Guide 3 min
Do you need to filter water? The rule: from night one
On a day hike, the 1.5 L you carry is often enough. From your first night out, treat it: filter, tablets or boiling. One clear rule.
Do you need to filter water? You don't decide by looking at it, you decide by the trip. On a day hike, you carry your water: 1.5 L, and 2 L once it hits 22 °C. You drink what you brought from home, and the question of treating it barely comes up.
From your first night out, the rule changes. You can't carry it all any more, so you draw water on the spot and you treat it: filter, tablets or boiling. WildKit advises a way to treat water from 1 night. And a filter or a pack of tablets counts as 1: you don't pack one per litre.
On a day hike, the water you carry settles it
A day hike runs on the water you bring. The rule of thumb is simple: 1.5 L, and 2 L once the forecast reaches 22 °C. You know this water: filled at home or at a tap. No doubtful source, so nothing to treat.
The day you pass a marked water point, you top up. The rest of the time, what's in your bag is enough for the trip.
From your first night, water gets treated
Spend one night out and the numbers flip. You drink more, you cook, you rinse a little. Carrying all that water from home weighs the bag down for nothing (see the target weight per trip). So you draw it on the spot, from a stream or a lake, and that's where you treat it before drinking.
That's why WildKit brings the filter into your list from 1 night. The first-night checklist files it with the items people forget most often.
Water by trip type, at a glance
| Trip type | Water you carry | Treat it? |
|---|---|---|
| Day hike | 1.5 L, 2 L from 22 °C | often needless |
| 1 night or more | what you carry isn't enough | yes |
The tipping point isn't the colour of the water or the altitude: it's the night. One night out, and treatment goes into the bag.
One way to treat, not one per litre
Filter, tablets or boiling: you pick your method, but you pack just one. The same one serves the whole trip. So WildKit counts it as 1, a single item in the bag, never one per litre drunk. It weighs little, and it settles the water for all your nights at once.
What to remember
- On a day hike, you carry your water: 1.5 L, 2 L from 22 °C. Treatment is often needless.
- From your first night out, you draw water on the spot and you treat it: filter, tablets or boiling.
- One way to treat counts as 1, never one per litre.
As soon as you add a night to your trip, water stops being a weight you carry and becomes an item you treat. Tell the configurator how many nights you're out, and the filter appears in your list the moment it counts, not before.
A guide WildKit keeps up to date. Published .