B0wz3r
Flashlight Enthusiast
I'm the first to admit my caving experience is very limited (but I want to do more, just haven't had the opportunity), but in my week of going through the tubes at Lava Beds I found a combination of three lights that worked for me like a charm. First was my ST5-190 on my helmet; worked just fine as the headlamp it is. Second was my SC50w+ on a wrist lanyard. Third was my Jetbeam Jet III Pro ST which has a very throwy beam profile for not being a dedicated thrower; I used it primarily for looking down longer shafts/tubes to see what was up ahead, otherwise it was kept in a pocket.
Many of the tubes there did allow walking upright, but I also explored several of the more challenging ones that required crawling or belly crawling for long distances. When I could walk upright, I found my handheld much more useful than my headlamp. When I was crawling or belly crawling, I still got tunnel vision from my headlamp, but solved this simply by pointing the light up so it illuminated the ceiling of the tube in front of me, and the splash lit the rest of the tube. This not only gave me an excellent view of the floor of the tube in front of me, but of the ceiling as well, which more often than not were covered in literally thousands of those little sharp ridges and spikes from the cooling lava dripping off the ceiling of the tube. Even with a helmet on they could do some serious damage if you weren't careful... So even when I had to belly crawl, I found the combination of a handheld and headlamp far more useful than relying on a headlamp alone.
I guess I'm just very puzzled why a lot of cavers seem at the very least, to scoff at carrying/using a handheld, if not being outright contemptuous of it, in favor of only using headlamps.
Many of the tubes there did allow walking upright, but I also explored several of the more challenging ones that required crawling or belly crawling for long distances. When I could walk upright, I found my handheld much more useful than my headlamp. When I was crawling or belly crawling, I still got tunnel vision from my headlamp, but solved this simply by pointing the light up so it illuminated the ceiling of the tube in front of me, and the splash lit the rest of the tube. This not only gave me an excellent view of the floor of the tube in front of me, but of the ceiling as well, which more often than not were covered in literally thousands of those little sharp ridges and spikes from the cooling lava dripping off the ceiling of the tube. Even with a helmet on they could do some serious damage if you weren't careful... So even when I had to belly crawl, I found the combination of a handheld and headlamp far more useful than relying on a headlamp alone.
I guess I'm just very puzzled why a lot of cavers seem at the very least, to scoff at carrying/using a handheld, if not being outright contemptuous of it, in favor of only using headlamps.
Unfortunately for the most part it is only flood OR spot, with no real blending options and no low spot modes. I'll do my best to break mine underground, and we'll see if any other cavers get and use it. With any luck they will prove themselves dependable and AHorton won't regret all his hard work and the hefty financial investment - designing and building a custom run of high quality yet affordable handmade headlamps is absurdly difficult and few such projects make it all the way to production - the two (Spikelight V3 and Kavelight P60 host) from this forum are both amazing.
