Headlamps and the night you did not plan for

The headtorch is the piece of equipment with the widest gap between how little it weighs and how much it matters. It converts a benightment from an emergency into an inconvenience, and its absence turns a routine descent into a situation.

Carry one on every trip, including short ones

The days people get caught out are not the big days. They are the short afternoon outings where nobody thought a torch was necessary, and then a route took longer than expected or someone twisted an ankle.

A small torch weighs less than a bar of chocolate. There is no trip where it is not worth taking.

Understanding the specifications

Lumens measure total light output. They are the number manufacturers advertise and they are the least useful for choosing. High lumen counts are typically achievable only on a boost setting that runs for a very short time before the torch steps down to protect the battery.

Beam distance and beam pattern matter more. A wide flood is right for close work, camp, cooking, reading a map and technical tasks. A focused spot is right for route-finding, spotting cairns and looking down a descent. Most useful torches offer both, or a hybrid.

Regulated output is worth paying for. An unregulated torch dims steadily as the battery drains; a regulated one holds a constant brightness and then drops off. Constant brightness through the useful life is far more practical.

Burn time at a usable setting is the number to compare. Manufacturers quote burn times at the lowest setting, which may be barely enough to see your feet. Look for the figure at a mid setting.

Rechargeable or replaceable

Genuine trade-off, and the correct answer depends on the trip.

Rechargeable is cheaper over time, lighter, and fine for day trips where you charge at home. It is a liability on a multi-day trip without power, and lithium cells lose capacity substantially in cold.

Replaceable cells mean you can carry spares and swap in seconds, in the dark, with no power source. For expeditions, winter trips and anything remote, this is still the more robust choice. Lithium primary cells perform much better than alkaline in cold and weigh less, at a higher price.

Several torches take either, which is the sensible compromise.

Cold destroys batteries

Battery capacity falls sharply as temperature drops, and a torch that runs for hours in a warm room may last a fraction of that at altitude in winter.

Keep spares in an inside pocket against your body. If a torch dies in the cold, warming the batteries in your hands or against your skin will often bring back some life, which is a genuinely useful field trick.

Use it well

Use the lowest setting that works. Full brightness destroys your night vision, and adapted eyes see remarkably well in moonlight or even starlight. A dim red or low white setting for map reading preserves adaptation.

Do not shine it in people's faces. One thoughtless head turn removes someone's night vision for several minutes, which on technical ground is a real problem.

Angle it down. A beam pointing straight ahead lights the horizon and leaves your feet in shadow with no contrast. Tilting it down produces shadows that reveal texture, which is what lets you see ground.

Fog, snow and rain reflect light back at you. In those conditions a bright beam is worse than a dim one. Turn it down and, if you have one, use a lower angle or a hand-held light held low and to the side.

Redundancy

On any trip where being out after dark is plausible, two light sources. The second can be tiny — a keyring light or a phone — but the phone is also your communication device, and burning its battery for illumination is a poor trade.

In a group, everyone carries their own. Sharing one torch between three people descending technical ground is slow and dangerous.

Practise moving at night

Descending a familiar trail in the dark with a torch is a genuinely different experience from doing it in daylight: distances distort, familiar landmarks vanish, and route-finding is much harder. Doing it once deliberately, on easy ground, removes most of the surprise.

People who have never travelled at night find the first involuntary experience of it disorienting in a way that adds significantly to their stress at exactly the wrong moment. An hour of voluntary practice removes that.