UKC

Anyone got any experience of setting up floodlights on a crag. I have been developing a new cliff that stays dry even in Norwegian rain (It's in Norway) problem is its getting too dark to climb after work. Thinking of buying a generator and some lamps. Routes are about 30m slightly overhanging. Convenient pine tree about 20m from the rock.

In reply to chrishamper:

Friends use these for local bouldering :

http://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-400W-Portable-Worklight/p/702859?CAWELAID=12...

not sure if they would be suitable for 30m routes though..

In reply to chrishamper:
I've used very powerful battery lights for climbing but it's on gritstone so only up to about half the height you're talking about. You really need the lights to the sides of you rather than behind ( so not sure how helpful your tree is) and also wear a good head torch.
We also managed to hang lights down the crag with varying degrees of success.

In reply to chrishamper:

I've climbed in ferentillo where the crag is floodlit, it's a bit strange and difficult to see small footholds. The lights were powerful , set at base of crag and good for 20+ metres maybe more (it was a few years ago)

Thanks for the replies. Think I'm going to try attaching LED spots to bolts on the neighbouring route which combined with a head torch should throw some light onto the situation. Would be a shame to waste these dark evenings.

In reply to chrishamper:

I once heard that using UV light at a crag or boulder in the dark can be quite good fun! The chalk glows and it all gets pretty psychedelic. Throw in some beers, a BBQ, a few good freinds and you have a pretty cosy evening!

Curious to know where is getting so much rain, we've had near 3 weeks of blue sky and sunshine here in Barteby. Even Stavanger and Bergen were dry last week!

In reply to chrishamper:

Headtorches on your knees. Seriously. Helps a lot with reducing shadows.

In reply to chrishamper:

I have one that runs on my drill battery, it is pretty good for a convenient portable work light.
http://www.clasohlson.com/uk/Cocraft-LXC-WL18-2-Work-Light/40-8640#moreinfo

In reply to GarethSL:

Yes, it's not rained here for weeks. Typical, find an all weather crag and find you don't need it anymore.

In reply to chrishamper:

Back in the 1980s we used to climb at Harrisons using gas fired flood lights - the sort that road contractors use for doing night repairs on highways. They are very powerful, but the biggest problem was seeing the holds because the light source is from below rather than from above. Also shadows including your own tend to hide the rock. Headtorches help.

Carrying in the lamps and large gas cylinders is a bit knackering.

Good luck! It's great fun despite the drawbacks, which with practice, can be largely overcome or adapted to.

In reply to chrishamper:
There's a pretty thorough (8 years and counting) treatment of this on the other channel here: http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,8731.0.html

These seem to be the current favourites:
http://www.screwfix.com/p/ae0294-rechargeable-led-work-light-10w-12-24v/258...
http://www.screwfix.com/p/ae0295-rechargeable-led-work-light-23w-12-240v/70...

In reply to chrishamper:

You might want to think about what sort of location the crag is in. Here in Germany, with lots of crags & boulders in the woods, disturbing nocturnal woodland wildlife by climbing after dark is considered a big environmental no-no.

In reply to chrishamper:

Interesting point Alan, worth considering. Maybe low impact with head torches is better than floodlights. Have been thinking about ways to move a lamp up the cliff next to the climber. On a less than vertical cliff some sort of wheeled device might work but this cliff aint a slab.

In reply to AlanLittle:


it's a valid point at some times of year, but everything is hunkering down with winter looming now. I noticed yesterday evening how quiet it was at sunset. If there are thick bushes you might have birds hiding away, or in large cracks crag, bats will be finding their winter roost etc.. but there is little nocturnal activity now. Badgers don't seem to be out every night now either. As the darkness is rapidly getting longer, floodlighting is pretty normal in the Nordics, ski slopes, running / Nordic ski trails etc... there are enough expanses of wilderness for it not to impact that much overall.

OP, Northern Lights were pretty bright last couple of nights, but perhaps not enough to climb by. LEDs are good for battery life, but they produce what many call flat light, not so good for adding depth and shadows etc.. So I would try to use a mix of lights and angles. If it's quite private then leave the battery there in a box with a small solar panel to keep it topped up.

In reply to chrishamper:


tension a rope from the top of the crag, to a tree 20m away at the base. Hang your light mid way along, so it kind of shines down a little like the sun, might highlight the small holds better.

In reply to summo:

Any ideas as to how to keep the lamp pointing in the right direction?
No problem with leaving stuff at the crag, one of the many benefits of living in Norway.
The wife of the farmer who owns the cliff got quite excited when I asked about lights. She had always dreamed of putting Christmas tree lights in the large pine tree that grows next to the cliff.

In reply to chrishamper:


Hard to explain, small piece of plywood, say 30-40cm long, 15cm deep, a hole in two corners with krab in each, so it hangers on the rope in a given direction and won't rotate. Drill a hole lower down for your lamp.... it might work?

of course


you could run a thin line up the tree round a pulley at the top, she can then hoist up one of those lines of lights that are made for flag poles in gardens. You do of course need to climb the tree first.

We put lights in a tree on our garden, several 10m long LED ribbons. I tape a bent bit of wire on the end, then use a very long telescopic pruning saw holder to lift up and hook the bent wire over a branch. In reverse to remove is a little more time consuming, fishing with the 10m rod for a bit of wire is hard on the arms.

In reply to summo:

"LEDs are good for battery life, but they produce what many call flat light, not so good for adding depth and shadows etc.."

There is no difference between an LED source and any other of any similar brightness and output area. You also clearly misunderstand flat light.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteout_(weather)

In reply to Offwidth:

Perhaps I misnamed it.

Are leds and other light sources all transmitting the same frequencies? Also picked up by our eyes exactly the same? I've always understood them to be different.

Regardless of what I've tried to light, being it when climbing, caving, building, work in a forest at night with a machine.. anything I've found that what you might call traditional bulbs offer a much sharper, clearer light etc. Or perhaps I just need my eyes testing.

In reply to summo: Pretty much spectrally . Fluorescent tubes are the oddity but it doesn't matter anyway.

Compared to old halogen worklights they're a bit whiter, and not as bright despite what's claimed

In reply to summo:
What we perceive in vision is influenced by all sorts of things. If I was being naughty I might even suggest your inner (world) model of vision does seem untypical.

In terms of eye 'brightness' response it peaks in the green and there is certainly no visible wavelength differences in shadowing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photometry_(optics)#Photometric_quantities

Different lights do have different photometric flux angular profiles and different spectral outputs that give different photometric response when reflected off a rock face.

In reply to summo:
For anyone who wants to see just how much our inner model for vision fools us in weird unexpected ways, set up some RGP primary colour bars on a slide and view them from a screen projector on a white screen in a room with roughly standard lighting. Look at the results (R, G and B, so what?) and now repeat using a smartie tube or a hole in a clenched fist to isolate a small area of each colour bar at a time. Most visual optical illusions are cleverly set up to fool us but this set up isn't, yet still does. We rely on this trick when we deliver lectures with colour slides without dropping the room lighting. Photometry measures desaturated pastel shades (the smartie tube result) yet we 'see' reasonable saturated colour in the full context.

In reply to Offwidth:

So in summary; all lights are the same, only leds are perceived to be different?

Even if it is an optical illusion, I still consider the light offered by leds to be inferior in some circumstances.

In reply to summo:

They may well be for you but not in any change of shadows from one light. Flatlight is a diffuse lighting from many points that overlaps shadows so that they seem to dissapear ... a LED light is close to the opposite.

In reply to chrishamper:
Can you suspend from one end a cable with bulbs every few meters that you see outdoors on building sites?
Might work as xmas tree lights too!

http://www.screwfix.com/p/defender-e89810-festoon-lighting-kit-60w-110v/444...

110V, 60W, 10 bulbs, ES fitting, 22m long

A bulb every 2 meters so no shadows!

I assume that means 600W overall so cable rated for at least 5.5Amps at 11OV.

Replace 110 volt incandescent with something like 12 Volt LED Bulbs (ES fitting)

http://www.lightinthebox.com/e27-7w-36x5730smd-800-1200lm-6000-7500k-warm-w...

7W LED is equivalent to 47W incandescent although the LEDs I have look brighter to me so I'd reckon closer to 70W equivalent.

7W x 10 bulbs = 70W

70W at 12 volts is 5.8 amps so should be within spec of cable.

Replace plug with something for 12 volts so it does not get plugged into 110V AC!!!!!!!!!

Use a 12V battery that can supply 6 amps for a few hours.

I don't know anything about batteries but this thing has 17Ah so should last a 90 mins or couple of hours without being overly discharged????

http://www.halfords.com/workshop-tools/garage-equipment/jump-leads/phaze-4-...