Monday, May 21, 2012

Guide Gear Review: Black Diamond Spot Headlamp


Russell Hunter, full-time guide with the Colorado Mountain School, here to share with you my opinion on the Black Diamond Spot headlamp. Recently I have been using the Spot headlamp and it has quickly become one of my new favorite pieces of equipment. 


When guiding in the mountains, an alpine start is often required to maximize the potential for good weather.  Getting up and off a route before afternoon storms roll in is essential to climbing in the mountains. The Spot is the perfect headamp for these early morning starts: it is small, light, and incredibly bright! On early morning approaches, the Spot illuminates a good distance in front of me so I can walk safely and route find without issue. The Spot takes up very little room, and is incredibly light, so when the sun comes up, I throw it in my pack and forget about it.


The latest version of the Spot has a lock mode when it is in the “off” position. This means the lamp never accidently turns on in my pack and drains the batteries. Another nice feature is the battery power indicater that tells me how much battery life I have left. The bright red color of my new Spot, makes it easy to find in my pack or in a pile of gear. Black Diamond includes three new AAA batteries with the Spot, so you can use it right out of the box! Thanks again Black Diamond for making a simple and functional piece of gear that I know I can rely on in the mountains. I’ll continue to use the Spot headlamp on all my mountain adventures!

Hope to see you out in the mountains this summer!

Russell Hunter
CMS Mountain Guide
1.800.836.4008

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree the Spot headlamp is great and packs a lot of power. The lock feature is key as the headlamp goes through batteries incredibly fast. My one complaint is that the mechanism used to tilt the lamp up and down wears out fairly quickly. It is just small plastic rivets along with another plastic piece that wears out easily after normal use, rendering the tilt function useless. The lamp will just dangle down unless you tape it back up.