Gear Review: Sawyer’s Fast Fill Hydration Pack Adapter

Before I left for the Long Trail in May, I made an order with Sawyer for a Sawyer Squeeze water filter, but they accidentally sent me a Mini filter. After straightening out the confusion and receiving the Squeeze, I sent back the Mini. I left for the trail thinking everything was settled and happy with my new purchase, only to get a text from my mom 2 weeks in saying I had another package from Sawyer.

I guess they hadn’t expected me to send back the Mini, and decided they’d send me some other stuff. The Fast Fill Hydration Pack Adapter was one of those items.

As a hiker who uses a bladder 90% of the time and doesn’t enjoy the balancing act that was filtering water into it, I was excited to try it out. So here’s my review.

This adapter gets a 4 out of 5 star rating.

It requires a bit of installing at first, but once you’ve made a cut in your bladder’s hose – about 2-3″ from the bite valve – and inserted a male attachment on the bite valve side and a female on the bladder side, you’re done with your installation.

If you’re installing this to a used hose, I recommend cleaning the hose before you put in the attachments.

The adapter is easy to use, it’s as simple as screwing the sports cap top off of the filter, screwing the adapter top, popping the bite valve section of your hose off and popping the filter on.

You are now free to filter away.

The 3 things I like most about this attachment are:

– I no longer have to find a seat and balance the bladder’s opening between my legs while trying to squeeze water through the filter
– no more struggling to get your bladder out of (and back into) a packed backpack!
– no dirty water in my bladder.

I would watch out for:

– over filling your bladder; it’s now pretty hard to tell how full it is because it’s probably still tucked away in your pack (where it should be).
– if you have to refill the bottle/bag you are squeezing, you’ll have to pop off the squeeze/attachment; the hose will have water in it, so it’ll leak a bit.

A good way to make sure you aren’t over filling, would be to put a hand down next to your bladder and get a feel for how full it is. I know it sounds simple, but the first time I used the attachment I didn’t do that and almost overfilled my bladder. Thankfully you will feel some resistance while you’re squeezing if you get to the “full” point, so make sure you’re paying attention to that as well – resistance = full.

The water that will be in the tube isn’t all to important (it’s not like all the water in your bladder is going to come out), so if you let it drop and water starts dripping out, dont worry too much about it. I’m only warning you about this so that you don’t dribble on any important gear.

This attachment obviously adds a bit of weight (all negligible in my book, but I’ll get you all the 0.? oz’s as soon as I can), and the Sawyer Squeeze itself isn’t the lightest filter out there – but from my use of both the Squeeze and Sawyer Mini, I can tell you that the Squeeze is worth the extra weight (that’s a whole other reveiw). If you are like me and love your hydration systems, this attachment will come in handy. And it can be purchased for under $10.