Blew $180 on a water filter for the JMT that clogged on day 2

Bought a pump filter everyone on Reddit swore by, it crapped out after two days on the John Muir Trail because I never bothered to check if it could handle glacial silt, so I finished the trip boiling creek water over a WhisperLite while my buddy's $35 Sawyer Squeeze never skipped a beat, what filters are you all actually trusting on long high-silt routes?

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beth_singh5d ago

Did you ever figure out what the silt actually does to those pumps? I've heard the ceramic cartridge ones gum up bad in glacial runoff and you basically have to scrub them every single day or they're done. That really sucks about the $180 though, boiling over a WhisperLite for the whole trip sounds miserable, especially when you were watching your buddy cruise along with his cheap squeeze. At least you made it out and got water either way, that's the main thing I guess.

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the_wesley5d ago

Did the cartridge really gum up that fast though, or was it more the prefilter letting stuff through? Either way that sounds rough, having to baby your filter every single day while your buddy just squeezes his and keeps walking would drive me nuts. Glad you still got water and made it out, that's what counts.

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