In my (limited) experience, I find people tend to rely too heavily on flashlights. At a camping weekend we ran for the cadets back on the Labour Day weekend, the sleeping area was 200 yards down the hill from the kitchen where we ate. It seemed everyone, including the Boy Scout leaders, I think, had honking great maglites that they used to return to the sleeping area after supper. I found that I simply couldn't see where I was going with all those flashlights bobbing around; I was much more comfortable waiting for everyone to go on ahead and then proceeding down "in the dark". It was a dirt road, and a clear night - if they'd only turned off their flashlights and waited 5-10 minutes for their night vision to adjust, they'd probably have been astonished at how easy it was to see the road. <br><br>I'm only speculating, but testing a flashlight around the house or in the back yard, there might well be enough ambient light from the street, passing cars, or other houses, to prevent your night vision from ever kicking in. On the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, you might well find that your night vision is far better than you ever thought possible.<br><br>(My brother once dropped a roll of exposed film in the darkroom. He couldn't turn on the lights to look for it without destroying it. After about 45 minutes of fruitless groping on his hands and knees, he discovered that he could use the backlight from his digital watch as a flashlight; he found the roll of film and was able to develop it successfully.)