Canmore, early morning. The air smells of pine needles and cold stone, the Three Sisters still shrouded in mist. We’ve been on the road for two and a half weeks, from Canmore through Banff and the Icefield Parkway to Jasper, and we’ve set ourselves a list of challenging hikes: Tentridge Horseshoe, Sentinel Pass above Moraine Lake, Lake Louise. Long days, lots of elevation gain, and every other corner a stream, a lake, or a glacial meltwater inviting you to just dip your hand in.

The problem with these waters: they all look like they’re straight out of a still-water ad, crystal clear, ice-cold, photogenic. What you can't see are the inhabitants called Giardia (bacteria), which can thoroughly ruin the rest of your vacation. So either you carry enough drinking water for the whole day from the start, which adds considerable weight to your shoulders on 18 kilometers and 900 meters of elevation, or you find a better solution.

Our better solution was the QOOL Bottle. It has a built-in UV lamp that disinfects water in 180 seconds, allowing us to refill at almost every source instead of lugging all our daily water needs from the beginning. Dip the bottle into the water, wait three minutes, and move on. No filtering, no boiling, no anxious eyeing of the stream.

The practical test on the first long trail: Teahouse Trail at Lake Louise

We tested it most intensively at Lake Louise, a trail where you're highly motivated in the parking lot and after two hours start questioning every unnecessary item in your backpack. Steep ascents, short snowfields, halfway a stream, clearly too beautiful to walk past. Dipped the bottle in, a three-minute break that was needed anyway, and off we went with a full tank instead of an empty bottle and a guilty conscience.

Sentinel Pass, Tentridge Horseshoe: More of the same, with even better views

The remaining tours followed a similar, very pleasant pattern. At Floe Lake, emerald green and framed by the almost vertically rising mountain wall, there were enough small glacial meltwaters to refill. At Sentinel Pass, high alpine with views of the Ten Peaks, there were snowfields and meltwater streams. Everywhere the same principle: don't plan in advance how much water you can carry, but refill along the way wherever there is water.

Our conclusion after two and a half weeks

Neither of us are ultralight fanatics who weigh every gram in our backpacks, but eventually you realize how liberating it is not to constantly ration water or plan ahead. The QOOL Bottle, the 500ml for shorter days and the new 750ml for longer stages, made exactly that possible. More trail and less luggage.