Originally Posted by
HooKooDooKu
Sawyer's are so inexpensive that when I start having a problem, I toss them and buy a new one.
I too have headed out with my Sawyer after winter storage and forgot to test it. I fortunately use it in a gravity mode where the water goes from a dirty water bladder thru the filter, then a hose to the clean water bladder. I was able to rig something up so that the dirty water was near the top of my pack and the clean near the bottom and over the course of hiking a few miles got my 2L of water to filter.
You say you always backflush with distilled water. I wonder if the issue is that you are filtering very hard water and you didn't back flush enough to get the water that always remains in the filter to be diluted enough that there were still enough minerals to clog the filter.