When it comes to hydration packs, I admit that I am a rookie. I enjoy camping sites that are road accessible. With a family of five, all our excursions have adventure built in. While camping, we enjoy fishing, hiking and biking but these adventures rarely last over several hours. For hydration, we usually bring water bottles- lots of water bottles. So when I was asked to review the Geigerrig RIG 500 hydration pack, I agreed although I wasn’t sure a hydration pack would benefit me and my family.

Hydration. When I heard that the Geigerrig pack has a pressurized system, I was intrigued. I like that you can share water from one pack with the entire family because you don’t have to suck on the valve like you do with other hydration systems. Sharing one pack means less clutter and gear to carry. After all, who do you think ends up carrying the extra water bottles, sunglasses and other items? By the way, these fit nicely into the pack as well.

Sharing water with the Geigerrig Hydration System

Hygiene. I love that you can use this system to rinse off dirty little hands before they go into the child’s mouth (especially important with a thumb sucker). Kids’ hands get dirty while engaging in outdoor activities, especially when we are fishing, between the worms and the fish- you get the picture. We bring hand sanitizer but we really need clean water to rinse the grime from our hands.

Rinsing out cuts. With kids, cuts, scrapes and other injuries are a given. With the Geigerrig packs we are able to flush these cuts immediately. You can’t do that with the other packs which require you to suck on the valve.

Cooling down the kiddos. The summers around here are hot. The pressurized system allows you to squirt some water on the kids to cool them down. This is important not only for camping families but also for kids involved in team sports.

Washing Up With a Pressurized Hydration Pack

Hydration Packs For Team Sports

So you’ve never heard of using hydration systems for team sports? Of course not, who wants their child sucking on the same hydration valve as all the other kids? But thanks to the pressurized Geigerrig system, it’s a whole new ballgame.

However, hydration is not the main reason I see a need for the Geigerrig hydration pack for sports teams. On the little league fields (baseball, football, soccer, etc…) the coaches instruct the kids to drink lots of water throughout the day, during the activity and after the activity. All the kids bring their own water bottles to the fields.

So why would we need a hydration system for team sports?

To cool down the kids. When is the last time you saw a tree in the middle of a baseball field? Exactly. There’s no shade on sports fields. It’s hot out there. Keeping the kids cool while they are playing sports is so important. Think of the little baseball players who play in tournaments over a weekend. What about the young football players, who play with full pads and helmets- practice starts in August and the heat is extreme. With the pressurized system, one coach can cool down the kids during practice or while there are time-outs on the field and while he is at it, he can hydrate them also. This is revolutionary. You would be surprised at all the ways people attempt to keep the kids cool during sports events because they don’t know about the Geigerrig hydration system- yet.

Keeping Cool.

What We Are Not So Crazy About

Ummm. Well… I looked really hard for a negative, but I didn’t find one. Well, except for the fact that your kids will drive you crazy wanting to carry the backpack. Not only do adults think it’s cool, but kids think it is the ultimate water gun.

The Geigerrig RIG 500 hydration pack is very well made. It takes what you think you know about hydration and stretches is to the outer limits. Other systems seem like stripped down versions once you have experienced this over-the-top hydration pack with every bell and whistle imaginable. While other packs allow you to drink water, the Geigerrig packs allow you to drink your water, share your water, wash up, clean out wounds, filter water from a stream and drink it and allows you to clean the bladder in a dishwasher.

If you are looking for a hydration pack that may be shared and is very versatile, the Geigerrig hydration systems are the only hydration packs on the market today that can meet all of these needs.

What ways could you use a pressure stream of water while on your outdoor family adventures? Could you use a pressurized hydration system on your next camping trip?

The Geigerrig RIG 500 Hydration pack was sent to me to review by the manufacturer. The opinions in this post are my own.

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