For many outdoor enthusiasts, activities such as camping, hiking and canoeing take you away from clean water sources.
If you are doing anything more than a day trip, packing in water is simply not an option as this would add in far too much weight (every ounce counts!).
These days any outdoor gear store will have tons of options to help you get clean water while out camping. From water filtration pumps to iodine to even the super popular Life Straw. But each of these solutions has it’s own set of problems.
If you’re canoeing and portaging, a water pump is a necessity, but it is definitely not fun to pull out of your pack in the middle of a long canoe ride or portage, it is most useful when you are setting up camp and looking to fill up your camp water jug.
If you have ever used iodine to purify your water you know that it tastes absolutely terrible and can be very easy to mess up (I learned this through a nasty case of giardia a few years back).
And the Life Straw, while it is an amazing invention, is horribly inconvenient to use as a daily water filter due to the fact that you must literally use it like a straw from your water source. This means you must carry an extra water bottle or be willing to bend down into streams, lakes and other water sources.
Vapur Has A Better Solution
The Vapur MicroFilter Water Bottle feels like it has addressed every problem listed above and come up with a solution that is perfect for camping, hiking, hunting or any other outdoor sport.
The MicroFilter water bottle works by combining your water bottle and your water filtration in one.
The Filter
The MicroFilter on the Vapur water bottle is a light weight, chemical free water filtration system that removes over 99.9999% of all waterborne bacteria (such as Salmonella, Cholera and E. coli) and 99.9% of protozoa (including Cryptosporidium and Giardia).
This is the same filtration of the Life Straw and in reality, is built almost exactly like a Life Straw.
The Vapur MicroFilter is capable of filtering 500 liters of water before needing to be replaced. This means that the filter will last you many camping trips and uses.
Did you knowit is recommended that the average adult drinks roughly 2.6 liters of water per day? So if you used the Vapur MicroFilter to filter all of you water and you consumed the recommended quantity of water every day, the filter would last you over half a year!
The Water Bottle
The water bottle is actually not a bottle at all but more of an incredibly durable and re-useable water bag (although Vapur does refer to it as a bottle due to it’s durability). The bag stands straight up when full of water but can be folded and/or rolled and packed away when not in use.
The weight of this bottle (with filter) is 2.7 ounces which is far less then any rigid water bottle (even without a filter). Along with the added benefit of being able to be packed into a tight pack, this bottle hands down beats any rigid bottle available.
The bottle is also dishwasher safe, BPA free, comes with a clip to latch it onto your pack (or any other area you can clip to) and has a Super Cap which seals the top to prevent contamination (something the Life Straw cannot offer).
The Complete Package
When you combine the Vapur MicroFilter and Water Bottle you get the perfect companion to any outdoor activity that requires you to be filtering your own water.
With the Vapur you can safely drink from lakes, rivers, streams and tap water.
Using The Vapur MicroFilter Bottle In The BWCA
I recently took a week long trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota and brought along the Vapur MircoFilter and water bottle as my main source for drinking water.
The bottle and filter worked better than I could have expected. While canoeing I was able to fill the bottle straight from the lake without stopping, drink as necessary and clip the bottle onto the thwart (the cross bar) with the clip while paddling.
While we were camping, we filled a 2.5 gallon jug with filtered water from our Katadyn gravity filter so we could use clean water for cooking, drinking and cleaning without having to go back to the lake. During this time I either kept my Vapur bottle out and just kept drinking from it as normal or rolled it up and packed it neatly into my Granite Gear Portage Pack.
When we portaged (carried our Wenonah Canoesand gear from one lake to another through the woods on small trails), I made sure to top off my bottle right before we reached the portage and then clipped it onto my portage pack during the hike.
The Vapur MicroFilter water bottle allowed me to have clean filtered water at all times during our trip without any extra weight or without the loss of valuable packing space.
It is also worth noting that the Vapur added no flavor or chemical taste to my water, it actually tasted fantastic.
Complaints
One complaint that I have read from reviewers online is that it can be hard to suck water through this filter. I did find this true but I also have experienced the exact same issue with the Life Straw water filter. This is something that is unavoidable due to the water having to pass through their filtration system.
This complaint actually quickly turns into another advantage point for the Vapur vs. the Life Straw though. With the Vapur filter also having the attached non-rigid water bottle, I was able to squeeze the bottle as I drank, thus squeezing the water out of the bottle and through the water filter into my mouth. This made drinking the water acceptably easy and quickly eliminated the complain of being hard to suck.
A Quick Overview Of Vapur
If you have never heard of Vapur, they are a California based company that was founded in 2009. They wanted reduce the waste that disposable water bottles were creating by offering a better solution than the typical rigid water bottle.
Their idea was to create a water bottle that was durable, dishwasher safe and able to be compact and convenient.
Their product was the Vapur Anti-Bottle, which is a water bottle that will stand straight up when full and also able to be rolled and placed into a pocket or bag when not in use, thus taking up far less space then a normal water bottle.
These bottles quickly became popular with the backpacking and camping community due to their light weight, small packing volume and durability.
In Conclusion
The Vapur MicroFilter Water Bottle currently sells for $39.99 on Amazon. When you factor that a good water bottle costs roughly $20 but consists of more weight and is not nearly as convenient and then throw on the high quality water filter, I think that the Vapur delivers a lot of value through it’s convenience and capabilities.
