Aquarmira! - Appalachian Trail

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#1

is there any good reason to NOT use aquamira for a thru hike? apparently there’s no chemical taste, it works, and its very small/light. yes, it does take up to 30 mins to do its thing…

–andrew

andrew

#2

I think Aquamira is great, but I only used it for the last few days of our hike. For the first 5+ months, we struggled with a Pur Hiker, using it for ALL water and needing to constantly replace the filter, even when used with care and pre-filters etc. But we kept hearing that soon we would encounter water too mucky for Aquamira so we held on to our filter. Maybe 2002 was a good water year, but I could’ve used Aquamira the whole time.

The other thing is cost. For a few days (before trying Aquamira) we tried straight bleach. Lots of hikers believe that it is the same as what is in city water supplies, and is a cheap version of Aquamira. When my husband got done hiking, he asked co-workers (he is a civil engineer) and professors at the U of MN if that was true. They told him that household bleach is NOT the same as what is in city drinking water and it would not be effective unless used in undrinkable concentrations.

One last thing (sorry this got so long): Aquamira DOES have a slight taste, but it didn’t bother me.

Jitterbug

#3

This is a quote directly from Goldberry’s journal (she completed a thru hike of the AT this year): “Water Treatment: I used Aqua Mira the whole time and never got sick. There’s no aftertaste in the water. Worst thing about it is that you have to wait a total of 20 minutes before drinking it, but since it wasn’t a very dry year, I was rarely in desperate need of water.”

Water filters are great if you have a large group, like scouts or large hiking groups, but just a single or two thruhikers, chemicals are best for lots of reasons. (1) filters clog up easily (2) filters always have to be changed (3) filters are heavy (4) filters ice up in real cold weather and don’t work (5) filters are expensive (6) filters are bulky, and (7) etc.

Filters also use chemicals, a lot of them use a iodine resin for the water to pass thru and then a charcoal filter to take out the iodine taste. So the filters are using chemicals too. And that murky water or muddy water, talk about clogging up a filter fast, it will do it.

Iodine and bleach are effective when used properly, use proper dosage, wait 30 minutes and pop a Vitamin C pill in the water and that will remove the taste of the iodine and chlorine. The Vitamin C actually changes the iodine to iodide and the chlorine to chloride. My reasoning tells me that you need just enough dosage to kill all the bad things in the water, but yet not kill all the necessary bacteria within your digestive track when you drink the water. So treating with Vitamin C not only removes the taste, but makes the water better and safer for human consumption. (Reference–Page 316 & 317, Wilderness First Aid).

Aquamira evidently dissapates over time and initially kills all the bad things in the water, but over time (20-30 minutes, longer if it’s cold) dissapates----that is becomes safe for consumption. Aquamira has been tested extensively and used extensively, so I would say it’s great to use if used correctly, just like bleach (chorine) and iodine.

BTW, it is my opinion that many thru hikers get sick not from the water they get on the trail, which they filter or treat, but from the water they get from the hostels and small towns along the way, which they do not treat. It is just like when people visit Mexico or some other places, they get sick from the water because of low levels of bacteria in the water, which the locals are immune to and drink all the time.

So regardless of what you use to treat or filter your water, I would advise you to treat and/or filter it all even that you get from hostels, and small towns, etc. A lot of that country water comes from shallow wells, often times 100 years or more old, and the septic system is sometimes only 20 feet or so away from that shallow well. So treat all your water, and in those small towns, drink bottled water or bottled softdrinks only. That way you will probably stay well out there on the trail and not get the dreaded Giardia and other bacteria and viruses from the water you drink. Hope all this helps.
:cheers

Maintain

#4

Thanks Andrew for posting that comment. I dont know why EVERYONE doesnt use it…I used it for 5 months and no problems at all. I’ve even been done for a month+ and no side affects, loss of toes, nose etc…
its cheap, LIGHT, easy, 20 minutes. If you passed 2nd grade you can use this product! :slight_smile:
A-Train

A-Train

#5

If the water came out of a rock,I didnt treat it most times and I didnt have trouble from town water. I used aquamira most of the way and had great results. It did make Kool-aid taste a little funny. And it works in 10 minutes as I recall.

Virginian

#6

I started out with a filter last year which had had about 5 weeks use, after about 1 month the filter clogged (the filter cartridge itself was new) and had to be replaced. About 1 week later the pump failed, so I switched to Aqua Mira. I found it very convenient and could not detect any clorine taste. I used it for the remaining 3 months of my hike and rekon it’s the best thing. Another beneift is that I saved nearly 1 pound in pack weight.

Two pieces of advice though… If you are going to use Aqua Mira then put a few extra packs of it in your bounce box as I sometimes found it difficult to find it or similar products up north. Also, one downside is that if it is a very dry year you may find yourself very occasionaly having to drink water that is dirty looking. For those few cases I would recommend that you take a piece of filter material to place over the neck of the container you use to draw water with.

Downunda

#7

I have used AquaMira on my last two backpack trips and was very happy with it, but the water was very clean and clear. What is the best way to deal with murky water? Do you treat the water first, then filter? or filter, then treat? What works well as a filter? I have heard of using your bandana–that sounds yucky and I’m thinking it wouldn,t do much to clear cloudy water. As a newbie, I’m still trying to figure out this water system. Thanks for the post about local wells, hadn’t really thought about that in the U.S.

Quilter

#8

Filters also use chemicals, a lot of them use a
iodine resin for the water to pass thru and then
a charcoal filter to take out the iodine taste.
So the filters are using chemicals too.

I don’t believe this is true for the current crop of filters. I know neither the current MSR Miniworks/Waterworks or Pur/Katadyn Hiker filters have an iodine resin element.

deeddawg

#9

Filters: Some use micro filters to take all bacteria, etc out of the water, and these micro filters are such a tiny mesh, that they clog up big time with a little use. Many people recommend and I agree that if you use a water filter, you should prefilter the water to be filtered and that keeps the filter from clogging up so bad. You can do this by tieing a piece (or several of these) of fine mesh cloth or sponge material over the water input to give you some pre filtering. This keeps them from clogging up so bad. Filters are great for large groups. Exactly what elements are in these filters may or may not be known/advertised and chemical elements and/or chemically treated elements may be in most of them (and may not be in some of them). I know of no town or metro water system that only filters their water (but there may be and probably are some, depending on the water source), most commercial systems use chemicals, they work. But filters too have their use and place, a combination of the two works well in many water systems. Enough said about that.

Regarding murky/muddy water and clearing it up. Use a water bag, collect the water, let it hang for a while and let the sediment fall to the bottom, then draw water the clear water off of the top. A little white ash from campfire sprinkled into the water will help clear the water and have the sediment fall to the bottom of the bag. Additionally using several pieces of cloth and/or some sponge material, you can make a drip filter to take sediment out of the water. Also if along a stream, and you can find sand, you can use it to make a drip sand filter, which will really clean your water up. Note that after you get clean clear water using these methods, you should still chemically treat it to make it safe for human consumption. Hope this answers some of the questions and helps out a bit.

:slight_smile:

Maintain

#10

As far as filters I’ve used coffee filters tied on with a rubber band to my intake tubes on pump type filters like Pur. I’m a somewhat lazy hiker so I’ve tried small cap type filters that I bought at Cabelas…but these kind of scare me…I’m using the water bottle filters now…my mother-in-law bought me a Sawyer Biological Filter Bottle that was somewhat expensive ($40)…but it had 2 extra filters with it and one filter supposedly does 480 bottles (80 gallons) of water…plus it was free since it was a gift. I’m like some others though…coming out of the rock water does not always get filtered…Wesser Bald spring near NOC comes directly out of the mountain in the cleanest concrete water box you’ve ever seen…the coldest and best water I ever drank.

Doc Holiday

#11

Has anyone ever tried filtering water for a group? My experience tells me that it takes so long to pump water for a group that I would rather go the chemical route. Filters like the Pur Hiker are fine for one or two people. But real time comsuming for more than that.

Peaks

#12

I bought a Seychelle in-line filter (www.seychellewater.com) this summer and I love it. I carry a MSR Dromedary bag (I’m gonna replace it with a DromLite one of these days) for “dirty” water and I just fill it up when I get to camp, attach the filter and hose to it, and let the water flow through. No work at all except keeping 1/4 of an eye on things so that you switch bottles out when one is nearly full.

My one caveat about the Seychelle filter is that it doesn’t have any sort of prefilter. I’m going to get some sponge material and put it in the intake hose to the filter to catch some of the gunk. Sweetwater used to make an inline filter that’s been discontinued – you can still find it sometimes in stores. That had a prefilter element in the body of the filter; but the downside of the Sweetwater filter is that you have to run some water through to set it up before you can use it.

The Seychelle filter cost me $21.95 plus shipping, which is less than the $30 a replacement filter for my old PUR Hiker would have cost me. Yes, it weighs more than Aquamira, but much less than a pump filter. For a long hike I would worry about the combined impact chemical purifiers. Anyway, it has a great “cool” factor.

I’ve heard from others’ experiences that if you prefilter the water, you can do the AT with just one or two cartridges. I’m looking forward to finding out!

Bunchberry

#13

What I meant to say in that last-but one paragraph:

“For a long hike I would worry about the cumulative impact of chemical purifiers. Anyway, the Seychelle filter has a great ‘cool factor’”.

Bunchberry

#14

Bunch - Did you get your inline filter direct from manufacturer or somewhere else? Did you try drinking straight from the hydration pack? Any difficulty with suction? I was going to get one but I have read some bad reviews about these filters falling apart and having poor instructions:

http://www.backpackgeartest.org/reviews/Water%20Treatment/Filters/Seychelle%20Water%20Filter/Bill%20Jeffrey/Long%20Term%20Report/

Harlz

#15

Harlz – I direct ordered it – didn’t think I could find it in a store around here.

I had read the negative backpackgeartest reviews, too, but I decided to try it. The instructions are fine. I am careful with the filter, particularly making sure not to strip the threads out when I take it apart to dry after a trip.

I set it up by putting a hydration system conversion kit on my dromedary bag, then the filter, then a hose cannibalized from an old filter. When I first got the filter, I was doubtful that it would work just from gravity, but I hung the water bag on my shower and it filtered a gallon in about 20 minutes. The only change I want to make is adding a pre-filter.

I’ve had it for six weeks and used it on one 3-day solo trip and to filter for a group of 4 on a 3-day group hike. I love it and it’s going to be my purification method of choice from here on out.

I don’t know if it would filter fast enough to be useful in-line to a hydration hose – never having used one, I don’t feel qualified to comment.

Bunchberry

#16

I think the water on the AT is one of the best parts of hiking. There’s nothing like filling a bottle with cold spring water after a long hike. I hiked with several people who used chemicals to treat their water; I used a MSR Miniworks which I’ve had for about six years. I never had any problems with my filter, it did a great job of cleaning my water without leaving chemical tastes. Also, I saw lots of people have trouble scooping out of shallow water sources, with a pump it was no problem.

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