Originally Posted By billstephenson
There's no doubt that just a bit of panic, rushing to make up time, and being tired is a surefire combo to getting injured while hiking. It sucks you took the tumble, but it's good you got out without worse too.

For me, of all the new backpacking tech that's come along in the past 30 years the LED light is by far most useful. I bushwhacked all over before I got a GPS, but I didn't go far at night until lightweight and cheap LED lighting came along. Since then I've bushwhacked at night and never worried for a moment that my lights would fail, and they never have.

I've given away quite a few of those cheap LED headlamps over the years to people who had to cut out early or someone who was leaving on a hike without one. I just couldn't let them go without one because I knew what it felt like to go through what you did.

That's a tough situation to find yourself in. You did good though, and you learned a lesson I think we've all learned, and probably kicked yourself as much as we all have over it learning it the hard way.


I have a really nice Petzl headlamp I put some new batteries in today. While at an auto parts store earlier, I noticed they had a whole rack of personal headlamps -- Energizer...

I really did learn a few things on that hike. The biggest is that I shouldn't have went on it given the realities of my starting time. I suppose I could have set a hard turnaround time, but that would have added stress on the way up and I would have been pushing hard to summit before I had to turn around. Better to plan the hike all out from the beginning.

Thanks for your comments.