Headlamps - How many Lumens

I gave up on expensive headtorches as I keep leaving them on the top bunk! My el cheapo $5 one is no longer functional. Keeps turning off! But I'd be happy to buy another. Yes, I take a spare as well. You need one torch to change the batteries of the other but come to think of it, we don't need to change the batteries in the field these days. We just charge the batteries at home before the trip.

Wow an August walk via the cave to Upper Whiri in the dark would have been an adventure. Speaking from experience.

Haha. It certainly was. And was my first night tramp and first river crossings. The ground was frozen all the next day so cold also. Spent the whole next day at Upper Hut to recover as I didn't get there until midnight.

One (outnumbered) vote for the burn-your-retina style torch (with a sensible low setting). If I think of the night walk-ins I've done in the last couple of months: Cameron Hut (Makaroroa), Home Hills Hut (Caples) and Ray Simmonds (Tekapo). All three the high-beam was used for short periods casting around for the track / a viable route, and route finding would have been tricky without it: - Picking up the track again after large clearings / river crossings - Identifying continuous viable routes through networks of bluffs - Identifying good slips leading to tops of spurs / ridges (rather than stopping half-way) - Finding the hut in a barren expanse of nothing! So yes - something with a high lumens setting (200 lumens +, don't care about battery life as it's only used for brief intervals) with a low-power setting giving 60+ hrs off a battery. That's my choice.

@madpom Yes ... totally agree with your experience. My shopping list includes: 1. 18650 Rechargeable batteries 2. A very clean even beam. (This is more important than most people think.) 3. Smoothly adjustable intensity 4. A secure lock-off device 5. Genuinely waterproof; ie IP67 or better 6. A red-led option for hut use 7. A top strap if it's a head-lamp 8. An option to carry hand-held. (I find that a a light source that is more distant from the eyes, ie in the hand rather than on the fore-head, shows up uneven terrain better.) But considering the importance of what madpom notes above, I'm beginning to think that no one device can reasonably tick all these boxes at once. Maybe one head-lamp for low-intensity regular track and hut use, combined with a hand-held for rough ground and a possum-dropping high intensity setting is the way to go.