira.

I’ve mostly been doing UV SteriPens on family trips plus iodine tablets as back up.  Since even in summer our mountains are 55F highs and 40F lows, we do more soups, tea and hot chocolate and I skip the UV if I’ll be boiling the water anyway.

Required carrying capacity depends, in part, on how many people are sippers versus gulpers.  I prefer to “camel up” and drink a liter at a time.  My wife wants to treat a liter and then sip it over the next many miles.

I did the HST 2 years ago with a group of 3.  We used a sawyer mini in gravity mode with the 2L Platy dirty bag.  It worked great.  We did have a second sawyer mini that one of my partners was carrying and a back flush syringe.  Water sources are abundant so you shouldn’t have any issues finding water.

Matt

Thanks. After posting the question, I took another look at the BeFree.  I think I’m now leaning toward the BeFree. I like the idea of bringing a 2-3L (dirty) bag for in-camp, and then each of us bringing a BeFree 1L Filter, plus AquaMira for backup. Good to get confirmation from @jmatt567 about abundant water sources on the HST too.