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I was using a Platypus 2.0L Hoser as my daily hydration system so I decided to leave the clean side bladder at home and use the hoser in its place, this brought the weight of the system down to 221g, which is reasonable for piece of mind and ease of use. There are certainly pump action filters that are lighter than this but they take quite a bit of effort to get the same filtered result.

The Gravityworks is certainly easy to use and fast to filter even dirty water. I was forced to filter water filled with glacial silt and the filter coped with it with no discernable reduction in the flow rate. When I got home I back flushed the filter and the silt came out so there must have been some reduction in performance but with the 4L that I filtered the impact on performance was negligible.

One point to note is that you really need the right height of branch to hang it from, the connections won’t stand 2 litres of water hanging freely from the filter, the clean side bladder needs to be supported in some manner. There are enough adaptors in the ‘complete kit’ to allow you to fix the outlet tube to virtually any water container, but if you have one that’s different you can just put the tube in the spout.

So, its easy to use and quick to have your water ready to drink, it has an easy backflushing mechanism which you can carry out while on the trail to keep the flow rate up to scratch. The only real drawback is during the day, it’s a bit of a palaver to get the kit out in order to top up your water bottle and there’s not always a handy tree, you can work round this by perhaps only refilling your bladder once during the day, at lunchtime, though this depends on how much you need to drink and the prevailing conditions eg hot and sunny vs wet.

Its an excellent piece of kit with a nice pouch to keep the parts organised and the Dirty bladder away from the Clean parts.

Mark Richardson
Mark was the founder of Ultralight Outdoor Gear back in 2006 and has completed long distance backpacking routes in some of the remotest parts of the world. His favourite hikes have been Torres del Paine (full circuit), the John Muir trail and the Markha Valley trail (Ladakh, India). Although semi-retired Mark has not lost any enthusiasm for minimalist backpacking and is tackling Scotland’s Munros choosing multi-day backpacking routes over the more usual guide book excursions. Read more from Mark Richardson