The Midnight Walk to the Bathhouse Got Easier With a Headlamp

The bathhouse at our usual campground sits about 200 yards from the site we always take, down a gravel loop road. Two hundred yards is nothing in daylight. At midnight, with a flashlight in one hand and a towel bag in the other, it is a long ways. I made that walk for years with the light clamped under my chin, aimed at my feet, watching for the root that pushes up through the gravel near the second turnout.

I tried the other things first. A phone light works right up until you need both hands, and then it is a glowing rectangle in your pocket. A flashlight works right up until you need to unzip a bag or pull open a door. What I wanted was light that went where I looked without taking up a hand. That is the whole case for a headlamp, and it took me longer to admit it than I care to say.

In the first week of March I bought the Black Diamond Spot 400 headlamp, along with the rest of the gear I was replacing that spring. It runs on three AAA batteries, and they come in the box. It weighs a little over three ounces. I put it on in the driveway before we ever left, just to see how the headband sat, and then I did not think about it again until dark.

The first night I wore it, I walked to the bathhouse and back and never once pointed a light. The beam goes where you turn your head. Going down, I could see the root at the second turnout without stopping. Coming back, I could read the number on the campsite post from the road. Ray was already asleep when I came in.

That is the other thing. The Spot 400 has a red night-vision mode, and I use it for anything after Ray turns in. Red light does not flood the tent when I come through the door. I can find my bag, find my shoes, get down onto the sleeping pad without lighting up the whole site. Ray has his own light and he can run it however he likes. Mine stays red after ten o'clock.

The beam goes where you turn your head. I walked that 200 yards and never once pointed a light.

I have used it through one season now, March into October. I changed those three AAA batteries once, in August. That is the whole maintenance log. It rode out the May rain with the rest of the gear and there was no water inside it, and the listing calls it waterproof, so I have no argument to make with that.

The brightness settings matter more than I expected. There are multiple brightness settings and a proximity mode, and I use the low one far more than the high one. High is for the walk, when I want the whole road ahead of me. Low is for cooking, for digging in the food bin, for reading a label on a can. The proximity mode is what I reach for when I am close to something and do not want the light bouncing straight back at me off a metal surface.

I should be honest about the comparison, because there was not one. I did not shop around. I had a plain flashlight in the glovebox of the CR-V and I had been using that flashlight for years. When it finally got through to me that the light belonged on my head instead of in my hand, I bought the Black Diamond and got on with the weekend.

The headband is adjustable and it stays where I put it. Three ounces does not pull at your forehead after an hour, and I have walked into the tent still wearing it more than once. That is how I know I stopped noticing it.

I wear it at the stove after dark too. Low setting, and it lights the skillet and nothing past it. That sounds like a small thing until you have tried to turn bacon with one hand while holding a flashlight with the other.

None of this changes the walk itself. It is still 200 yards, it is still dark, and my back is still stiff in the mornings. A headlamp is a light. That is all it is, and most nights that is enough.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you not to overthink it. Buy a headlamp with a red mode, put the batteries in at home where the light is good, and set the band before you are standing in the dark trying to sort it out. Wear it around the yard one evening so the fit stops being a question. Then leave it in the top pocket of your bag and forget about it until the first midnight.

And I would tell you what I tell anybody who asks me about gear. The thing that quietly fixes a small annoyance every single night is worth more than the thing that impresses you once. I do not think about the Black Diamond anymore. I put it on, I walk to the bathhouse, I come back, and the walk is just a walk again.