I haven't hiked anywhere that arid, but I have been building up a system that needs some testing. I splurged on a CamelBak, and I have some old ALICE web gear I can rig with either surplus canteens or a Nalgene bottle hydration hose system. $30 is better than $300.
Let me know how that works. ALICE rig might actually be helpful, with my camera bag I can't really do much with a CamelBak but that'd at least let me carry more water.
Lol, the $300 ones are for when you need something for both backpacking and photography. There's areas that I want to explore that'll take a good bit of hiking to even get to.
Now that I've had some sleep ALICE is sounding better and better. At least the belt and suspenders setup, now just to find it, the army surplus situation around here is surprisingly bad considering our proximity to Fort Knox. Thank you sir!
There are commercial harnesses and belts, too. If you can stomach Amazon, the Condor brand might be a decent balance of budget and durability. Sporting goods stores might have Blackhawk on the shelf. The downside to any of these is potentially looking like a tryhard mall ninja, but they seem to be going for chest rigs and tactical vest systems these days.
I'll probably just stick to surplus kit, it'll go well with my BDUs that already make the city slickers nervous. On a side note, did you know that BDUs/ACUs/whatever the hell they're calling them now are impregnated with permethrin? Was picking wild blackberries years ago and noticed that I was finding a lot less ticks on me than my friend who wasn't wearing BDUs, did some research and discovered that. Now I try to wear them in the woods anytime the weather will permit.
Tryhard mall ninja, that's a good one. We just call'em LARPers, may have to start using that one too. Yeah, it was a lot easier to find the vests and chest rigs than ALICE stuff when I looked online today but I have no use for either the look or the gear, it'd just interfere with my camera stuff.
According to Wikipedia, permethrin is also useful as a single-application topical remedy for scabies. The much-maligned ivermectin requires two doses some time apart for equal effect. Huh. And it does mention the US and UK are both impregnating uniforms with permethrin.
Any idea how old your gear is? I'd like to now how good that is long-term. There's a commercial spray-on product suggesting 6 weeks or 6 washings, but an impregnated fabric would presumably be more effective long-term, and the instructions there might be more about selling bottles that a real decrease in effectiveness.
It was probably ten years old when I discovered that. When I was trying to find out more about it I came across some DoD regs that require it to last for the life of the uniform which they equated to 50 washings. Even after that it supposedly only losses effectiveness slowly. When I noticed it with my BDUs it was well past the 50 washings mark, so it seems that's likely to be true. It's definitely more effective than the spray-on stuff, that's why the DoD made the switch.