I didn't want to de-rail Dietley's thread on high visibility throwline so I'll start something on night climbing here.

I talked about using a Maglite as a throw-weight while isolating in low light.

While working with students doing night climbs in the forest I will sometimes make them hang a chemical lightstick off their harness so I can keep up with where they are while looking around for them in the dark. Sometimes I will even place a lightstick at the base of their rope to help me find their ropes as I walk about beneath the climb. I don't want them flashing their headlights about more than necessary because it scares off the nocturnal fauna that we are sometimes studying. A red headlight will also work as many animals in the canopy cannot see the colored light.

Anybody else doing night climbs?

I like to night climb when I have time. A head light is a must, doesn't need to be a super expensive petzl, anything cheap will do. I really like the ones that use LED bulbs to save battery juice. The red colored lights don't attract as many bugs in my experience.

I have a couple of students - a grad and an undergrad - who have done more night climbing than day climbing. We're doing work in white pines, one local tree that has easy access (and is only about 75 feet tall) and a few bigger trees (110-135 feet) in the Lost 40.

We leave throwlines and para cord in the trees between climbs, so our settings are stable and well-tested. In the local tree, Trista and Justin set climbing lines at night, but it's an easy trunk tie-in over an established setting. We set climbing lines in the day in the big trees at the L40 (even though we're using leave lines), but that's a more complicated 2-stage process that I like to have light for.

Trista and Justin both climb yo-yo, so there's minimal fiddling with hardware during the climb, although Trista has to set a redirect for sampling in the local tree (we leave the webbing sling and 'biner up there). I climb my usual Mitchell when we're working in the bigger trees, but I've practiced the changeover to rappel often enough, and I keep all the gear attached right from the start of the climb. My only recent gear innovation: a little non-locking 'biner on my left leg strap for attaching unused parts of the Mitchell system (rap rack or left foot ascender) so they don't dangle around.

Headlamps with the red light are handy for: a) minimizing loss of night vision, and b) minimizing headlamp effects on what we are measuring (nighttime chlorophyll fluorescence).

Other than the rope setting cautions (settings need a good visual evaluation, bounce test or no) and a tendency to climb a bit more deliberately in the dark, I just don't find a really big difference between day and night climbs.

At one of the camps where we climb with kids who have muscular dystrophy, we've done a few night climbs. We get a few big halogen spotlights to shine upwards so that we have enough light to get the kids into their saddles and get them on rope. (The tree is a big beech, so the light reflects pretty well off of the underside of the leaves.) Once the kids are up among the lower branches, we shut off all the lights.
The climb site immediately transitions from loud chatter to absolute silence.
After about 10 seconds, we turn on strings of LED Christmas lights that we have (unknown to them) strung out in the the tree above them. We turn the big spotlights on when it is time for them to come down.
The kids tell us they really enjoy the evening.

Patrick
Arbor Quest Unlimited

oops! Posted on wrong thread...!

Yeah, but I just use night vision goggles.........well, I have them for another purpose, sooo...