Najjar, Lawrence (2008). Gear Guy - Caving Lights. Texas Caver, 54(1)(pp. 8-11). Austin, TX: Texas Speleological Association.
Lawrence Najjar
Caving lights are the most important gear you bring into a cave. Good caving lights help you pick the best route, identify dead-end leads without crawling down them, spot interesting formations, and make the cave trip safe and fun. Good caving lights are reliable, bright, and easy to use. Bad caving lights can get you hurt, lost, or cause you and everyone else to turn back early on a great trip. Bad caving lights can wreck a trip.
In this column, I share my opinions and some helpful tips for selecting good caving lights.
First, here are a few important caving rules that are worth repeating.
Why? Because stuff happens. People trip. Lights smack into rocks. Bulbs burn out. Batteries die unexpectedly. Water falls. Helmets fall down pits. Cavers get lost. Packs roll into holes. Lights get rubbed off in crawls or on-rope.
So carry three caving lights and spare batteries. And cave with other people for safety and to share their lights.
What should you look for in a caving light? Here are some good features.
For a primary light, you need something bright, ideally with adjustments for focus or brightness. I have a Petzl Mega Belt that uses three C-batteries. It is heavy, but, oh does it light things up. I can see down holes, up domes, across pits, down passages, and deep into crevices. I can check out leads without moving my feet. I can focus it into a tight circle to light up distant objects or defocus it to light up the passage around me as I walk. It is tough and it is a caving classic, but it is heavy and not really water resistant. I burned out a bulb when I turned on the lamp beside a waterfall. I think the mist got to the halogen bulb.
Light emitting diode (LED) headlamps are the next great advance in caving headlamps. LEDs are reliable, don't use as much power as incandescent bulbs, and last a long time. Since LED headlamps don't drain batteries as quickly as incandescent bulb headlamps, you can use fewer, smaller, and lighter batteries. LED headlamps are now getting bright enough where they may be good replacements for traditional, heavy, battery-sucking, bright, incandescent headlamps.
I really like the Princeton Tec LED headlamps. Their lamps are tough and water resistant.
If I had to buy a new primary headlamp, I would go with the three-Watt Princeton Tec Apex. The three Watts of light are blindingly bright, but offer much longer battery life than a comparable incandescent headlamp. The Apex has a single, three-Watt LED and four regular LEDs that run on four AA batteries.
The three-Watt LED lasts an hour on High and nine hours on Low, then slowly fades for around 72 hours. On High, the three-Watt LED's focused beam lights up objects about 50 meters away and is good for brief use to look down pits and up domes.
The four regular LEDs go eight-and-a-half hours on High and 14 hours on Low, then slowly fade. The four regular LEDs produce a broad beam. On High, the four regular LEDs light up objects about 20 meters out and seem to work best overall for caving. On Low, the regular LEDs send a beam about 10 meters out that is good for crawls.
| LEDs | Level | Full Brightness | Useful Distance | Total Light Life (includes Fading to Off) | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One 3-Watt LED | High | 1 Hour | 50 Meters | 72 Hours | |
| Low | 9 Hours | 35 Meters | 96 Hours | ||
| Four regular LEDs | High | 8.5 Hours | 20 Meters | 100 Hours | Recommended general setting |
| Low | 14 Hours | 10 Meters | 150 Hours |
Figure 1. Princeton Tech Apex headlamp.
The three-Watt and regular LEDs do not work together and have separate switches on the bottom right and left sides of the lamp. The left button controls the three-Watt LED. When you press the left button once, the three-Watt LED turns on in High mode. When you press the left button again, the three-Watt LED goes to Low mode. To turn on the four regular LEDs, you press the right button once. The regular LEDs turn on in High mode. When you press the right button again, they go to Low mode. A third press puts the regular LEDs in the common but annoying blink mode. If the three-Watt LED is on and you turn on the regular LEDs, the three-Watt LED turns off. The same thing happens if the regular LEDs are on. To turn off the light, you hold down the associated button for a second or two.
You cannot change the focus of the beams. The Apex tilts up and down, so you can point it down for a tough scramble or up for an easy walk. It has a removable overhead strap to help secure it to your helmet.
Figure 2. Princeton Tech Apex buttons.
The Apex also includes an LED battery power indicator so you know how long your batteries will last. The LED changes from green to yellow to red as the batteries drain. After you turn off the Apex, the battery power indicator blinks for 24 hours. I think the purpose is to help you find the headlamp in a dark tent. But it prevents you from completely turning off your light to enjoy the pitch blackness of a cave. While your friends sit there with their lights off, yours emits the occasional green blink, destroying the pitch black experience. If you find this feature annoying (and I do), put a piece of duct tape over the battery power indicator.
The Apex is waterproof in up to one meter of water for 30 minutes, so it can take the occasional climb in a waterfall or walk through a drippy passage.
The Apex includes a power regulator, so you can use AA alkaline, rechargeable nickel metal hydride (NiMH), rechargeable nickel cadmium (NiCad), or even Lithium 1.5 Volt batteries. The alkalines are easier to find when you're out on a trip. The rechargeables reduce the number of used batteries you add to the environment. The Lithiums probably last the longest on a single trip.
The batteries are fairly easy to change. You use one of the strap buckles as a screwdriver head to turn the latch screw that opens the battery compartment. The inside of the compartment door has a handy drawing that shows you which way to face each of the batteries. After you replace the batteries, you close the compartment and tighten the latch screw securely with your hand.
Right now, the Princeton Tec Apex is, by far, the best primary caving light available.
Get the regular Princeton Tec Apex, not the "Pro" that uses two Lithium batteries. The four AA batteries on the regular Princeton Tec Apex last longer (8.5 hours vs. 5.5 hours on regular LED High) and are easier to find when you are traveling. At BrightGuy.com the Princeton Apex is $69. You can also get it at Cabelas.com for $80 and REI.com for $84.
If price is no object, there is a very promising $310 headlamp called the StenLight (http://www.stenlight.com/). Designed by cavers, it is small, rugged, uses two very bright three-Watt LEDs (one focused narrow and far, one focused broad and near), has a rechargeable lithium battery, is water resistant, has adjustable brightness and tilt, and lasts for more than 24 hours on Medium. Currently, you have to drill some holes in your helmet to mount the StenLight. Cavers who have used it also want the broad-near lens focused a little more broadly.
Since primary caving lights fail, you need a couple of backup lights. As you move to your second and third lights, they should get smaller, dimmer, and lighter. Because your primary light could fail while you're on-rope or in a nasty, tight crawl, your second light should be on your helmet, facing forward, right beside your primary light.
There are many good second lights. A small LED headlamp is a good choice. I like the small, lightweight, and water-resistant Petzl Tikka Plus. Don't confuse it with the new Petzl Tikka XP which has a beam diffuser, a temporary bright "boost," and a single one-Watt LED. And don't get the regular Petzl Tikka which has only three LEDs.
The Petzl Tikka Plus uses three AAA batteries, has four white LEDs, and a single, wide headband. Due to its light weight, you don't need a top headband. The Petzl Tikka Plus is small enough to place to one side of the primary lamp on your helmet and puts out a decent amount of light. It lets you see well for a distance of about five meters. It won't light up any high domes or long passages, but you will be able to continue to cave with this light. I've had to use mine when my primary headlamp faded out when I was on a long rope climb. A quick click on my Petzl Tikka Plus and I was back in business, safely climbing without banging my head into any rocky overhangs. The Tikka is also comfortable to wear without a helmet while you put away your gear in the dark or hang around your camp.
Figure 3. Petzl Tikka Plus.
The LEDs have four modes. When you press the button once, the Tikka is in High. The second click is Medium, the third click is Low, and the fourth click is blink mode. To turn off the headlamp, you hold down the button for a second. After being on for a few seconds, a single quick click turns it off. The Tikka tilts to one of four fixed settings. You cannot adjust the focus of the headlamp beam.
The battery pack is directly behind the LEDs. To replace the three AAA batteries, you push one of the headband strap buckles into a half-inch tab on the battery pack. The front and back halves of the headlamp pop apart. Simple drawings on the inside of the battery pack show you which way to point the replacement batteries. Since it keeps popping out, you have to be careful to keep in place the battery closest to the hinge. You slip the bottom hinges back into the bottom of the front half and snap the two halves together. The seal is fairly tight, though not waterproof. The Tikka can handle waterfall spray or a brief splash. I've turned mine on in the rain and it worked fine.
The High mode is the most useful for caving. Full brightness lasts for about 10 hours, then fades out over about 80 hours. The light lasts longer in the other, dimmer modes.
The Petzl Tikka Plus sells for $33 at BrightGuy.com and for $35 at Cabelas.com and REI.com.
The third light should be the smallest, lightest, dimmest, and cheapest of your three caving lights. If you are using your third light, things are bad. All your batteries died, or you smashed your headlamps, or you lost your helmet down a drop. And, your caving buddies are not around to lend their better lights so you can keep up.
I don't like to mount my third light on my helmet. First, three lights make my helmet heavy and unbalanced, so my neck hurts. Second, if I somehow manage to lose my helmet, I still have a light. I heard about a guy who forgot to fasten his helmet chin strap as he got on-rope for a 200-foot climb. Partway up, he tilted his head back to answer someone at the top of climb. His helmet slipped off and fell 100-feet to the rock floor - along with his lights. So, I don't mount my third light on my helmet. And I don't like the idea of fishing around for a flashlight in the bottom of my cave pack - especially if I'm on-rope, jammed in some tight crawl, or away from my pack.
I found a tiny, bright light that I can wear around my neck, inside my shirt, so it is always with me. It is the Photon Micro-Light II and I love it.
Figure 1. Photon Micro-Light II.
It is a single regular LED in a small case about the size of a quarter. And, unlike a lot of similar lights, it has an on-off switch that is much more convenient for longer use than one of those tiring squeeze buttons (though it has one of those, too). The Photon Micro-Light II comes with a keyring, but I took it off and ran an accessory cord through the hole for the keyring, then tied the two ends together with two adjustable, slip knots.
The Photon Micro-Light II comes in a wide variety of colors. The red one lasts a long time and retains your night vision. So, I originally bought a red Photon Micro-Light II. Mistake. It used a single battery, wasn't very bright, and the unfamiliar red light made it difficult for me to identify objects (like the passage I just came out of). Also, I eventually realized that I never had any night vision to retain in the cave. I was always using my white lights or was surrounded by other cavers using their white lights.
So, after a few years of carrying around a not particularly bright light, I finally got a white Photon Micro-Light II - the new 2X brighter one that uses two CR2016 lithium coin batteries. Good move. It may not last as long as the red light (12 hours vs. 120 hours), but it is bright and it is very useful. I use it when I'm changing batteries in the primary headlamp, or trying to find my cave bag in a dark and crowded car trunk, or even when I want to poke into a hole when I'm out hiking. Since it is around my neck, it is very handy. I use it a lot.
The only time I caved with the Photon Micro-Light II was after hiking to the top of Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg. I held the light in my hand or mouth to clamber about 10 meters down into the narrow, twisting main entrance to Enchanted Rock Cave. If I had to use my Photon Micro-Light II for caving, I could switch it on and use the accessory cord and my headlamp straps to attach it to my helmet.
I use my Photon Micro-Light II so briefly that the batteries have not died. But I did open it up to see what was inside. I used a tiny, eyeglass-type, Phillips-head screwdriver to unscrew the four tiny screws that hold the two halves of the polyurethane case together. To change the coin-like Lithium batteries, you simply slide them out, note in which way they are positioned back-to-back against each other and in the case, and replace the batteries. Simple. But not something you want to do in a cave.
Figure 5. Four screws to change battery on Photon Micro-Light II.
The Photon Micro-Light II is not water proof, but it is water resistant. I never had a problem with mine getting wet, even from my sweat or from belly-crawling in streams. I have heard of one problem. Someone I know got his soaked in water. When he turned it on, it would not go off. When he got home, he opened it up, took out the batteries, let everything air-dry, then put it back together. It worked fine.
You can get the Photon Micro-Light II 2X white for $8.75 at Gad-Zooks.com, $8.95 at BatteryJunction.com, or $12.30 at BrightGuy.com. Avoid the cheaper imitations that are out there. And be sure that you get the post-June 2005 2X white beam version with the two CR2016 lithium coin batteries.
Good caving lights are bright, reliable, simple, and free up your hands. The right caving lights make caving a pleasure. The three lights I described are currently some of the best choices out there and should help you have a fun trip.
Great gear. Great caving.
I'll see you underground.