When you say, "The standard for user safety is 200 lumens", is that your standard, or something externally imposed? The reason I ask is that you could probably get away with much less and still get satisfactory results with camp use.
No. It is not "my" standard. I spent 3 fire seasons laying progressive hose lays in the dark as well as the day. I spent another 3 seasons cutting hand tool fire line, finding small smokes from something still smoldering, and cutting lead brush hook on indirect attack at night with the ordinary incandescent bulbs that came with these headlamps. It's true that they weren't brilliant but since we could cut line for 12 hours without injury when using them and their 4 D batteries I thought they might be a good way to go.
The 200 lumen minimum came from a camps system wide evaluation of ~6 different light outputs. The councilors from all 6 of our overnight programs were asked to evaluate several headlamps ranging from ~50 to 350 lumens. Each councilor had one of the lights to use for a week. They were asked to do everything that they did at night with only the headlamp they were testing.
Young campers do 3 day trips with 2 nights away from camp. Their trips always use improved camp sites which have people built pathways in the camp but no area lighting. Occasionally a trip will get delayed on the trail by some unanticipated circumstance such as a medical emergency, injury, or trail closure. That can cause even these rather young campers to end up getting to camp after dark and their lights have to be bright enough to use unimproved trails in the dark. Councilors are trained to make sure that all the lights are aimed at the ground right in front of the campers.
Junior high school aged campers spend a whole week of their 2 week session on the trail in addition to a prep trip. The 7th & 8th grade kids who are graduating from the youth camps into the teen program have developed a tradition over the last decade of walking through the night on the last leg of their trip as a graduation exercise. The camp staff and counselors did not start that. Once 1 group did it it became a "thing" and all of the graduating groups want to do it. I find it amazing how much care they take of each other. Larger campers will take some of the load off of smaller campers and nearly hold the flagging campers upright for the last few hours of that graduation trip. All of the graduating campers so far have rated their graduation trip as the best part of their camp experience.
High School aged campers engage in a series of experiences such a rock climbing, wilderness camping, a couple of days on their own, canoe trips...
I tell you all this so that you will know the conditions of use the lamps must be suitable for.
The 200 lumen minimum came from a camps system wide evaluation of ~6 different light outputs. The councilors from all 6 of our overnight programs were asked to evaluate several headlamps ranging from ~50 to 350 lumens. Each councilor had one of the lights to use for a week. They were asked to do everything that they did at night with only the headlamp they were testing.
Over the 6 weeks of a summer session they each tested one of the candidate headlamps based on three criteria. Would a camper be able to deal with some rapid change in the weather and help reset the tarp shelter properly against the wind and rain. This was just the test task chosen because it seams to happen several times a season spread over 500+ campers who range in age from 3rd through 12th grade. Would they be able to walk safely in the dark. Would they be able to perform after dark tasks such as food preparation and camp set up after dark.
Some of the councilors argued strongly for very bright lights but when pressed on the issue of the minimum for safe performance of the three types of nighttime activities None of them classified the 200 Lumen lights as inadequate. It's a fairly large sample. The same in camp staff members in each of the programs questioned the councilors and collated the results. That doesn't mean that it meets scientific research standards but I think they did a pretty good job of evaluating the LED headlamps for performance during routine and one simulated urgent night time activities.
Tom Horne
