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Melody

As others have mentioned, many people don't like
using headlamps. At the AERC convention, when the
top buckle holders held a forum, Hal Hall mentioned
that, in his opinion, headlights were not necessary
and that if you are going to be out there in the dark,
you should trust your horse and be comfortable riding
him in the dark.

And using one may be fine for you, but really bother
other riders. I guess it'll be up to you as to who
you're riding with and how they feel about it (and
anyone you come up behind). And how well you/your
horse personally know the trail.

All that said, a couple of years ago I did quite a bit
of night riding on the Tevis trail when I was helping
a guy train for the WS100 run. He'd run on foot and
I'd ride behind him (bear bait? <g>). He wore a yellow-
beam headlight and I actually quite liked having him
up ahead to mark the trail for me. Even though he was
often 50'+ ahead of me, I was able to note any rocky/
odd sections coming up (note, I rode Cal Loop the first
time in this manner - talk about mimicking Tevis
situations <g>).

While riding with him, however, I also wore a small LED
headlight that I got from REI. It's a "Black Diamond"
headlight (~$20) with four bright white LED bulbs in it.
Runs for 11 hours on three AAA batteries.

We liked it so much, we went back and bought another.

There are two reasons I like this light:

a) the headlight part is hinged, so you can point
it wherever you want (i.e. away from the person's
face you are talking to). (It makes a great winter
mucking-out headlight for this reason, as you can
point the beam at the ground instead of getting
a crick in your neck).

b) because the light is white, it doesn't seem to
cast the same type of shadows as do conventional
yellow-beam lights. My runner friend didn't like
it for precisely this reason - it didn't give
enough trail definition for him to be able to run
comfortably with it. OTOH, any shadows cast by it
didn't seem to bother the horse at all.

There were several occasions when I felt the need
to turn the light on as it was so dark under the
trees that I literally couldn't see a thing and
couldn't find the trail...

(note these were not full-moon nights. The following
is the moon rise/set data for Tevis night:

Moonrise   8:53 p.m.
Moonset    6:57 a.m. on following day

We have it about as perfect as we could ask for,
although the moon will take a few hours before
it's high enough to peek over the sides of the
canyon walls, so that may be the worse part -
the first few hours after dark.)

The trouble with headlights is, once you've
got it on and your horse's eyes have adjusted,
it's very hard to turn it off again without the
horse thinking a black hole just opened in front
of him.

Another time my husband and I rode from Cool to Robie Point on a moonless 
night. My horse went along
the trail with her face 6" off the ground to make
sure of her footing. It was one of the more peculiar
rides I've done, where I just had to put complete
trust in her, because I couldn't see the trail at
all. However, at one point, my horse became worried
and stopped and didn't want to move forwards (we'd
ridden out-and-back and there had been some deer on
the trail on the way out). We were on the narrow
trail up above No Hands Bridge and I really didn't
want her spooking off the edge, so ended up turning
on my light and she was content to go on. Trouble
was, when we got down on the bridge and were picking
up enough ambient light from the lights in Auburn and
I tried to turn the light off again, she reacted with
a mammoth stop and a loud audible grunt. I ended up
having to keep it on until the end of the ride - so
be warned.

One thing about this light - it's designed for head-
sizes, so to keep it from slithering off the top of
my helmet, I had to secure it with duct tape. Might
be a task to assign a single crew-member - affixing
your headlamp to your helmet securely so it doesn't
fire off the top of your head the first time a bush
brushes past it. Or have a second helmet, ready-lit,
available to you at FH?

Oh. One other thing worth mentioning. Sue Flagg had
a very valid worry about riding at night - she was
(rightly) concerned about poking an eye out and has
been experimenting with clear safety goggles for night
riding. This may be more important than worrying about
headlights?

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Lucy Chaplin Trumbull
elsietee AT foothill DOT net
Repotted english person in the Sierra foothills, California
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