Originally Posted by
Loren Pechtel
I actually do have a very small filter in my emergency gear, but it's never been used.
Most of my hiking has been around SoCal til recently, so I only just started filtering when we started doing stuff in the PNW. If your filter is one of the little Sawyer filters that has a 1 L bag, be forewarned that the bags have a tendency to pop during use. I was lucky enough to read about this before my first use and brought (and pre-tested) a platypus bag, but ran into someone on the Mt Hood Timberline Trail who didn't do his homework and we ended up lending him a backup filter setup. It sounds like lots of people use emptied out soda bottles that they just crush and stuff in a pocket in their pack.