Helmet Dogma

JEFFREY KLUGER, Time Magazine

The fact that Richardson was not wearing a helmet may or may not have made a difference in the gravity of her injury. If skiers are moving slowly - say 10 m.p.h. or slower - and they fall on soft snow, they're probably not going to be hurt severely, whether they're wearing a helmet or not. If they're moving faster than 15 or 20 m.p.h. and strike ice, hard-packed snow or another solid object with the head, they're likely to suffer severe injury, and again the presence of a helmet may not make much difference. It's in the middle area - at speeds that are neither very slow nor very fast - that a helmet can play the biggest role. The trick, of course, is that you never know when you're going to be in that gray zone, since even slow beginner skiers can lose control and speed up, and high-speed skiers have to slow down eventually.

Physics makes things trickier still, causing different parts of the body to move at different speeds. Your skis or snowboard may be sliding along at a slow 10 m.p.h., but if you catch a tip or edge on something stationary, the rest of you plunges forward and accelerates. "The body acts as an inverted pendulum, so the upper body moves much faster than the lower body," says Shealy.

Once you do fall and hit, the brain can do much more than just bump the inside of the skull. "You can have stretching of cortical connections or stretching of blood vessels, and that can lead to bleeding," Shealy says. "You can also have linear or rotational acceleration [of the brain]. There's a lot that can go wrong in there."

Even some experts acknowledge that helmets are no panacea, and not only because they become less effective at higher speeds. Skiers argue that they reduce peripheral vision and also provide a false sense of security that encourages speeding.

Another item.

The first thing I do when I hear or see rock/ice fall, tuck into the side of the wall. Base of the skull through C7 exposed; well at least I was wearing a helmet for the media release after I get my f'd for life injury. I did get tagged on the head by a piece of ice this past winter and almost bit my tongue off, was glad to have the helmet on.

When I learned to ski (in the 80's) ski helmets didn't even exist except for maybe slalom racers. I fell plenty and I was only eight years old. I still ski and still don't wear a helmet. People tell me that I'm "crazy" for not wearing a helmet while skiing, even though I've been doing it for twenty years. I think those people are a little silly, personally.

I love to ski fast on the groomers and moderately fast in the trees. I hate the extra weight of a helmet on my head while skiing; I think it gets in the way of my peripheral vision and my ability to quickly assess my surroundings. I just make sure that I'm skiing in control. When I do fall (because it's inevitable) I make sure that I protect my head as I'm falling. It's all part of skiing in control.

--Marc

Marc, I can relate - I wear a helmet though when I plan on skiing steeper runs, on days when I plan on taking it easy though, I've tended to not wear the helmet. Invariably it's been that day when i take the unexpected weird fall and bounce my noggin off the hardpacked run and get my bell rung.

Wearing the helmet is just an added margin of safety - may not matter if i crash into a tree running 30 mph, but since I rather like my brains the way they are, I'll wear the helmet. It's a measure of reducing my risk - nothing more.

By the way, my helmet is super light - lighter than my climbing helmet in fact - which I ALWAYS wear.

Personally I feel more at risk from having someone crash into me than I do from losing control myself.

edit - I don't understand how anyone wearing goggles can claim that the helmet inteferes with peripheral vision - the side of the helmet sits behind my goggles and in no way does it intefere with my vision.

The peripheral vision thing is BS. With goggles on you have the same vision as if you are wearing a beanie. In fact even with sunglasses I notice no lost of peripheral vision. Maybe it's because I don't wear a full face helmet, and always get one that has removable ear flaps, so less bulk around the sides.

Helmets are plenty light, and makes skiing/riding in the trees much easier. I know I can squeeze into much tighter spots with the helmet on than without. Goggles never rip off, unlike with a hat combo.

Anyway, it's still a personal choice. Helmets certainly don't hurt and I agree that there is a good chance a helmet would not have made difference in this case.

The main reason I wear one, is there are a lot of out of control idiots on the slopes that can blindside you. The other reason is that I ride mostly in the backcountry and there is a lot of stuff under the snow that you just don't know about. No ski patrol marking hazards out there. A fall can get you tumbling into hidden rocks and such.

When I started in 88 helmets weren't really around either. I adopted using them in 98 and have seen more advantages to them than not.

killclimbz wrote:The peripheral vision thing is BS.

Tell me how you really feel. :)

I have good goggles (I think they're Oakley's) that are intentionally designed to not reduce peripheral vision. The one or two helmets that I've tried on have limited my peripheral vision; maybe I just need to try a higher end helmet on to eliminate this as a problem. Call my statement BS is you wish, but that's my experience--whether you believe it or not.

killclimbz wrote:Helmets are plenty light, and makes skiing/riding in the trees much easier. I know I can squeeze into much tighter spots with the helmet on than without. Goggles never rip off, unlike with a hat combo.

So your helmet makes your head smaller? I don't get it.

Justin Cantrall wrote:Snowboarding: I'll keep wearing my helmet. Catching a heel edge at even slow speeds is enough to whack the back of my head against the snow pretty hard. I rarely catch edges, but shit happens. The one time I've ever knocked myself unconscious snowboarding was before I started wearing a helmet. I know I've taken similar falls since I started wearing the helmet, and have been ok.

I'm a skier, but I have lots of friends that snowboard. We've talked about helmets before because almost all of them wear helmets and I don't. We realized that because of the physics of a snowboard fall, it's much more prudent to wear one snowboarding because of the greater potential to injure the softer, more exposed back part of the skull.

--Marc

Justin Cantrall wrote: I know exactly what he's talking about. When tree-bashing, branches often brush up against the top of my helmet/hat. These branches can easily rip off the goggle-hat combo, but never rip off the helmet-goggle combo; they just skip right off instead.

Ahh.. gotcha. I get my hat pulled off occasionaly, but not that frequently.

--Marc

Once clients started wearing helmets helicopter skiing in Canada we saw a lot more tree related accidents, internal injuries, arms, hips, etc. People tended to just ski faster.

I don't wear a helmet skiing either backcountry or ski areas but I do rock climbing.

I've been skiing for almost 40 years so helmets are pretty new to the scene for me. I raced in high school and college with out a helmet. I still don't wear a helmet, but I don't ski the trees anymore.

Your right about the main concern being hit by another skier. That happened to me a couple of years ago and I separated my shoulder and broke a couple of ribs. A helmet wouldn't have helped. Now I get "gun-shy" when a skier approaches my peripheral, so I won't wear glacier glasses or anything that might reduce my peripheral.

I always climb with a helmet though, except in the gym.

I usually wear mine when I ride the trees to avoid the Sonny Bono Syndrome. I'm a boarder, so riding the trees can be a bit more interesting as far as speed control etc. are concerned.

Often I don't use it on the trails, until the other day someone reminded me it the OTHER D-bags I need to worry about. Valid point...

I was definitely speaking of the branches ripping your hat and goggles off. A helmet does add some bulk, it still doesn't make my head bigger than the rest of the package it's attached too.

I too, have goggles designed to not reduce peripheral vision. My guess is the helmets you were trying on had more bulk than the ones that I have used. There are a lot of different styles of helmets out there. I guess I should have called BS on that all helmets block peripheral vision. It is certainly not the case.

One thing I will continue to agree with. It's a personal choice and it needs to continue to be one.

killclimbz wrote: One thing I will continue to agree with. It's a personal choice and it needs to continue to be one.

Amen!

I don't wear a helmet skiing...they don't seem to offer that much more protection. I won't ski aggressively in tight trees or rocky terrain if I'm too tired to stay on top of my skis or if I'm in an unfamiliar area. The "I wear a helmet to avoid tree limbs hitting you in the head" thing is a bit dumb in my opinion. Use your poles and arms like a slalom skier bashing gates, or bob and weave like a boxer to avoid getting stuck by an evergreen.

It aint the wand, It's the magician.

I usually don't wear a helmet climbing. Although I've been finding myself wearing one or wishing I brought one more often then not on weekends in Eldo.

killclimbz wrote:One thing I will continue to agree with. It's a personal choice and it needs to continue to be one.

+1

For whatever it's worth, I only wear a helmet while climbing 10-20% of the time.

--Marc

Over the last few years I've started wearing a helmet most all the time when climbing. There are too many gym puke climbers who have no clue about warning when they knock something down from above. Gyms might be fun, but the gym scene has really lowered the skill sets, etiquette, sense of responsibility and overall demeanor of the climbing community in general.

I wear a helmet while I'm climbing anything, even highball boulder problems. I wear a full face helmet skiing, and it's saved my jaw more than once. If it's a big day and I'm heading to Vail or A Basin to huck , I usually wear knee and elbow pads and a backpack with a metal shovel blade in it. Body armor is your friend, sure you take more risks while wearing it, but the payoff is worth it to me. As for a helmet while climbing, regardless of weather or not you're worried about rockfall from above, what happens if take a little fall, even a LITTLE one, and end up sideways or upside down and smash your fucking skull open as you slam into the rock. Maybe I look like a dork wearing a helmet on a 5.7, but that's your problem, not mine.

My favorite topic.... wooo hooo!

I love the news reports that go something like this. "Today a skier died after being run over by a snow cat and then pushed over an 80ft cliff. Responders to the scene report the skier was wearing their helmet"

I grew up ski racing out east. When I first started we used bamboo for slalom, no one wore helmets for slalom until break away gates came around and helmets were used to deflect the gates from your head. We were required to wear helmets for Giant Slalom and above. When we trained GS we rarely wore our helmets. My schedule from when I was about 8 years old to 16 was Tues-Thurs train, Saturday train races were usually Sunday sometimes Sat Also. With all that time spent on icy slopes going fast you would think that I had seen a lot of traumatic head injuries, I haven't.

Is a helmet a good idea in certain circumstances? Sure. Is it necessary for average resort skiiing? There are different conflicting studies on this. The studies that support this always have a stat like 5 in 1000 injuries made less severe by wearing a helmet, blah blah. The stats are so low, if you feel the need for a helmet skiing, why not wear a helmet when you drive?

I also agree that snowboarding is a different animal.

I always wear mine climbing.

Evan wrote:Maybe I look like a dork wearing a helmet on a 5.7, but that's your problem, not mine.

Not if you're the one looking like the dork. :)

I do think it's slightly funny when you see someone top-roping at a stable cliff with a helmet on. Like Rick says, "Why not just wear one while you drive?" It's much more likely to protect you while driving then TRing at most places.

--Marc

I guess only some people are comfortable enough in their manhood to wear a helmet.....

You might climb for 40 years and only need a helmet...once.

I don't wear a helmet skiing backcountry because I'm a chicken. I sometimes wear one at an area because a) the snow is rock-hard and b) somewhere, someday, there's some gumbie who's going to wallop me at 35 mph.

I was just so used to wearing a helmet cycling that it seemed like the right thing to do when I started climbing. I use a helmet doing just about anything I do outdoors except fishing.

I always wear a helmet, skiing and climbing. Don't know why anybody would choose not to wear a helmet skiing. I'm probably going to get a full-face helmet for next season in fact. I do know some extremely good skiers who just chose not to wear helmets, which I guess I respect given their skill and their knowledge of the sport/safety, but I have to say the vast majority of people I see skiing without a helmet aren't very good, and probably just don't know any better when it comes to helmet safety. Makes me think of the hippy tele'ers I see up at Bethoud and Loveland Pass with their patterned wool hats and all their avy gear.... what good is that beacon/shovel/probe/hour you spent digging a pit going to do when you hit a tree? [Edit: sorry for the unnecessary rant on hippy teleskiers!]. Same goes for climbing.... I don't know why it seems like you hardly ever see any shots of climbers in magazines wearing helmets... guess they just aren't "cool".... gotta make it look like your just out for a casual stroll on that 5.14. Just this past weekend climbing in the Fisher Towers I was reminded of why a helmet can be nice as my partner sent down a steady rain of mud onto my head leading the nasty aid pitch above me. Ah well, each to his own. Anyways thats my rant.
Cheers,
Phil.