Chief, I don't climb anymore. These days I'm just having fun in a hilly terrain.

In all my years of real climbing, I wore helmet most, if not all the time. Once in a while, we went on a trip, where pack weight was such an issue that we talked about cutting our food down, or not bringing helmet. So on some pretty hard (at least for me) trips I didn't wear helmet, but not because I didn't want to. I sacrificed safety for a few ounces of less weight. Calculated (foolish?) risk, not macho attitude...

The Chief wrote:
Liability and Insurance.

It's a fad to wear a helmet these days. Up until some six or so years ago, you never saw anyone wearing a helmet on a sport or trad crag... never.

I have whipped hundreds of times on sport climbs in the past four decades and have never worn a helmet nor ever impacted my head in the process of doing so.

Okay, that explains the guided clients on glaciers thing. But I disagree strongly on the helmets thing - I think it's an issue of positive peer pressure increasing helmet use (if that is indeed happening, I sure hope so). Again, I acknowledge it's about personal choice, but the consequences of head injury are so high, surely it's not worth the risk. The only time I haven't worn a helmet climbing in the last ten years (not including while crossing glaciers!) was on a couple of sportclimbing trips to Thailand - even then I nearly got taken out by a 'biner dropped from 3 pitches up, and witnessed another climber hit by a plate-sized rock from a good 30m up (in the thigh, fortunately).

Do yourself a favour, Chief, wear a helmet. It only takes one knock. And where are we gonna get our vigourous dissenting opinions if you can't remember what you had for breakfast, let alone how X was done BITD?

(Thread hijack over. Yay for DMM Revolvers, prussiks and a tibloc)

WillP wrote:

The Chief wrote:
Liability and Insurance.

It's a fad to wear a helmet these days. Up until some six or so years ago, you never saw anyone wearing a helmet on a sport or trad crag... never.

I have whipped hundreds of times on sport climbs in the past four decades and have never worn a helmet nor ever impacted my head in the process of doing so.

Okay, that explains the guided clients on glaciers thing. But I disagree strongly on the helmets thing - I think it's an issue of positive peer pressure increasing helmet use (if that is indeed happening, I sure hope so). Again, I acknowledge it's about personal choice, but the consequences of head injury are so high, surely it's not worth the risk. The only time I haven't worn a helmet climbing in the last ten years (not including while crossing glaciers!) was on a couple of sportclimbing trips to Thailand - even then I nearly got taken out by a 'biner dropped from 3 pitches up, and witnessed another climber hit by a plate-sized rock from a good 30m up (in the thigh, fortunately).

Do yourself a favour, Chief, wear a helmet. It only takes one knock. And where are we gonna get our vigourous dissenting opinions if you can't remember what you had for breakfast, let alone how X was done BITD?

(Thread hijack over. Yay for DMM Revolvers, prussiks and a tibloc)

26 years of technical rock climbing, both trad and sport, and I never came close to hitting my head. I'd prob throw a helmet on if I had a new belayer on a climb with multiple overhangs to pull through. I wear helmets on climbs with high rockfall probability and alpine. Lately, I've been inclined to wear them on regular crags as well.....just an extra precaution. I'd never say it was an absolute necessity for someone who has learned to fall correctly and knows what they're doing placing pro around overhangs and keeping their body/rope relationship correct.

The Chief wrote:

I'd never say it was an absolute necessity for someone who has learned to fall correctly and knows what they're doing placing pro around overhangs and keeping their body/rope relationship correct.

And that comes with both members of the team keeping one another honest. It is imperative that the belayer maintains a constant watchful and keen eye on the lead and corrects them accordingly.

Experience and communication are the keys to keeping one another alive.

Great point and thanks for posting.

100% correct. I absentmindedly backclipped below a crux in Joshua Tree and my belayer quickly pointed it out. No guarantee that a fall would have passed through, but it def eased my mind that he was on point like that.

Just to make things a bit clearer. Helmet is not only "useful" for protection in falls, but "essential" for protection of one's head from things falling on you. I have never fallen in a way, that a helmet made a difference, but I could recite many examples where helmet spared me from serious injury by stuff falling down on me and not only in alpine terrain. A few years back, some guy dropped a Friend number 3 on me from the Flakes area of Big Rock in Southern California.
Sorry to (again) derail the post somewhat..

asmrz wrote:Just to make things a bit clearer. Helmet is not only "useful" for protection in falls, but "essential" for protection of one's head from things falling on you. I have never fallen in a way, that a helmet made a difference, but I could recite many examples where helmet spared me from serious injury by stuff falling down on me and not only in alpine terrain. A few years back, some guy dropped a Friend number 3 on me from the Flakes area of Big Rock in Southern California.
Sorry to (again) derail the post somewhat..

This can be true even at a local crag. A couple of years ago, Harvey Carter was climbing at a local crag when his partner got slightly off route and knocked off a rock with the rope. Harvey (who I never saw climb with a helmet) ended up with a broken nose, smashed eye socket. broken cheek bone, and a fractured skull. (He claimed it was his own fault for not watching. He thought he was safe from rockfall since it was a somewhat popular crag.)

I know this thread died awhile ago but I wanted to follow up. I went back out and practiced setting up a hauling system and replaced the upper prusik/pulley and a lower pulley system with a Petzl Micro Traxion and a DMM Revolver carabiner. I made another video showing 2 different setup methods and a weight comparison between the 2 setups. Seems like a cool alternative to the "traditional" setup.

Can be found here...
http://www.brianinthewild.com/crevasse-training-modified-31-haul.html