Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Wearing helmets 14-Nov-2005 At 9:07:14 PM Andrew_M

Message

On 14/11/2005 garbie wrote:
>This thread sounds familiar, but is it true that most climbing helmets
>are designed for rockfall from above, not for groundfalls?

Yep. The standards only address stuff falling from above or slightly off to the side (I did have descriptions of the tests at one point, but can't find them now). They have nothing about side impacts...the sort of thing that might happen from swinging on an abseil or a side-impacting ground fall. That's not to say that they won't help, just that they're not designed for it. The biggest problem is that the temple is not covered. The temple is a major weak point on the skull and has a large artery running directly underneath it...not nice to get a fracture there. Bike helmet standards also neglect the temple, and this has been found to be an issue in studies on head injuries in cyclists. Still, they are designed more for side impacts so probably would be better for sport climbing etc where groundfall or slamming into the wall sideways are the major things to worry about. Any helmet is likely to be much better than none.

Personally I feel naked without my helmet. I reckon it's saved me a couple of times.

Edit: Found some of the standards info. The climbing helmet 'side impact' test is slightly more realistic than I remembered, but still far from perfect. Another important thing is that climbing helmets are designed to stop puncturing impacts which is why they have a hard shell, while bike helmets are designed to slow deceleration of the skull and prevent brain injury in non-puncturing impacts (like whacking into a flat rock). In other words, bike helmets might actually be a lot better if you are more worried about a ground fall and don't expect things to be donking you on the head.

Standard disclaimers about random crackpots on the internet who make authoritative-sounding statements apply...use your own judgement