I also use a Steripen Freedom, but haven't done a large through hike like you guys are planning. How are you going to recharge the battery while on the trail?
Same question for flashlights?
I'm assuming you'll have backup water purification.
SteriPen Power
Nick
Answers and Replies
Damien Tougas 953
Nick
Thanks for the reply Damien! I've thought about bringing a solar panel + rechargeable battery pack for a longer hike, I like the sustainability of it. Granted I only have two mouths to water. I've found that we needed to recharge our SteriPen freedom once during a 6 night trip and a charged battery pack eliminated the unneeded weight of the solar panel.
I'm looking forward to the gear list and will be following your project. Good luck planning!
Damien Tougas 953
Thanks! Did you see the gear list we have posted here? http://www.toesalad.com/articles/family-thru-hike-gear-list/ It's a work in progress...
Hey Nick, that is a great question. We are actually approaching our strategy from a few different angles:
As you may (or may not) know, StrePEN is a sponsor of ours. Since there are five of us, we will need to consume a rather large quantity of water on a daily basis. To help with this, they are providing us with 3 pens (1 Freedom, and 2 Emergency). The Emergency uses AA batteries and gets more treatments per set. Since we will hit a town every 4 or 5 days, we can replenish AA batteries as needed. If we run out of AA battery power between towns, we can still re-charge the Freedom (more on that below). In addition to the SteriPENs, we will also have Aqua Mira drops as a backup, and some Aqua Mira tablets for emergency use.
Because we are filming our trek, we are going to have a certain amount of technology (cameras, audio recorder, etc.) to bring with us as well. All those things will use battery power. To be able to maintain power along the trail we will be bringing a couple USB battery packs with us that can charge anything with a USB plug. We can use the same battery pack to recharge the camera or the SteriPEN Freedom. This is all extra weight, but a necessary evil for us to be able to capture the trek on film.
SteriPEN also makes a solar charged battery pack that you can get for the Freedom, which might make sense for some people. We have opted not to bring it though since it doesn't have enough capacity to charge multiple devices.