The humble water bottle can appear to be quite an innocuous subject on the surface, i mean all it does is carry water, right? Out of the thousands of options on the market, does it really matter which one you go for? Do you even need a water bottle if you have a camelbak?
For us, at Three Degrees South, there is a clear winner when it comes to water bottles and that is the 1 litre (32oz) Nalgene Wide Mouth Water Bottle.
Why?
Ok, let’s go deeper.
It gets cold on the mountain, that goes without saying. If you’re the kind of person that prefers a little extra warmth at night, you can fill your Nalgene with boiling water and boom! You have yourself a hot water bottle. Even better, by morning it’s down to a temperature you can use to brush your teeth, wash your face or just drink during the morning.
During your summit bid, unless you have an insulated bottle, your water bottle WILL freeze - 100% guaranteed (see video below) - even your wide mouth Nalgene. The best way to counteract this is to put your bottle upside down in your side pouch. This way it will freeze around the bottom (which is now the top) first. It doesn’t completely stop it from freezing, but it does delay it and makes it easier to break through the ice when it does.
(The video below was taken back at basecamp, 3 hours after summiting)
When climbing with Three Degrees South, your safety is our top priority. From the day we meet you until the day we leave the mountain we conduct medical checks twice a day to make sure we know exactly what your body is going through. One of the questions we ask you is: how much water have you had to drink during the day. With a Nalgene it’s super easy to work out exactly how much you have drunk because the bottles are see through and have the measurements up the side.
Our recommendation: Carry two 1 litre Nalgenes on you and drink 2 litres in the morning and 2 in the afternoon as a bare minimum. If you feel like going that little bit extra, grab yourself a baby Nalgene (½ litre / 16oz) wide mouth water bottle. These are great for putting coffee in and keeping in an inside pocket for an extra bit of heat direct to the chest. Lush!
Now then, we should probably address the “pee bottle” comment. There are many among the mountaineer community that have an aversion to getting up during the night to relieve themselves. We can only imagine the wide mouth comes in handy in these cases…Nalgene also does a glow in the dark version to help you know which is the correct bottle to use! We’re pretty sure they only made the glow in the dark version to make it easier to find in the middle of the night though…we’ll let you decide.
A quick note on Camelbaks.
Although Camelbaks are extremely popular and certainly have their place, in our opinion, that is not on the mountain. I am yet to take a group where a camelbak has not leaked, split or become unusable during the trip; and when this happens, you have a bag of wet kit, which is far from ideal, and potentially no vessel to drink water out of.
It is also extremely hard to keep the mouthpiece clean, which can lead to stomach bugs if not done properly. This is also not ideal. Even with an insulated sleeve, the tube will freeze very quickly during the summit bid - yes, you can try the blowback method to keep the tube empty of water, but that will give you an extra 5 minutes!
Having a bladder of water in your backpack makes it very hard to keep track of how much you drink. In some cases, clients believe they have drunk continuously only to find the bladder two-thirds full at the end of the day or, in the opposite scenario, run out of water a lot quicker than they anticipated.They are only good for water and can’t be used for anything else and if that wasn’t enough, they also take a lot more maintenance over the long run and are just not worth the effort when life is so much easier with a physical water bottle.
We hope you have found this guide useful. Feel free to get in touch if you have any comments or questions.
