@Glenn Roberts: Yeah that's why I'm hanging onto the petzl. I wish it was rechargeable though, button cell batteries are expensive and I really dislike the waste of disposables. The Revolt is nice but too big and bulky to carry on my person on a daily basis. The Zebralight seems to nail it. Just got it today and I am really liking it so far, tested it out in my pantry and was able to read a book with it and tinkered around with the programming, its pretty slick. The only thing is I'm going to have to remember to click and hold, otherwise a single click will turn on the lamp at maximum brightness.

@Gershon
This is like a santa isn't real episode all over again, you're breaking my heart ha ha. Does it still stand that red/green/yellow tend not to spook certain animals due to their inability to see certain wavelengths? This is something I'd like more detailed info on. Hmm. Did some reading up on night vision, low red seems to be all right although I read that if you can see the color red it's probably too bright, seems worthless to me. Info seems pretty scattered or not easy to find about animals and night vision in general.

I'm very graphic design savvy, so I'd be able to do that hack without too much effort. It would work fine if willing to put in the work ahead of time, PIA if you lose your map or have to use or compare with someone else's map in the field. Interesting use of excel. I subscribe to alltrails.com and they provide access maps similar to what you were showing me. As a proof of concept I followed what you did, but I used indesign to get at the paths I needed and stretched the grid lines to fit the border without losing alignment. Cool. Gotta be careful about rotation though, it'd be pretty easy to mess that up depending on what's selected and where the center axis is located.

Anyways I'll test some compasses out soon and try out my Zebralight on some maps and see if it's usable.