More thoughts on water

I am a big fan of versatility. For backpacking, lightweight solutions are great, and of course redundancy is important when it comes to emergencies. The purification tablets that I carry in my survival kit allow for viruses, which almost no inline/straw type filters do. The only exception is the aquamira frontier max, which is undesirable in a variety of ways, not least because of its very limited connection style.

So I've settled on the HydroBlu versa flow. It allows a bottle or bladder to be threaded into either side, but still has hose barbs on both ends; maximum connection versatility. It's very light, lighter even than the sawyer micro. I'm interested to see if a bottle or bladder of clean water can be used to backflush it. The same company also manufactures an add-on combination activated charcoal/ ion exchange filter that's good for 150 gallons and removes heavy metals and chemicals. About all I might want to add on is a prefilter for large sediments.

As for containers, I'd like some of my water to be in collapsible containers to minimize sloshing around; these would be (hopefully) on the front straps of my bag or vest. I'm leaning towards 500 or 600 mL hydrapak bottles, which would also give me the flexibility to move to the befree from Katadyn. With two of them, I'd be carrying roughly 40 extra grams over using small smart water bottles, but the lack of sloshing around is worth it. Ideally, these bottles would be for clean water only; with $14 and 25 grams worth of accessories, I could even hang one of them from a 28mm screw filter to accept gravity flow (and use them to backflush such a filter).

1-1.2 liters of water is not really enough for a lot of situations, though. Also, it would be desirable to have at least one container that's not collapsible, in order to try out the use of an aspirator to obtain, and possibly prefilter, water from sources too shallow or inaccessible to dip a container into. 1-liter smart water bottles fit the bill perfectly; light, cheap, moderately rigid, and they fit the Hydroblu filter. They weigh something like 40 grams (I should buy one to weigh and clean), so I can easily carry two (one for clean water and another for dirty water). Sloshing shouldn't be an issue, since I would only carry them either empty or full most of the time. If I really find myself wanting a collapsible one liter bottle, hydrapac and cnoc both make soft 1-liter container in the 60 gram range with 28mm threads.

All told, between the versa flow, a charcoal filter, a pair of 600 mL ultraflasks, and a pair of 1-liter smart water bottles, I'd be looking at 3.2 liters of water storage, filtration for most things except viruses, and a total weight of about 300 grams. Another 25 grams would give me a gravity filter option/ ability to backflush with an ultraflask. If I decide to only carry one smart water bottle, and thus not have a clean one, these adapter would be wise to carry to ensure I can backflush. I'm not sure how much a siphon arrangement would add.

Anyway, on another note, keto doesn't seem to have seriously compromised my running pace. And I weight in at 87.5kg this morning. That's probably a bit low, but it still seems to represent a solid 2 kg in two weeks of dieting. At this pace, I should comfortable achieve my target weight by mid-march, and juuuust about use up the keto chow that I have now.