water filter bottle reviews

A backpacker hiking the Highline Trail past Elbow Lake in Wyoming's Wind River Range.

25 Essential Backpacking Gear Accessories of 2024

By Michael Lanza

Sure, your backpack, boots, tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, and other backpacking gear matter a lot, and you should put serious thought into your choices when buying any of them. But little things matter, too. Various necessary accessories, convenience items, and small comforts accompany me on backcountry trips. Nearly three decades of field-testing gear—including the 10 years I spent as the lead gear reviewer for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog—has refined my sense of what I like on certain types of trips and what I will not do without anytime.

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The LifeStraw Go Water Bottle With 2-Stage Filtration.

Review: LifeStraw Go Water Bottle With 2-Stage Filtration

Water Filter Bottle
LifeStraw Go Water Bottle With 2-Stage Filtration
$45, 8 oz.
22 ounces/650ml bottle capacity
moosejaw.com

On an 80-mile, five-day backpacking trip in the North Cascades National Park Complex in September, I stopped filling my pack’s bladder by the second day. I didn’t need it—I could just top off my LifeStraw Go bottle every time we passed one of the frequent creeks along our route, and continue hiking with hardly a pause. Rare is the piece of gear whose convenience and utility actually change the way I behave, but the LifeStraw Go does exactly that.

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Gear Review: Aquamira and LifeStraw Water Filter Bottles

Lifestraw Go and Aquamira Frontier Flow Filtered Water Bottle
Lifestraw Go and Aquamira Frontier Flow Filtered Water Bottle.

Water Filter Bottles
Aquamira Frontier Flow Filtered Water Bottle
$50, 7 oz.
20 oz./0.6L bottle capacity (with filter)
mcnett.com/aquamira

LifeStraw Go
$35, 8 oz.
22 oz./0.65L bottle capacity (with filter)
buylifestraw.com

Treating water in the backcountry has always been time-consuming—until now. From long dayhikes on and off-trail in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness to a four-day, 34-mile backpacking trip on the Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies, I used both of these bottles to obtain treated, drinkable water by simply bending down, filling the bottle in a creek, screwing the cap back on, and then immediately sipping from a straw—that’s it.

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