Blinded by the light

Against a torrent of snowflakes falling fat and furious, the power of technology became a curse. Hundreds of lumens of light from the headlamp banged into billions of ice crystals that reflected every beam back toward its origin.

It was hard to decide which of the two end results were worse -- the lack of light on the trail ahead or the blinding reflection. Twenty-five years ago, this would never have been a problem. Headlamps then were pretty lame, even the ones everyone and their uncle pumped up with high-watt halogen bulbs and big battery packs needed to keep those high-draw bulbs burning for hours.

Some even went to over-volting bulbs to get more light, which worked quite nicely for a limited time. The bulbs burned bright because the tiny filament wires inside were glowing hotter. Of course, because they glowed hotter, they burned out a lot faster.

Thus one always had to carry extra bulbs. Nobody carries extra bulbs now. I don't know that they would do you any good if you did. All the LEDs I've examined closely needed to be taken apart with jewelers tools. These are not lights you would want to be messing with in the field. There tend to be too many small screws too easy to lose.

Messing with them, though, shouldn't be required because solid-state LED arrays are said to last almost forever. I don't know if they do. I do know they have no filament to burn out. I know that most of them work great, although if improperly designed they can pretty easily overheat. Some have a heat-activated "safety" switch to turn them off before they fry in these circumstances.

I had an old LED headlamp like that. It would run for about a minute before shut-down. Then it had to cool for several minutes before it would come back on. Needless to say, it was little used. It's probably still around the house somewhere, but I haven't stumbled across it for a long time. There are enough functional headlamps there's no sense worrying about the dysfunctional one.

I own a Princeton Tec Apex that has been in use for tens of thousands of hours over the course of several winters and is still going strong despite a crack in the lens case. I wouldn't call it my favorite light, but for some reason it's the one I grab most often when heading out the door for a quick run, ski or snowshoe.

Still, my favorite lite is a Dinotte bike light converted for use as a headlamp. At about 220 grams in weight, it has half the heft of the Princeton Tec, but pumps out twice the light. Unfortunately, the factory-installed switch has never worked worth beans. I sent it back once to get the switch replaced. The new switch lasted less than a month. Then it started misfiring.

I gave up on the switch and wired the light to a battery pack with a switch on it.The battery pack holds four AA batteries and conveniently fits in the pocket of a vest where the rechargeable NiMH batteries stay efficiently warm in the cold.

The only problem with this conversion is that the factory switch had high, medium, low and blinking functions. The light, as jury-rigged, has only an off-on function, which is usually all one needs. At least until that night when a lot of light is too much light, and a little light would be better because your night vision is all shot to hell from staring into a blinding light display reflected off an icy wall of snowflakes only inches in front of your face.

In these circumstances, it is almost better to go light-less, but once you've gone and messed up your night vision with a big blast of light, it takes quite a while to get it back. Technology is our friend -- when it works.

Long before technology, of course, humankind somehow managed to get around in the dark, and if you practice at it you still can. I know a few mountain-runner and musher types who've largely given up on lights in most circumstances and sort of gone back to nature.