Headgear for Climbers

Helmet Head- A hair cut that forms a perfect “helmet” shape around the head itself. Many times this can be accomplished by a horrible haircut and lack of caring in the morning tossed with a side of being a boner. This non-trendy look is usually seen on people with the name “Mike”.
“Man, Mike walked in this morning with some crazy helmet head! Die it pink and he’d look …….!!”

There are a couple other urban definitions, but enough joking. This is an important topic. We’re discussing helmets and protecting our attic, belfry, brain, capitulum, coconut, cranium, crown, dome, gray matter, noggin, noodle, skull, tank, top story, upstairs, etc….. You get the picture.

During a 3½-year study Bowie, Hunt, and Allen reviewed 451 injuries reported by 220 climbers in Yosemite. The sources of the injuries varied, but 144 climbers reported injuries from lead falls. Data was collected when climbers arrived at the Yosemite Medical Clinic or were rescued by U.S.N.P.S. and YOSAR (Yosemite Search and Rescue). A larger portion, 227 of the 451 injuries reported, were to the skin or subcutaneous tissue. Of the remaining injuries, 127 were to the lower extremities including the femur, knee, tibia/fibula, ankle, and foot. Twenty-nine were to upper extremities including the shoulder, forearm, wrist, and hand. Twenty-five injuries were reported to the head (skull/brain). Of the remaining injuries, ten were sustained around the face and neck area.

Let me deviate for a second, I just found this funny. Quoting Lead Climbing Injuries, “The study also showed that falls are not the cause of injury; it depends on how the climber lands after the fall.” This sounds like a familiar joke. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing? Anyway, it goes on to say that the nature of the contact surface is important. Ya.

So most importantly, the study points out that there were a total of thirty-five head plus neck-related injuries; Four injuries related to lead climbing were fatal, and all of these were head injuries. The good news is only 8% of total injuries reported were head/neck injuries. Thus, during a fall it is less likely you will break your neck than something less critical.

Let’s face it, if you fall in a way that breaks your damn neck, a helmet won’t help. With that in mind let’s consider, “What are helmets good for?” They’re designed to protect your head from falling debris, whether it’s loose rock or a stray carabiner. They also offer some protection in the event of a fall. I say some because getting flipped upside down by the rope, taking a swinging pendulum, or tripping on the decent, makes the possibilities for banging your head almost endless. Oh, and how about the smack upside the head your friend doles out when you’re caught checking out the ripped 5.13 climber chick/guy next route over. Oh Never mind, that would be a hand impact. Lets worry about rocks and falls.

So it’s a no-brainer, right? Maybe I shouldn’t put it that way, but helmets are a good thing. Say it again, “helmets are a good thing.” You got it, now we just need to understand a few things to get the helmet that best protects our priceless peanut. Things we’ll consider are the standards, testing to which helmets manufacturers comply, and helmet design. Lastly, a sample of helmets on the market. It’s a lot of info, but if you care about your head read on.

Certification Standards and Testing

It should be remembered that standards set minimum performance criteria. There is an argument that standards encourage manufacturers to produce helmets that barely pass. Some manufacturers use this to produce the lightest possible helmet, or to keep costs down and produce budget models. It could equally be argued that it is better to encourage helmet use by competitive pricing and enhancing user friendliness, at the cost of some performance.

British Mountaineering Council Technical Committee (BMC)

The point of the quote is to make you consider so-called standards. Standards are just relative measures. Often they are the product of technological limits. No sense creating a standard that no one can meet. They can also be the product of assumptions about an activity. Climbing helmet standards are no different. They have come a long way, but they have limits. Standards just provide a minimum that hopefully achieves some consistency across the manufacturing spectrum. Hopefully, they also define a level of real protection.

Let’s get this certification thing straight. You are going to see any number of “certifications” when you go shop for a helmet. It can be a little confusing. For all you know those things are just marketing gimmicks and mean nothing. However, they can have important meaning. The cool numbers may give you piece of mind (“piece of mind”, get it?), but I’m pretty sure we can take it a little further. Here’s certifications you’ll see.

CEN or CE – European Committee for Standardization, they set the European standards. EN (European Standard) is a document that has been adopted by one of the three recognized European Standardization Organizations. In the case of our helmets it’s the CE.

UIAA - The International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation. “The prime feature of UIAA Safety Standards is that they are developed by mountaineers and climbers FOR the mountaineering and climbing community.” In the case of most of our gear the UIAA collaborates with the CE to establish uniformity of standards. In some cases, the UIAA asks for additional tests making the certification stricter than the CE. This is true of helmets. Thus, if you see the “UIAA” certification, the helmet has been tested to a higher (better) standard. For example, you could see standards advertised in many forms.

1. Certification: CE – UIAA
2. CE EN 12492/UIAA
3. CE Certified
4. CE / UIAA 106 / 3 Sigma rated

I pulled these from various helmets. It’s actually redundant to put “CE/UIAA” on a helmet, as you’ll see. The last one shows the 3-Sigma rating. Don’t freak out it’s just a statistical measure that makes for good advertisement. It implies that all helmets fall within a certain statistical limit (3 sigma). Meaningless for most of us. However, there are variances during manufacture (FYI 3_sigma implies that 99.7% of the products [helmets] will meet the standard). Ain’t that good news. The implication is not all helmets are going to meet the standard.

Originally, EN12492 the standard for “Helmets for mountaineers” was written with the dangers of alpine climbing in mind. Designing a helmet for use in the mountains is concerned with two primary factors 1) protecting the wearer’s head from falling stones and 2) the penetration of the helmet (and the head) by sharp-edged stones. Additionally, the retention system (chin-strap) has to be designed to retain the helmet on the wearer’s head.

To be sold within the EU, climbing helmets must have been independently tested and shown to have met or exceeded the requirements of EN12492. In addition, if the slightly stricter requirements of the UIAA 106 standard are met, then the manufacturer has the option of applying the UIAA Safety Label to the product. To my knowledge there is no such restriction to selling climbing helmets in the U.S. so be wary of uncertified helmets. And again, the UIAA certification improves on the EN standard, hence the redundancy.

So what’s all the EN/UIAA standard gobly-gook mean for helmet testing? It’s simple. It outlines these tests, weights and results:

Vertical impact test – A 5 kg rounded weight is dropped from 2 meters twice, 10cm apart, in the centre of the helmet. Impact force measured must be less than 10kN CE or 8kN UIAA.

Impact tests (Front, side and rear energy absorption) – A 5kg flat-bottomed weight is dropped from 50cm at 4 points at the front, sides and rear of the helmet. Impact force measured must be less than 10kN CE or 8kN UIAA. (Note: the lower the figure recorded the better)

Penetration test – A 3kg pointed weight is dropped from 1m in the centre of the top of the helmet. No mark must be seen in a ‘putty’ which is placed in the ‘head form’. Here’s a nice little diagram from Wild Country (the pic is a link).

Click for Wild Country Testing

Helmet stability – Checks (1) that the chin strap will not release under a load of 0.5kN, and (2) that the helmet is retained on the head-form when an impulsive load is applied by dropping a 10kg weight separately onto the front and rear of the helmet in a direction to roll it off the head-form. Check out the diagrams below. Both are linked. For a visual of the tests, the EN-12492 pic takes you to a printable PDF of the document.

Essentially seven tests are carried out on a helmet which is mounted on a wooden head-form.Typically three samples are tested per helmet model. A load sensor is located in the head-form’s neck. The color diagram demonstrates the setup (courtesy of Wild Country). The image links to Wild Country helmet testing. The second is a PDF diagram of EN/UIAA tests.

Click for printable PDF

Quick review: In regards to the limits indicated in the pictorial representation of the tests (PDF right), a kilo-Newton is a measure of force, where 1kN equals about 225 pounds. Thus 8kN is about 1800 pounds and 10kN is about 2250 pounds. Remember that helmet impact tests doesn’t measure the amount of force a helmet can withstand, it measures how much force is transmitted to your head and neck. The UIAA test requires less force transmission to your head/neck. Still, 1800 pounds will do damage to fragile bones.

Having fun yet?

No? Here’s a climbing joke, sorta.

Q: How do you get a blonde to climb on the roof?

A: Tell her the drinks are on the house.

Hey, It works for most of the climbers I know

BMC Testing

I’ve already said that the tests described above are required if a manufacturer wants to certify their helmet as meeting CE or UIAA standards. Unfortunately, those tests don’t really tell us much. All climbers should thank the BMC for doing it’s own independent testing. For more than two years, the BMC Technical Committee conducted a helmet testing program. Their tests provide us with a lot of useful research into the level of protection one can expect from the various types of climbing helmets on the market.

Much of the information I’m presenting in this post comes from the BMC tests, and subsequent results. Their tests raised almost as many questions as it answered. This was particularly true regarding “Off-center” impacts. Since the original standards were written with falling object protection in mind “the major pre-requisite of the standard was that helmets for climbing and mountaineering should provide adequate protection against impacts on the crown of the head. Unfortunately, this means that requirements in both these standards for minimizing the effects of impacts elsewhere, or for preventing major injury if the climber hit the ground headfirst are minimal.”

Mark Taylor of the University of Leeds headed BMC’s inquiry. In a followup at the end of BMC’s testing, and after consulting a number of climbers, they decided to conduct some additional testing to include the off-center impact. This test simulates a climber hitting his head in a fall from swinging or hitting the deck. The new comparison test was devised “whereby the front of a helmet (inclined at 45° from the vertical) would be subject to an impact equal in energy to the crown impact test stipulated in the EN standard – 98 Joules (or a 5kg weight dropped from 2m).

Design

Still there? Awesome. Now we can look at helmets and how they are designed to meet the certification standards. There are primarily three types of helmet designs for climbers. Each has it’s merits and drawbacks. The material in quotes is from the BMC.  *There are links to more resources and BMC documents at the bottom of this blog.

• Traditional hard-shelled helmet or shell/cradle (e.g. HB, Joe Brown, Edelrid Ultralight, Petzl Ecrin Roc). Traditional hard-shell helmets consist of a hard outer shell and a flexible internal cradle constructed of webbing. The cradle is multi-functional. It provides the wearer with a modicum of comfort and holds the helmet on the head. Most importantly, it manages impacts by stretching.

The main energy-absorbing component in these helmets is the textile webbing cradle, and the crucial clearance distance between this and the shell. This webbing is anchored to the shell at the rim, which means that the nearer the rim an impact occurs, the lower the energy absorption will be – in this case the force transmitted is over four times the maximum allowed for a comparative crown impact by the EN standard.

• Thick foam/soft-shelled helmet (e.g. Cassin Mercury, Camp Starlight, Petzl Mercury & Meteor, Grivel El Cap). Typical foam helmets are made from expanded polystyrene (EPS) with a thin polycarbonate shell. Compared to hardshells they are lighter and provide better ventilation.

The thickness of foam is constant throughout the whole shell, and as this is the main energy-absorbing layer, it is clear that the helmet will be effective wherever an impact occurs. However, Impacts cause the cells in the foam to progressively collapse. The foam can crack into pieces, or even crumble completely with a large impact.

• Hybrid hard-shelled/thick foam helmet (e.g. Black Diamond Half Dome, Camp StarTech, Petzl Elios). This design is the latest iteration in helmets. It combines features of both traditional and foam helmets. No helmet does it all perfectly, but this design does provide a pretty good balance of properties.

With these helmets the foam is concentrated around the crown, and thins out towards the edges or simply stops. Again the foam is the main energy absorber, and as it is thinner at the edges, the transmitted force is much greater for an impact in these areas than one where the foam is thickest.

So those are the designs we have to consider. We are now close to asking the all important question, “Which one do I want?” Selection is best determined by the activity. From the British Mountaineering Council -

For general rock climbing, at the typical British crag you should be looking for a lightweight helmet that offers good all round protection (ie. from impacts from all sides) with good ventilation to help keep the old noggin cool. Modern foam/shell combinations are a good choice.

For alpine and ice climbing, good top impact performance is more important along with good resistance to penetration from sharp falling objects. Traditional shell/cradle models are more appropriate for this use.

Since I’m a climber, my principal use is climbing. That includes sport and longer trad routes. I need a helmet that will protect as much of my head as possible and is durable. Not only are we subject to falling objects, but we are also at risk of off-center impacts from falls, slides, tumbles, and swings. The helmet I choose is going to provide the broadest amount of protection. I’m going to admit publicly that for most of my climbing life I haven’t worn a helmet. In fact, the helmet I own is an older traditional style. I’m not sure it would provide anything close to the protection of todays standards. That said, I’m going shopping.

Before I go buy my new helmet, here’s a summary of helmet design pros and cons:

• Hardshell
  • Pros – Top impact (good against rock/ice fall), *Residual protection, Durability (transport/rough handling)
  • Cons – Off-centre impact (little protection towards the rim) Weight/ventilation
  • Best for mountaineering, long routes, groups, rescue teams, caving
• Foam
  • Pros – Off-centre impact (good for climber falls), Light Weight, good ventilation
  • Cons – Durability, Lack Residual protection
  • Best for short routes & sport climbing
• Hybrid hardshell/foam
  • Pros – Good all round performance
  • Cons – Off-centre protection only where foam present
  • Best for All round climbing & mountaineering

One thing we haven’t touched on is the topic of *residual protection. This refers to a helmets ability to provide protection after an initial impact. Hard shells may provide protection after being struck if the shell’s integrity is intact. Foam, on the other hand, provides protection by crushing (see above). Once its been crushed it can no longer provide protection. It’s important to note because in the case of any helmet which utilizes foam for protection, once its been struck, its trash.

Helmets with UIAA Certification

For my money I want a helmet that meets the UIAA certification standard. Even though in practice, the difference between it and the CE standard is probably minimal. I still want all the added protection I can get. Fortunately the UIAA has a list of helmets that met their certification standard as of 2008. It’s a couple years old but still worth considering. Helps cut down on the research anyway. Many more models now meet UIAA standards, so if a helmet you like isn’t here don’t rule it out.

HELMETS UIAA 106 Date: 2008-07-20
The products listed below are conform to the UIAA Standards

Black Diamond
Half Dome 53-61 cm (circumference) 2009-12-31
Tracer 2008-12-31

CAMP
Armour 54-60 cm 2009-12-31
Armour Lady 54-47 cm 2010-12-31
Armour Jr 54-57 cm 2010-12-31
Startech 2009-12-31
Silver Star 2009-12-31

Edelrid
Ultralight Junior 2009-12-31
Madillo 52-62 cm 2010-12-31
Ultralight 2009-12-31

Grivel
Salamander 54-62 cm 2009-12-31

LAS
Annapurna 53-61 cm 2009-12-31
Tomtog 53-61 cm 2009-12-31

Mammut
Tripod Kids 48-55 cm 2010-12-31
Tripod 54-61 cm 2010-12-31

Petzl – Charlet Moser
ALTIOS 2010-12-31
Ecrin Roc 53-63 cm 2009-12-31
Meteor III 2009-12-31
Vertex Vent 2010-12-31
Elios 2010-12-31

Salewa
Salewa Sargon 2008-12-31

Simond
Bumper blue, red, silver, yellow 2008-12-31

Helmet examples – Traditional designs

The venerable Joe Brown. No longer produced

Petzl Ecrin Roc. A good hardshell helmet. One-size-fits-all: 53-63 cm Weight: 445 g CE/EN 12492/UIAA

Edelrid Ultralight, Weight: Ultralight? size: 54 – 60 cm CE/EN 12492 and UIAA

 

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Hybrid Hardshell/Foam

Here we have the Black Diamond Half Dome. Note the innards of this hybrid. This is also CE/EN 12492, UIAA certified. Weight : 360 g; 12.7 oz Size Range : 53–61 cm; 21–24 in

 

Next is the Mammut Skywalker 2. Similar hybrid design. The Skywalker is listed as EN 12492 Weight: 380g Size: 53-61cm

The Petzl Meteor III and the CAMP Armour. Meteor - Size: 53-61 cm Weight: 235 g CE/EN 12492, UIAA. Armour - Certifications: CE/UIAA Size: 54 - 63 cm, 21.5 - 24.5 in, Weight: 340 g, 12.0 oz

 

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Foam Helmets

 

Left the CAMP Starlight Carbon, and the Black Diamond tracer. Both foam construction. The Starlight is a whopping Weight: 280 g, Size: 51 -61 cm CE/EN 12492 & UIAA. The Tracer is Weighs : 245 g, Size Range : 49–57 cm (small)

Links & reference

Helmets – A guide for mountaineers and climbers

Head Games Part 1 – BMC Helmet testing or The article contains diagrams and is best viewed as a pdf

Head Games Part 2 – BMC Helmet testing or View this article as a pdf (added diagrams)

Helmets – Off Center Impacts

UIAA Safety Standards

Wild Country Helmet Testing

Bowie, William S.; Thomas K. Hunt, Hubert A. Allen. “Rock Climbing Injuries in Yosemite National Park”. Western Journal of Medicine 149 (2): 172, 174.

Be Safe, Live Long, Climb Hard