Hi,

I did my first night ride a few weeks ago on Bamford Clough, in the pitch black with no lights, and I loved it. I spend most of my time in Scandinavia and I’d like to carry on night riding here. Also, it’s dark most of the day now, so good lights are neccessary. It’s really snowy atm too.

I think I should have a light on the helmet, and another on the bar.
For riding on snowy terrain, can any body recommend any lights for this?

I’ve looked at the lights below, what are your thoughts on these?…
Hope Vision 1 LED Adventure (bar)
Hope R4 LED (bar)
Exposure Maxx-D (bar)
exposure joystick (helmet)
exposure diablo (helmet)
Lezyne Superloaded XL (bar)

btw, if anyone has some for sale, i may be interested 🙂

cheers,
rich

I treated myself to a Diablo and had my first ride with it last night. Granted it wasn’t super technical riding but I thought it was more than enough for my local night riding. Do bear in mind the runtime on full power is only 1 hour. I didn’t need full power tho’. Looking forward to my first snowy ride with the new light and I’m sure it will be plenty powerful.

I’m a big fan of the all-in-one design of the Exposure stuff though so would always pick their lights over any others if price is not an obstacle.

Snow can be pretty glarey, i tend to run low power when nightriding in snow as you don’t generally need more and it gets you back some depth perception.

Riding when it’s actually snowing can be a problem too since the light will bounce back off the snowflakes. Which is quite nice, but if you’ve got a high powered light on your noggin is pretty irritating.

Vision 1 is kind of rubbish, unless it’s very cheap. Standard joystick is just rubbish frankly, it’s just a bad torch. There’s still an argument for buying higher end lights from quality manufacturers but the cheaper ones are generally pointless.

But that’s a kind of endless circuitous argument! I’d personally recommend the excellent Magicshine MJ-872, it’s just as good as a Hope R4 and far cheaper. Cheapest you can get a really good light for, unless there’s something newer and cooler.

As above, variable output is a good thing. Also try and get something you can bar and helmet mount if you’re not buying both anyway – but bear in mind rain and snow and a helmet mounted light don’t mix terribly well.

And mist, aaargh!

Mtbbatteries.com have some very well priced lights. Smudge is from on here
Neninja(?) on here sells good budget ones too. Do a search for glow worm on here to get his info.
Trout from on here sells some amazingly bonkers bright lights but are a bit more high- end price-wise.
I like giving my cash to the little guy.

I use a Fluxient 3 x U2 on my bars and its AWESOME !!! and the Old Magic shine 1000lmn (a-like) lives on top of my helmet and is great for looking where to aim next.

The Fluxient was £130 and worth every penny! Seems to be properly waterproof too.

Adi

I have a Hope Vision 4 I’ll be selling soon, they go for a bit over £100 on ebay.

But tbh I’ll probably replace it with the MTB Batteries Lumenator – having seen a friend’s in action.

Hans , I can highly recommend Four4th . Dozens of us use them & can vouch for the build quality & performance . I night ride year round , mine have been in use 3or4 times a week for 3 years now.

More importantly , they are available with slight green or yellow tints , which , while not snow specific , dramatically reduce glare.

http://four4th.co.uk/

You will need less outright power in snow as it’s so reflective.

We are supplying Ed Oxley with a Gloworm X1 to compete in the Rovaniemi 150 (2 day 150km Artic Race in Finland) – so that will be good test of it’s durablility in extreme conditions and snow (it might be as cold as -40C during the race!).

And mist, aaargh!

Cacked myself last night at Glentress when coming up to some corners just into some trees when I was suddenly overcome by a patch of mist! Made the rest of the ride quite fun though to suddenly reduce your visibility down to about 2m.

And in Dust too – remember that?????????

I don’t get on with helmet lights…the glare is truly awful…rain, sleet, hailstones, snow, mist…it all just reflects and glares and stops you seeing what you need to see. Helmet bar for me all the way…from memory, I’ve ridden in dry night conditions less than 10 times in all the years I’ve been night riding…helmet mounted just doesn’t add up for me.

Looking at some of those lights, you should get a very good spread from the bar to see the ground when you turn the bars…but a helmet light does have that benefit – providing it isn’t damp!