Katadyn Exstream

[theonew]

I like to drink a lot of water when I hike. On a hot humid 6 hour hike I can easily drink 3 quarts. When I was a teenager cutting cordword for spending money we (me and a friend) used to bring 3 gallons of water out to the woods in the morning. On some days we came close to finishing all of it. But water is just so dang heavy to carry. So I started looking at water filters and a week ago I picked up the Katadyn Exstream. In my fantasy world I imagined this filter effortlessly producing an endless supply of perfect tasting water, though this isn't the case, I still think its a very useful and decent product. The first thing I noticed is that it takes a good deal of grip strength to squeeze water through the filter. You frequently have to stop squeezing and let the valve suck more air in. It's also a little strange, though obvious why, that the bottle needs to be held in an upright position. The bottle holds 21 ounces of water, but its pretty darn hard to get the last 7 ounces out of it, you need to squeeze and suck pretty hard I've found that its best to keep topping it up whenever you find a relatively clean water source. The second thing I noticed is that the water has a weird sort of chemical taste, not terrible, but noticeable. It tastes clean but not in a beautiful refreshing kind of way. On my last hike I took a frozen 1.5 liter bottle of Poland Spring and the Exstream. This worked well, as I drank the melting spring water, I kept topping it off with water I squeezed through the filter. For most of the day I had an abundace of cool refreshing water.

 

[j williams]

Nice review, Ive looked at those in the past. Ive never owned a filter, but would like to try one out. For the price tag, I just dont know enough about them.