Hung Up

After twenty years of faithfull, reliable, comfortable light my Petzl carbide has been replaced by the latest LED caving light technology. Being able to take thirty hours of light underground from four tiny batteries is luxury after all those years of carbide, waste carbide, muddy cleaning, shaking, swearing, washing...

Hmmm. Doesn't sound quite as glowing a performance as I first indicated. But the old carbide was a good, warm light. There was also nothing like sticking the generator down your front to warm you up. It helped those long waits standing at the bottom of a rope in a waterfall while some slow bugger took forty minutes to get to the top. "Off rope yet, for Chrissakes?"

But no more. I have to figure out how else to stay warm without the constant heat of a carbide generator and flame. So there Petzl will hang on a nail in my garage. It let me see the very, very end of many a cave in many a country, the evidence etched behind every scratch and dint.