You’ve got a few options in the headlight range with Black Diamond, Petzl and Princeton Tec being the main brands available in SA.
Nicholas Mulder highlights a few considerations you need to make for AR:
- that it is as waterproof as possible; it needs to get you through a heavy downpour.
- that it is as versatile as possible; reading maps & clearly seeing the ground vs seeing far into the distance searching for the checkpoint with a beam.
- that the battery life is long lasting; you don’t really want to change batteries every night.
- that the headlamp sits comfortably on your head. Some headlamps have battery packs in front, behind the light. Others have battery packs that sit on the back of your head. If heavy batteries are in front they’ll drive you insane as they’ll jiggle around and slip over your eyes when you jog/run.
There have been a few major advances in headlamp technology in the last few years, revolving around light brightness and battery life. LED lights are practically as bright as halogens nowadays but have the added advantage of the better battery life. The better headlamps have variable brightness setting and allow you to adjust beam focus and so on.
now this is a headlamp – you get what you pay for – but boy do you have to pay… http://www.surefire.com/Headlamps
HOWEVER – as a navigator i like to have a small headlamp on my head that i can read the map with without getting blinded, and then put the real light onto my bike. for hiking – somebody else in the team needs to have one of these lights so you can see the mountains on the other side of the valley 😉