A Headlamp is useful for having your hands free to do work in the dark

• how do you change batteries on a black diamond headlamp?  
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• The above word button is one of my top ten articles in this 30 day period. I find it strange that this is true. But, I find truth is often stranger than fiction in anything to do with blogging. Because you never know what people are going to get interested in.
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• Originally I bought this headlamp for going in Ice Caves created by lava flows around Mt. Shasta. If you go to places like Lava beds National Monument to the North and a little to the East of Mt. Shasta (the mountain itself not the city) some of the caves are lighted for you if you go during the right times of day. But, there are literally likely hundreds or more lava tubes you can discover various places all around the base of the mountain. The most interesting one I have been in of the Non-lighted ones is the Jot Dean Ice Cave. However, if it is still like it was you likely need ropes at the very least to get past the ice waterfall inside a ways down. My friends climbed down to the left past the waterfall and I decided it was too tight a space for me even though I have also been to the foot of the ice waterfall. I think the ice is there year around
• by the way because it is underground and sort of like a refrigerator when you get that deep under ground anyway.
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• So, I originally got a headlamp so I could go spellunking into Ice Caves underground. However, you need to be careful of bumping your head on sharp rocks protruding from the ceiling or the floor. You have to be careful of ice you are walking on from slipping and breaking your leg. You need ropes a lot of places to go deeper. And you really don't want to be doing this alone in case you get injured 30 to 40 miles from civilization with no cell phone reception either. 

So, though it is a great adventure it is also dangerous and there often is no cell phone reception in case of emergencies because you are in a wilderness area 30 to 40 miles or more from the nearest electrical wires or gas stations or cell phone reception.

One more thing. Every headlamp I have owned tends to turn itself on in your pocket and wear the batteries down there. So, my solution is to take the batteries out, put the whole thing in a zip lock bag in a ski jacket so when you need it both the headlamp and batteries are ready to go. Because there is nothing more frustrating that realizing your batteries are actually dead when you need the headlamp for an adventure or emergency of some sort.

I think these actually are jot dean cave. When I went into Yahoo Images with the definer of "Jot Dean Ice Cave" these actually looked like the inside of this lava tube:

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 You can see some picture of the underwater ice waterfall with some rocks embeded in it that must have fallen into it at some point and stuck and then more water dripped from above and froze them into place. It's hard to say when the rocks fell and were embeded. Could have been 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago or more the way these caves are because this waterfall stays pretty much frozen year around whether there is snow outside or it's 110 to 115 degrees outside it stays frozen I would think from what I have seen the few times I was there.

I talked to a local who said her grandfather stored Deer meat and hides in here like a refrigerator and one time he came there and a bear was living there then. I'm thinking she is describing this area somewhere between 1870 to 1935 from what she was saying. So, this cave has likely had people staying here to get out of storms or heat and used for many different purposes before it became a national forest here. (It's Shasta Trinity National Forest where this is located.)

I realized I actually took one of the pictures now out and about on the internet which is the one with two people with headlamps the one in front has an orange wool hat on near the ice.