Your light has three jobs: help you see, keep you safe, and make you seen.

When you get lost in the backcountry, there’s a good chance you’ll end up doing critical tasks after dark. Nightfall significantly impairs human depth perception and turns routine terrain into real hazards; roots, rocks, and drop-offs that were trivial in daylight can suddenly twist an ankle or send you over an unseen ledge. Layer on cold, fear, and unfamiliar ground, and the odds of a serious injury skyrocket. You might have lanterns on a planned camping trip, but you won’t be so lucky when a simple day hike takes an unexpected turn. Out there you don’t just need a light — you need a reliable one, and because every option is battery-dependent, it has to be fully functional when you need it most — often exactly when you least expect it.¹²

Every Jackpack Gear kit includes the Black Diamond Flare — a true emergency headlamp designed to live forgotten in your pack until the one time it really matters. It runs up to 15 hours, has a 10-year battery shelf life so it actually works when you expect it to, and is extremely compact and lightweight. The Flare is sealed, water- and impact-resistant, and completely hands-free, which is essential when you’re trying to navigate, build shelter, or treat an injury in the dark. Multiple brightness settings let you stretch runtime or punch a bit farther down the trail, and the low-light red mode preserves night vision while keeping a low profile. If you do need to call attention to yourself, the built-in SOS strobe turns your headlamp into a beacon.¹³

For the Trekker kit, we add a second, more powerful light: a Fenix Waterproof, Impact-resistant Flashlight with multiple brightness modes and runtimes up to 53 hours on low. Swapped over to lithium batteries, it becomes a dependable primary light for trips where you’re out at night on purpose, not just in an emergency. A handheld light complements your headlamp—use the Flare for camp chores and navigation while the Fenix throws a tighter, longer beam for scanning terrain, checking routes, or signaling at distance. Redundancy in lighting isn’t a luxury in the backcountry; it’s what keeps a minor problem from turning into a full overnight or an injury.¹²⁴

The Expedition kit adds one more layer of fail-safe redundancy with the military-standard high-visibility Green Cyalume Light Sticks. These two compact 6-hour chem lights don’t care about cold, batteries, or electronics: bend, snap, shake, and you’ve got instant light. They’re ideal for marking your shelter, hanging as low-glare area light, clipping to a pack or jacket for identification, or swinging in a circle as a high-visibility signal at night. Between the Flare, the Trekker’s Fenix flashlight, and the Expedition chemsticks, your Jackpack Gear kit gives you multiple, overlapping ways to see, stay safe, and be seen when the sun goes down.¹⁴

Treat light like any other survival system, not an afterthought. Always be prepared to spend a night on the trail, even if you only planned a short day hike—any delay can easily push you past sunset, when trail markers almost vanish in the dark. Never rely on a single electronic device: phones die, headlamps get lost, switches break, and cold saps battery performance, so a true emergency plan always includes a backup light and spare batteries. Choose lithium batteries for your emergency lights—they have a much longer shelf life, perform better in the cold, and are less likely to leak and ruin a device in storage. Rechargeable batteries self-drain over time; they’re often not fully charged when you need them and have no role in a dedicated emergency kit. Store spare batteries so their contacts are covered and can’t discharge against anything conductive in your pack. Manage your light with the same discipline you apply to your other survival gear to ensure it still has power when you need it most. ¹²⁵

References

1. 1. CDC-NIOSH. Mining Topic: Illumination. archive.cdc.gov (2022).
2. 2. Auerbach PS, Cushing TA, Harris NS, eds. Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine, 7th Edition. Elsevier; 2017.
3. 3. Lighting interventions to reduce circadian disruption in rotating shift workers. blogs.cdc.gov (2020).
4. 4. Cyalume Technologies. ChemLight Product Data Sheet. 2023.
5. 5. U.S. Army. Survival, Evasion, and Recovery: Multi-Service Procedures for Survival, Evasion, and Recovery. FM 21-76. Department of the Army; 2002.