Canteens and Hydration Bladders

Hydration: basic stuff of anyone leaving home. The most primitive form is to carry a water bottle, but nowadays the consumer has a choice between a bottle and a very handy hydration bladder.

The water bottle

A basic canteen is easy to pack, use and clean. Usually takes around 1 litre / quart of water. We got army surplus canteens and new ones.

A good companion for a drinking bladder as it's much easier to pour out water from a bottle than from a bladder.

Hydration pack

Ahh, the modern way of drinking on the move is of course the hydration pack. Although water containers carried on the back are an age-old invention, at some point someone decided to add a tube to it so the water could be drank directly from the reservoir.

Hydration pack and a hydration bladder are sort of two different things; the pack usually means the combination of a bladder and its carrying pack or the pack only. The bladder means the reservoir itself.