Gear Review: LifeSaver WayFarer Filter

In February 2023 I was grateful to receive a WayFarer water filter from Icon Lifesaver to use on expeditions and courses here in the UK. It’s seen just over two years of use now, so I’d thought I’d share a few thoughts on how it’s performed.

This pump filter solves for me one of the critical control points in water treatment that many other filters stumble over: disconnecting the potentially contaminated supply water with the filtered drinking water. It seems an obvious consideration, however several filters on the market operate by having you dunk the filter or a component of the ultimate drinking vessel into the dirty water supply to fill them. The Grayl bottles, Katadn BeFree, and LiveSavers’ own Liberty Bottles would be examples of this.

Whilst not a deal breaker (I have and regularly use all these examples very happily), you do have to give some consideration to the likely contaminants, concentration levels, and hand and kit hygiene during use.

The Wayfarer for me comfortably solves this issue and for this amongst other reasons is why this filter has become my ‘go-to’ expedition filter for group use.

Operation:

The system includes a long length of dark hosing, the Scavenger Hose, which you throw to the water supply such as a stream or lake. This hose has a plastic pre filter at the end with a fine metal screen to help reduce sediment and turbidity from being sucked into the filter itself. At this the Wayfarer excels, I’ve had other filters clog up almost instantly as the source water was just too cloudy for the element to handle, and always detail the value in prefiltering when teaching on our Bushcraft Courses. When I’ve been in very heavily silted waters, I’ve even tied my Brown’s Filter Bag to the end of the Scavenger Hose to add an even better pre filter option. This is easy to do as the hose is plenty long enough.

My only issue with the Scavenger Hose is that it tends to float to the surface in flowing water and so you can end up sucking up some air with the water. A minor point, and one solved easily by adding a bit of weight such as a fishing weight to the end of the hose. There is a foam float provided with the Scavenger hose too, which you can slide to the correct depth in still water so that the end of the hose is suspended in the water and stops you sucking up silt from the bottom of the pool.

I keep the Scavenger Hose in a zip lock bag during trips, and attach it during use. It’s then detached after all the water is filtered and in this way we have a CCP to maintain a break between the dirty water supply and the drinking water end of the system. The short clean water hose which outputs into water bottles etc I tend to leave attached to the filter.

The Wayfarer is a pump filter, with a short plunger to draw water up through the fine filter element. This is easy to do while holding the filter in your hands, or even easier when you can rest the filter on a rock for example. This is another reason why I prefer this particular devise for group use, as it requires very little physical effort to operate.

The filter is fast enough to be practical during trips, and the steady stream of clean water flows out of the clean hose to fill up as many bottles as needed. Because the filter isn’t also part of a drinking vessel it means we can fill everyone’s bottles without cross contamination.

Summary:

Having used the WayFarer filter for two years now I feel I’ve really got to see how this robust system works in several scenarios. We’ve supplied general drinking water during week-long canoe trips for 10 people at a time with it, we’ve had it running in the cold and rain as well as high August sun, and soon it will be coming to the Jungle of the Amazon for it’s first Southern Hemisphere trip with me.

It’s a dependable option when you know you need to reply of a filter for the majority of your drinking water, especially when you’re wanting to fill up several drinking vessels. It’s ability to operate when the water in turbid, and being able to wrap a bandana or pre filter bag directly to the end of the Scavenger Hose, means you have a dependable option in all conditions. It’s not the lightweight option you may choose for personal use on mountain treks, but in all other areas I prefer this to many options available.

Jamie Dakota - Howl Chief Instructor.