I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
– Hank Williams
I’ve got more headlights than Ben and Jerry’s has flavours. Well… maybe not, but I’ve got a few. I’m not going to go into all of them. But I will discuss two in particular. I purchased each of these in order to use one of them on the Grand Canyon R3. I ended up taking both. Before I get into the details I’d like to say that each of these units is exceptional from a lighting perspective.
The second unit I bought was the Black Diamond Distance 1500. This is more or less a classical headlamp. It was the first time I have ever had a rechargeable system. This is a heavy unit at 213 grams, but it’s actually lighter than my old Black Diamond Icon. But talk about features, and brightness. It’s not cheap at $200.00. I bought a spare battery as well and that alone is about $70.00. At the medium setting of 300 lumens the battery will last about 6 hours. The lowest setting is 15 lumens, (Suitable for reading maybe) and will last up to 40 hours. The high setting of 800 lumens will get a little over 1.5 hours. The ‘Power Tap’ feature will punch out a remarkable 1,500 (albeit short lived) lumens. Very good for long range route assessment. The proprietary battery is heavy, but is very easy to change out.
There are three colour choices for the mini led. Red, Green, and Blue. There is also a red light strobe feature on the back; useful for urban running perhaps. There is an additional strobe feature on the main light as well.
The head band is very comfortable and comes with a removable dome strap. This is a desirable feature when you want to use the unit with a helmet, like I did on Mt. Rainier this year.
The first unit I bought is not a headlamp per se, but rather a lighting and power system. It is the Koogala Ra. As far as illumination goes… holy smokes… this thing is not only blinding, but it spreads a wide field of light. That’s where the good stuff ends unfortunately. I wanted to like this thing, I really did… So here are my beefs with it… It’s just as expensive as the BD so no joy there. The lamp portion is reasonably light, but the battery pack alone weighs 250 grams. Granted you can use it to power a second lamp strip, and charge things like a watch or phone, but how often is that a necessity? The battery pack needs to be stowed somehow; in a pocket on a pack, vest, or piece of clothing. It connects to the lamp strip via a USB cord. So that in itself is a pain in the ass. The lamp strip needs to be attached to your pack straps or vest with a series of Velcro strips. The unit also comes with a flexible magnetic plate that allows you to affix the lamp strip to your shirt. Kind of a cool idea, but also heavy, and also a pain in the ass. Another thing that I didn’t quite get used to was the difference in not having the light on one’s head; where it points to where you are looking. With the Ra one needs to turn their body to change the direction of the light.
The unit turns on/off and cycles through its various options via a single button. You might think that would be simple… not so much…
Overall… I was underwhelmed with the Kogalla Ra experience.
I’ll probably use the BD Distance as my main adventure light source from now on. Although there are some nice other alternatives out there, especially when looking for a featherweight option…maybe there is another headlamp in my future after all…