Real World Scenario

When did you wish you had more lumens and looking back which light would you have chosen?

Camp Nelson Dodd. Summer, 1956. I was nine.
It was a dark and stormy night.
I had to go real baaad. The latrine was
down a steeply sloped path about two hundred
yards away. There were rumors of venomous snakes
lurking in the rafters there. Had my RayOVac
two C cell with me....At that moment in my life, I would
have preferred anything bigger and brighter; maybe my
grandpa's six volt Sears Lantern.

Back around 1991, my wife and I were staying in a cabin in a woods in Wisconsin. One dark night, we walked into the woods along a foot path, but started to hear an animal making louder and louder noises nearby. We didn't know what it was and couldn't see a darn thing because we had only a 2D consumer grade incandescent flashlight.

Looking back on the experience, I think we were hearing a large buck and a powerful floodlight would have helped. I still don't own a powerful floodlight.

Date: September 27, 2003
Time: Sunset
Location: Top of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, CA.
Flashlight: $8 combination red laser and 3mm blue LED, momentary switches only.
Objective: To get back to the valley floor.
Prefered flashlight: Just about anything else would be better, but that little sucker did light the way for six hours.

I was a new correctional officer at a large California State Prison. A Sergeant, one other officer, and myself were locked in the dinning hall with about 300 of the States worst inmates on a very stormy night. The power failed and the lights when out. :huh: Of course, none of the battery operated emergency lights worked, and the dinning hall was plunged into complete darkness. The inmates began screaming, and throwing things: Metal food trays, bottles, metal salt and pepper shakers, and shoes. It was total Bedlam :rock: ...Somehow, we three staff members managed to find eachother...If we tried to use our flashlights to find eachother, we stood out as individual targets. Then, using our Maglights (3 cell, I think :candle: ) we lit up the exit and prayed for the power to come back on, and/or for staff :help: to unlock the door to let the inmates out. After about 10 min. someone outside the hall opened the door and the inmates left the hall :wave: , and we could breath again. Somehow, nobody was killed. The last time we had shown a movie to the inmates in that same dinning hall, we had found a dead body when the lights had come up after the movie.
I wish I had a million lumens that night. Nothing succeeds like excess!

About a month ago, I was driving in flooding rain, we are talking mountain lions and mastiffs. The water ripped a shield off the bottom of the car and it was dragging. All the SureFires were at home. Used a chemlite under a gas station overhang. Kept driving, it fell off. No joy. C3, E2E, C2 or a magic fire stick would have helped.:devil:

Great responses. I did a few father/daughter camping trips before I found this forum. Wish I knew then what I know now

My brightest was my 3 D-cell Streamlight (looks similar to maglite) during the east coast blackout in august of '03.

Having anything else that could have pulled out to light up the neighborhood would have rocked. :rock:

I was teased with two brown outs last night as the power when out for a split second and came back on. The 2nd came a while later. Now I have all kinds of lights and the power stays on. What a gyp!

"That's not fair. There was time now." -Burgess Meredith on the old Twilight Zone after breaking his glasses, and not being able to read.

Went backpacking in Vermont with a friend of mine for the weekend. We met after work and drove up together. We missed a turn and ended up arriving at our starting point almost 2 hours late. The trail from where we started to the first shelter where we would be spending the night was also much rockier and harder to walk on than we had expected, which meant that we ended up hiking in the dark. To save weight I had only brought 2 small flashlights, a UKE 2AAA LED light and a stock AAA MiniMag. Meant to bring my aurora headlamp too but it didn't make it in the rush to get on the road. So then the MiniMag develops a connection problem and begins to dim and flicker. So the two of us are relying almost solely on the UKE light, which any of you who own one know is not very bright. Rough terrain, 50lb packs and very little light is not the best combination. Won't do that again.

1991, two guys backpacking, storm rolling in.
Although both valleys would take us back to basecamp we didn't know that one valley was WAY longer than the other and we took the wrong one. Pretty soon it's dark and raining/blowing like hell and suddenly the though occurs... hey, flash flood conditions and WE'RE STUCK IN A DEEP VALLEY!

We had compass, map, and really cheap 2xAA incan lights but it was only by sheer luck that we actually found the trailhead for -the- path that switchbacked out of the valley and up onto the ridgeline. I'd have given a LOT to have a 70-100 Lumen light with some runtime both for finding that trailhead and walking the ridgeline trail when we got there!

What do I carry under the same circumstances now? Night-Ops Gladius! (and usually a Princeton Tec EOS headlamp tucked in another pocket)

Date: Oct 27, 2005, 5:30am
Location: Clear Creek campsite, Grand Canyon National Park
Light used: River Rock 2aaa headlamp

Climbing trail out of canyon... pitch black, no moon. Trail about 12 inches wide on crumbly shale slope with 300 foot slide into nothingness. Headlamp gave me about a 30 foot range of vision.

I didn't want more lumens, or else I would have seen what end I would have came to had I slid off that trail.

BlackDecker... don't look down! NEVER look down! <he he he>

Night, 3am, searching for a handgun thrown out of a moving vehicle into a heavily wooded area. I had a SL Scorpion and a 2D Mag light, my partner had a Scorpion only. Burned through all batteries in about 90 min, gun still not found.

Upgraded my duty lights to now having a SL Strion, 3D Mag, and a Pelican M6 LED, with a SL Stinger XT in the bag, extra batteries in the bag too. Sometimes I'll even throw in the SL Polystinger (in case my partner fogets to bring his/her FL).

Recently added a Gladius for primary light with all the others mentioned above as backup/secondary.

1993 - 24 Hours of Canaan (mountain bike race)

Middle of the night, cruising along w/ a 10w and 6w cateye bar mount light system. Lead acid batteries. I totally wiped out due to fatigue and lack of usable light. I lay there in the trail for a few minutes thinking, "What the he!! am I doing here?" Finished the lap wondering what the continuous clanking noise was. It turned out to be a broken spoke taking all the paint and some of the metal off of my frame.

What do I wish I had? The Trail Tech HID and/or TriLuxIII I currently have. A NiteRider system that was available at the time would have been adequate, but I couldn't afford it back then.

baker

Hey, I did the 1996 24 Hours of Canaan. I managed just fine with a 5W head and 35W bar mount, and a cateye 4AA as backup. Our female team mate crashed and had to finish up the rocky downhill portion of the night lap with a Minimag taped to her helmet and only one contact lens. Yikes!

San Luis Valley, CO, September 2005. The ranch owner and I were doing some scouting for elk on a remote part of the 80,000 acres of hunting grounds when we lost track of time and direction just after sundown. Ended up wandering around for about 3.5 hours going up and back down steep mountain ravines, before we finally saw some headlights and flagged them down. We would have had an awful time without my Fenix L1p and SF L5 that night!

During the 2003 blackout the psych center lost power. I expected our generator to kick in - the carb flooded. A bus load of 50 patients from a local hospital showed up at the gate and we had to turn them away due to our generator failure. I relied on one of the nearly-dead 2d "econolights" in our hospital police office.

Never Again.

Late Summer / early fall 2001- Taking the garbage out to the dumpster about 1AM on a moonless night.

Came nose to nose with a bear.

Well, I exaggerate a bit.... Didn't REALLY come closer than five feet.... But it seemed like nose to nose. Neither one of knew the other was there, I don't think, cause he jumped about as high as I did.

Ordered my first Surefire about 10 minutes later, an E2E...... Now the E2 is about my lowest power, shortest throw light! (other than the keychain and 'LED candle' types).

2007 Singapore, 13th floor of an office tower. Singapore was hit by earth tremors due to an earthquake in Indonesia. The office building started swaying and we had to take the internal emergency staircase to evacuate. As luck or Murphy would have it, the swaying caused the circuit breakers to trip and the lights went off, the miserable lighting provided by the so called emergency lights were totally inadequate.

All i had then (but in my tackle box and not on me, never again!!!) was a 3xAAA, 9 LED, showerhead light. But on me was a Sony Ericsson k710 which had a single bright LED which could be activated to use as a flashlight. But i found it was inadequate though it got me out.

After that was when i got my first light, an Ultrafire C3 (it's still around) and found CPF and that was it!

Nothing as adventurous as everyone else, but back around 1992 three of us decided to go camping out in the "wild" (no bears, wolves or anything living that would cause a problem aside mosquitoes, red ants and skunks). We left pretty late and only got close to our destination at sunset. We couldn't see a thing in the woods, so we had to sleep on top of a bare hill, right next to power line pylones. Anything would have been better than nothing, but if I could go back I'd lend myself any fenix or quark and a TK20 or TK11...