Oh yes… the gratuitous upgrade I made prior to the West Coast Trail trip last year.

I traded in our Black Diamond LED Headlamps for these little suckers.

Total weight savings? The old headlamps weight an outrageous 1.1 oz, and these are only 0.2 oz. A whopping 0.9oz gain!

OK… I agree I'm getting into diminishing returns on my gear list and would be better served eliminating the Tarptent for a sheet of Tyvek. 🙂

So why the upgrade? Aside from just being a gear-head, there were are few other justifications:

1. Not just a simple on|off flash light – this thing is tricked out! It has a brightness control and you can dim it very low to conserve power. It has various 'blinking' modes – like an emergency SOS signal. All of this configuration with just a single button.

2. It runs for 120 hrs on a single battery.

3. The spare batteries are lighter.

4. With a little tab of Velcro on the back, it attaches easily to the rim on a hat to make a decent hands-free head-lamp mode.

5. It's bomb-proof and waterproof.

Finally… if you think about getting this – a word of caution. The light ships in a 'safety' mode to prevent accidental battery drain. If you turn it on, it auto-shuts off after 5 seconds. To get it out of this mode you have to hold the button down for a whopping 20 seconds. I learned this the hard way on the WCT. Three engineers around a campfire failed to figure this out in four nights on the trail. You wouldn't think that a single button can have so many permutations! Moral of the story: RTFM.

Available from PhotonLight.com for $19.95.