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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Upside down 8-Jun-2007 At 11:19:27 AM TonyB

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Thank you for all your input. For anyone who values their grey matter, wearing a helmet on a lead seems a sensible thing to do, to guard against head injury in the event of flipping inverted. However, on reseaching helmets I haven't as yet found any mention of helmets being designed to protect against this kind of event. Everything seems talk about protection from falling rocks. Falling rocks are much more likely to have been dislodged by someone, making helmets more useful to the belayer than the leader for this purpose ... ( on one such occasion, I dislodged a rock and yelled out to my girlfriend on belay "STONE !!" ... unfortunately her name is "Stone" and she just looked up ... now I yell "ROCK !!" )

Chest harnesses would seem to be able to halt backward rotation in falls, if the fall and rotation hasn't progressed too far. Does anyone actually use these ? I'm also curious if grabbing the rope during a fall might also be able to reduce rotation, as the rope tightens ? (I'd rather damaged hands than a damaged head).

When climbing, the only dangerous position I can think of is the one I described. A rope to the outside of the body, rather than the cliff side, would always cause flipping, no matter how the fall was taken. Apart from tangling the rope around a leg, I can't envisage any other dangerous stance. Others may disagree ?