Sawyer Squeeze Water Filter System
0.1 micron hollow fiber membrane removes 99.99999% of bacteria and 99.9999% of protozoa including giardia. Screws onto standard threads and attaches inline to hydration packs. Lifetime warranty. At 3 ounces for the filter alone, it's the lightest filtration option that still works fast enough for a horse camp.
- Material
- ABS plastic housing; hollow fiber membrane (0.1 micron absolute)
- Dimensions
- 5.5" x 1.75" filter; fits standard bottle threads
- Weight
- 3 oz
- SKU
- WTP-CAMP-SAWYER-SQ
The spec that matters: 0.1 micron absolute hollow fiber membrane. That rating removes 99.99999% of bacteria (E. coli, salmonella, cholera) and 99.9999% of protozoa (giardia, cryptosporidium). In the Bridger Wilderness and the Bighorns, giardia is a real risk. Horses and livestock above you in the drainage make it more so. A 0.2 micron filter is adequate for bacteria and protozoa by most standards; the Sawyer’s 0.1 micron rating is tighter, which matters when you’re pulling water from a creek shared with a packstring and nobody’s certain what was camped upstream two days ago.
The Squeeze is not the fastest filter on the market. A pump filter moves more volume per minute. But at horse camp, you’re not filtering on the move — you’re filtering at camp while the horses are on highlines, dinner is going, and you have time to squeeze a couple of bags into your pot or Nalgene. The filter screws onto any standard water bottle thread. It also connects inline to hydration pack hoses via the included adapters, and gravity-feeds when you hang a filled squeeze pouch above your container. Two reusable 32 oz pouches come in the kit, along with a cleaning plunger for backflushing the membrane to restore flow rate. That backflush procedure is important: do it after every trip and the filter lasts indefinitely. Sawyer backs this with a lifetime warranty.
Filter weight is 3 ounces. The full kit with pouches, cleaning plunger, and tubing runs about 8 ounces total. That’s a reasonable weight for the filtration volume you get. The $35 price hasn’t moved much in years; it’s one of the better value-to-performance ratios in any backcountry category. See the complete horseback camping packing breakdown at Horseback Camping Complete Guide.