As high temperatures roll across the globe, hikers may be getting a glimpse of their future. Historic data indicate that heat waves have been increasing in frequency, intensity, and duration—and without aggressive climate change measures, these in future decades.

This summer’s heat waves are threatening hiker safety: Multiple hikers have died in national parks this year, with the National Park Service stating that extreme heat likely played a role. At least in three national parks due to the heat this summer: Big Bend National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and Death Valley National Park.

Jeff Stebbins, a Public Affairs Specialist at Grand Canyon National Park, said that when temperatures hit 95°F. “So far this year, our SAR team has responded to 181 calls,” he said.

Despite the heat waves, hikers are still venturing out to national parks, which remain open. “Parks aren’t closing for extreme heat, but ranger programs and events may be canceled or changed to a cooler time of day,” Park Service spokesperson Cynthia Hernandez said.

In lieu of closing trails, NPS offers online resources such as and the to promote hiker safety. In addition, it maintains a . Individually, the three parks where deaths have occurred this year have taken extra measures to address the risks to visitors during periods of extreme heat by focusing on education and prevention.

Big Bend National Park, which has seen three heat-related deaths this summer, warns visitors of the dangers of heat with signage at visitor centers and park bulletin boards, large electronic message boards at park entrances, and park staff and volunteers stationed at the busiest trailheads.

“We tell visitors to be off trails by 11 a.m., and to spend the heat of the afternoon enjoying scenic drives, siesta in the shade, and to stay out of the heat,” Tom VandenBerg, Chief of Interpretation and Visitor Services at Big Bend National Park, said.

Despite the recent fatalities, there are no plans for the park to close down during a heat wave.

“If Big Bend National Park were to close when temperatures reached extreme levels, it could be closed for months at a time,” said VandenBerg. “Remember that Big Bend is very diverse and offers a wide variety of places to explore and ways to experience.”

Hundreds of miles away to the northwest, Grand Canyon National Park is also dedicated to preventive measures for visitors.

“We focus heavily on prevention and outreach in order to educate the public on the risks they may face and how to protect themselves as best they can. We would encourage hikers to visit our website and stop by the Backcountry Information Center before beginning a hike for the most up-to-date trail conditions and advice for their itinerary,” Stebbins said.

The park maintains a along with tips on how to stay safe in the heat. QR codes posted at major trailheads and strategic points direct readers to that page. According to Stebbins, rangers practice , and the park stations personnel at strategic locations on trails. Additionally, caches are stocked at various locations with emergency water, rations, and sometimes phones.

Much like Grand Canyon and Big Bend, Death Valley National Park has seen some of its . According to Nichole Andler, Chief of Interpretation and Education at Death Valley, “our best tool to help visitors combat the heat is information and air conditioning.”

When temperatures are regularly predicted to reach between the park places an alert on its website. Death Valley also has internal safety guidelines that are triggered by heat: At 120°F, the park stops all non-emergency outdoor work to maintain employee safety.

According to Abigail Wines, a Management Analyst at Death Valley National Park, will be attended by park rangers who are also EMTs. Their general protocol involves cooling the patient down through measures that include moving them into an air-conditioned building or ambulance, applying a cool moist cloth, and transporting them to a hospital if needed.

Just like Big Bend, management at Death Valley has no plans to enact closures during periods of extreme heat.

“It is physically difficult to close backcountry roads, as people move barricades or drive around them,” Wines said. In her 18 years of working with the park, she has “only heard that the park used to close some backcountry roads as distant lore,” and commented that this practice seemed curious to her.

“Many of those roads that the park used to close are ways to get to the higher elevation portions of the park, which is exactly where people can hike safely due to cooler temperatures,” Wines said.

As parks remain open and temperatures continue to climb, it’s on hikers to take responsibility for their own safety. Hernandez told Backpacker that the National Park Service asks visitors to and plan their trip in a way that reduces risks, noting that “safety is each individual’s responsibility, and many national parks are wild and extreme environments.”

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Water filters are one of those pieces of gear you don’t mess around with—there are few worse outcomes to a backpacking trip than a surprise parasite. To ensure you don’t bring home an uninvited guest, we dove deep into this year’s offerings to find water filters that not only do their primary job of keeping you healthy, but do so quickly, efficiently, and with minimal finger numbness.

The Winners at a Glance:

Best Squeeze Filter: LifeStraw Peak Collapsible Squeeze 1L Bottle with Filter

Best Press Filter: Grayl UltraPress Ti Water Filter & Purifier Bottle

Best UV Purifier: Waatr HydroCap

How We Test

Number of Testers: 5

Number of Products Tested: 19

Number of Gallons Filtered: 100

Dirtiest Water Source: Scummy lake water from Ward Lake in Olympia, WA

Our team of 5 testers evaluated 19 filters and purifiers in four states across a variety of water sources to find the best water filters for this season’s gear guide. We tested in locations ranging from city reservoirs and established campsites to backcountry mountain lakes. Water quality varied from clear streams in Olympia, Washington’s Capitol State Forest to silty and scummy lake water in the Central and South Cascades. We looked at variables including flow rate, ease of use, packability, durability, and weight in order to separate the very best filters from the average or gimmicky.

Meet Our Lead Tester

Dan Hu grew up in Hawaii and has lived in Washington State since 2013. A healthcare professional by training, he spends his free time hiking and backpacking in the Pacific Northwest and writing about his adventures.

Our Test Team

Jonathan Daley: Civil engineer

Matt Gardner: Emergency medicine pharmacist

Zoe Gates: Senior editor, Backpacker Magazine

Emma Veidt: Assistant editor, Backpacker Magazine

The Reviews: The Best Water Filters of 2023

Best Squeeze Filter: LifeStraw Peak Collapsible Squeeze 1L Bottle with Filter ($44)

Weight: 3.9 oz
Pros: Durable, packable and lightweight, several filtration modes
Cons: No handle for scooping water

Squeeze filters have long been favored by backpackers for their simplicity, affordability, and packability. One common complaint? Durability. The LifeStraw Peak Squeeze challenges that stereotype as one of the most robust squeeze filters we’ve ever used. We found that we could confidently twist, squeeze, and crush the tough thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) material used for the bladder body (which comes in 650 mL and 1 L sizes) without any concern of failure, unlike competitor products made of Mylar foil or polyethylene. The bladder’s seam runs down the middle instead of the sides, which mitigates weak points while squeezing. The Peak Squeeze folds (or rolls) down to palm-size for packing, and easily lashes to the outside of a pack—or, in the case of one tester, onto his stand-up paddle board—thanks to a burly cap loop. The Peak Squeeze filter can be seated internally to reduce bulk in a running vest-style pocket, but it also threads externally to the bladder and other standard water bottle mouths, which allowed testers to squeeze out the last few drops of water. (The filter can also be used on its own as an emergency straw if the bladder fails.) We found flow rate to be just average, between one and two liters-per-minute, but the Peak Squeeze resisted clogging better than comparable models. Despite repeatedly filtering water from mountain streams in Olympic National Park and the muddy shores of Washington’s Cedar Lake, we never reached a point where the filter was truly impaired. An included threadable syringe makes backflushing a piece of cake, although it also means you have to carry an extra accessory everywhere you go. Another ding? While the rigid loop was big enough for a carabiner, it wasn’t large enough to use as a handle for dragging the mouth through water while submerged, making filling the bladder a challenge in lakes and streams. With a few accessibility tweaks, the versatile, durable Peak Squeeze has the potential to be the best squeeze filter on the market.

Bottom Line: An affordable, durable squeeze filter for solo hikers and backpackers.

Best Press Filter: Grayl UltraPress Ti Water Filter & Purifier Bottle ($200)

Weight: 14.1 oz
Pros: Good-looking, electrolyte-compatible, three-in-one design
Cons: Pot function not particularly practical, heavier than original, expensive

Grayl, progenitor of the press-style filter, hasn’t changed its fundamental design much since it first came to market in 2016. The brand’s new titanium version, however, offers a deluxe, multi-featured variation on the tried-and-true model. For starters, the UltraPress Ti simply looks good with its sleek, laser-etched topographic design. But the Ti offers more than just a shiny exterior: A silicone one-way valve allows users to add electrolytes or flavorings to the water without compromising the filter medium. That means you don’t have to worry about accidentally “backflushing” lemon-lime powder into your snazzy $25 filter. And thanks to two fold-out handles, it can easily pull double-duty as a Sierra cup, shaving a few ounces off of your pack weight. (It is 1.6 ounces heavier than the regular UltraPress, however). The all-metal construction also means that, with the filter cartridge removed, the Titanium essentially becomes an elongated pot for use directly on a stove or in a campfire. (Grayl sells matching cooking accessories, like a pocket stove and a titanium cookware set.) Using such a tall, narrow vessel has its drawbacks, however. “Unless you have your setup on a completely level surface, it’s a bit precarious to balance a stove,” reports Olympia, Washington tester, Matt Gardner. It also takes roughly 5 minutes and 30 seconds for the full 550 milliliter-volume of water to come to a boil—and easily spills over the narrow rim when full. Careful cooks looking to minimize the amount of gear they bring into the backcountry might find the imperfect setup worth babying, however.

Bottom Line: A good-looking option for backpackers who want a water filter, mug, and cookpot all in one and are willing to compromise cooking capability for that convenience.

Best Ultraviolet Purifier: Waatr HydroCap ($99)

Weight: 4 oz
Pros: Compatible with many bottles, easy to use
Cons: Only works with sediment-free water sources

One of the drawbacks to Waatr’s previous UV-style purifier is that it only fit the brand’s narrow-necked water bottles. This year, the lifestyle-focused purification company solved that problem with the HydroCap, which is compatible with a host of 2.28-inch wide-mouthed bottles including those from Hydro Flask, Klean Kanteen, and ThermoFlask. Like its predecessor, the CrazyCap, the HydroCap is dead-simple to use. A push of the glowing top button activates two UV-C LED lights that purify pathogen-filled water, with options to activate a “Normal” 60-second cleaning, or a double-dose “Pro” cleaning. An optional “self-cleaning” function activates the LEDs for 15 seconds every hour to prevent funky odors, although testers noted that it’s not a particularly good use of battery life. (The HydroCap also deactivates when it senses that the cap has been removed from the bottle, which keeps users from accidentally irradiating themselves.) Testers averaged 38 sterilization cycles before needing to recharge with the portless, magnetic USB charger, or about 75% of the 50, 1-liter treatments you’ll get out of the gold-standard UV purifier, SteriPEN. But Dan Hu, șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s water filter category manager, found the HydroCap to be a more convenient way to purify water compared with SteriPEN-style devices. “It easily screws onto many bottles and is a no-fuss option. There’s no need to dig through your pack or pocket, and the operation is as simple as pressing a button.” And as with any UV-purifier, the HydroCap doesn’t actually filter particulates out of dirty water, nor can it be used in any water source that isn’t clear—like a running mountain stream. To the end, we think the HydroCap is best reserved for international traveling, where viruses are of particular concern, and on day hikes or short backpacking trips where pristine, running water sources are guaranteed.

Bottom Line: A versatile, easy-to-use option for day hikers and travelers who primarily use wide-mouthed bottles and thermoses.

How to Buy a Water Filter

When selecting a filter, the main factors are the number of people you’ll be providing water for, how many days you’ll be hiking, and how dirty your water sources are likely to be. For an adventure with just 1-2 people, a pump, squeeze, or press-style filter will get the job done. Squeeze and press-style filters are also great for day hikes, or as a secondary backup filter thanks to their light weight and/or water bottle compatibility. Inline filters, which sit between your bladder and your drinking hose, are easy to use while in motion, but cumbersome to deal with for cooking or groups. Larger groups may want to consider a gravity filter, which allows you to filter more water at once. Lastly, UV-based purifiers (which don’t filter particulates) can be a quick and easy option if you’ll be near sources of clear water. They’re also a critical piece of equipment if you’ll be traveling out of the country where viruses are a concern. No single filter can cover every situation, but fortunately, there are lots of options to choose from.

When it’s time to upgrade your gear, don’t let the old stuff go to waste–donate it for a good cause and divert it from the landfill. our partner, Gear Fix, will repair and resell your stuff for free! Just box up your retired items, , and send them off. We’ll donate 100 percent of the proceeds to .

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For better or for worse, social media is here to stay, and that’s as true in the outdoors as anywhere else. Most of us have a Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok account, and those platforms have come to play a central role in how outdoorsy people share their adventures with each other and the world at large. But while they can be a source of inspiration, a new study suggests that they could be getting some people into serious trouble.

When a tourist or hiker falls from a high place or gets charged while photographing an animal, internet commenters’ knee-jerk reaction is often to blame it on clout-driven selfie-seeking. There’s some evidence that they may not be off base: Researchers in Turkey injured or killed while trying to take photos and found that 43.2 percent of accidents took place in nature, with cliff edges being a preferred site for selfies. According to the study, one hiker who gets away with a risky selfie may lead to others doing the same, and visitors may come to view certain destinations as being less risky over time. 

This was not the first time authorities looked into the correlation between social media and outdoor dangers. In 2018 the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department SAR attributed an uptick in rescues to social media users publicizing dangerous outdoor hotspots like cliffs, rock pools, and waterfalls.

Dr. Zachary Lu of University of California, Irvine and his team decided to quantify that risk. Published in Wilderness and Environmental Medicine in 2021, their article, , matched SAR and national park visitation stats with social media data to try to determine the relationship between traffic, social posts, and rescues.

Lu told me that the idea for the project arose from both his love for the outdoors as well as anecdotes of hikers getting themselves into sticky situations in search of social media pictures. He said his process had a goal: “How can we maximize the experience of everyone having fun while keeping them safe, and particularly as it pertains to social media?” 

“We developed this study in order to pilot or encourage the idea of, ‘Hey, what if we looked at numerical data in terms of social media platforms, in our case, Twitter, and do a head to head comparison [to see] if there’s any kind of association with search and rescue incidents in national parks?’” Lu said. From a zoomed-out perspective, he says the study looked principally into visitation and search and rescue visits as a whole, while also evaluating correlations with social media.

Lu used Twitter to evaluate social media because of an existing relationship he had with the University of California, Irvine’s School of Information, which had developed a program called . Using this software, the team was able to evaluate Twitter data “in order to get a historical count of the number of tweets related to certain keywords by area,” Lu said. He noted that other platforms such as Instagram or Flickr have data that are less available to researchers at this time.

The team procured visitor data from the visitor use database and SAR data from the U.S. Park Service SAR incidents dashboard from 2017. They considered recreational visits, developed site stays, backcountry visits, and tweets as independent variables, and SAR incidents and fatalities as dependent variables. As the team noted in their paper, they ended up with a mountain of data. 

 “We analyzed the correlations between 180,216,375 recreational visits, 10,452,835 developed site stays, 1,956,935 backcountry visits, 183,744 tweets, 3,433 SAR incidents, and 181 fatalities that occurred in national parks during 2017,” they wrote.

What were their findings? All three types of visits (recreational, developed-site, and backcountry) showed positive correlations with SAR incidents. Backcountry visits had a stronger correlation with fatalities than developed-site stays, perhaps related to the inherently riskier nature of the setting. (While the researchers speculated that people calling for help in the backcountry might, on average, be more experienced and skilled than those calling for help in the front country, they noted that their study did not look at experience levels of SAR victims.) 

Those conclusions might not be surprising—the more people head outdoors, after all, the more chances there are for them to get hurt. Social media use, however, turned out to be an even better predictor of people getting into trouble: According to Lu, the strongest correlation they saw in their study was between tweets and mishaps leading to rescues or fatalities. Besides driving visitors to parks, authors suggest that “social media may be associated with SAR incidents via users motivating others to obtain photos or videos through risky or dangerous means.” 

On this point, Dr. Lu hopes that their research can be a part of the solution by encouraging social media users to share their adventures—and consume others’ summit shots—with safety in mind.

 “Hopefully it encourages people
not necessarily [to use social media] to get themselves in sticky situations, but rather to share about their fun experiences and to motivate others to maybe share their own and build those experiences for themselves,” he says. “Because that ultimately leads to a culture of environmental stewardship, where we can really take care of our environment so that everyone can enjoy it.”

This story was originally published by Backpacker.com. 

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Backpackers and hikers tend to take water filtration for granted: for $18, that weighs less than two ounces, is small enough to stick in your pocket, and will provide safe drinking water from any stream, lake, or questionable puddle in the country.

It’s nothing short of a miracle, however, considering what the average hiker is up against: organic and inorganic pollutants, chemicals, minerals, metals, and pathogenic organisms from the water and soil (or human waste). The most effective filters are capable of nanofiltration, protecting humans from viruses using pores as small as .001 micrometers.

We set out to discover the history of portable water filters, combing through academic literature, online forums, and archived magazines and interviewing representatives from the biggest manufacturers. Our findings? Although portable water filters were invented more than 90 years ago, they weren’t widely used until the 1970s. And while technologies have advanced in the 50 years since, some of the oldest designs are still in use today.

Water filter tech took many years to advance to the point of being feasible for backcountry camping. Portability, of course, is relative. An early “portable” water purification device, the Lyster bag, was used in the early 1900s by the U.S. military and involved suspending 36 gallons of chlorinated water from a tripod. Early 20th-century documents from the U.S. Department of War make reference to portable water filtration with these parameters: “Because of both size and weight, a filter not over four feet high and about 18 inches in diameter is the largest that is practicable.” Not exactly ultralight equipment.

The technological leap to portability in a backpack didn’t happen until the 1920s. When it did, it came in the form of a pump-style Maglite-sized silver and ceramic device from Katadyn, believed by many to be the first true backcountry water filter. According to Katadyn, the Pocket Filter was developed in 1929 by Swiss professor and brand founder Georg Alexander Krause. “For us at Katadyn, that was really the innovation that launched us along the way,” says John Wright, vice president of sales for Katadyn North America and Katadyn Desalination. is still for sale nearly 100 years later and continues to use a ceramic filter.

Still, portable water filters weren’t widely used until the 1970s, when outbreaks of giardia forced recreationalists to reconsider the safety of untreated water. By 1979, the nasty intestinal parasite was beginning to gain attention as a public health concern, and a review published in the American Journal of Public Health documented 23 waterborne outbreaks in the United States from 1972 through 1977.

Henry Romer, a longtime member of the Olympia, Washington, branch of the Seattle Mountaineers, recalls drinking straight from mountain streams with a Sierra cup. “In the old days, nobody worried about filtering water,” he says. “You didn’t purify water, and nothing happened.” A in the New York Times similarly notes the careless abandon with which adventurers could drink wilderness water in the days of yore, before discussing various methods of protecting against giardia—notably Calco Ltd.’s Pocket Purifier.

The Calco Pocket Purifier (no relation to Katadyn’s pump-style Pocket Filter) may have been the earliest straw filter sold to the public. An advertisement for it appeared in a of Backpacker magazine with the claim of “instantly safe drinking water.” It disappeared from the market in the late 1980s following a patent infringement lawsuit.

By that point, the portable water filter market exploded. Dozens of brands—many of which are now extinct, like Timberline, which sold the Eagle filter—vied for backpackers’ attention and money. Among those new, competing brands was MSR, which entered the market in 1991 with its classic WaterWorks Total Filtration System. Some of the most enduringly popular water filters were invented during this decade, like the Hiker and Hiker Pro (invented by Pur, acquired by Katadyn) and the Guardian (invented by SweetWater, acquired by MSR).

By the mid-1990s, new materials had made their way into filters, including ceramic with a carbon core (MSR MiniWorks), glass fiber strands with a ceramic core (Pur Hiker), and glass fiber matrix with a carbon layer (SweetWater Guardian). Military funding played a role in the development of at least a few products. Kevin Weitz, testing manager for the MSR Water Lab, notes that MSR’s hollow-fiber technology was produced through a relationship with the U.S. military. In the 2000s, pump-style filters saw competition from new designs, like the Platypus GravityWorks filter and the Katadyn Base Camp gravity filters. 

In 2005, history repeated itself: LifeStraw debuted its namesake product, repopularizing straw filters for the first time since the early 1980s. And while we wait for the next superfast, ĂŒber-compact, hyperefficient water filter tech to be developed, you can rest assured that your trusty pump or straw design has been around the block at least a few times. 

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