On a recent ride, I broke out my trusty Mini Sawyer filter, after storing it per the instructions and cleaning it the night before, to find that it just didn’t work all that well anymore. Granted this filter had probably only been used once or twice before. The stream from the filter was more of a trickle which struck me as odd as I haven’t filtered any silty streams. Granted, when you’re re-hydrating, you should be sipping water, not chugging it so it didn’t bother me at the time. Filling my bottles though, took forever.

It leads me to think there has to be a better filter for smaller, back-country rides where water is a concern. We have lots of streams, creeks, and tributaries here to drink from on big rides, which is nice but I’d love to find a better filtering option. We use an MSR pump filter for bike and backpacking trips but they take up a lot of space. Filters like the Scout Inline and MSR Thru-Link inline filters look appealing but what if you don’t ride with a bladder all the time? Steripen? Iodine? Surely you’ve got opinions, so we’d like to head what you use!