I almost invariably wear a helmet when climbing, partly in case of an out-of-control leader fall, but mostly against falling rock and equipment.
Pretty much everyone I climb with has had a close call with third-party gravity, and yet surprisingly few wear helmets. This bothers me even
more after the following incident :
On a trip to check out Kanalklippan in Stockholm, with no intention of climbing and thus no helmet, I was watching Al
climb when he knocked a walnut-sized stone from a ledge about 2m above me. It hit me square on the head, and stunned me so that I saw stars
in classic cartoon style, and almost passed out. This was a tiny stone, less than 2oz in weight (40g), and travelling at about
10mph (6 m/s, 20kph) when it hit me. I could probably have controlled a belay afterwards, but any bigger or higher and I would have most
likely dropped the rope. In this case I got away with a small cut and a big bump, but it made it clear how much damage small items can do.
Our day's climbing at Klövberget resulted in one ascent, due to a couple of rescues that took up the rest of the time. Getting down
to the base of the climbs from the approach is tricky, because the path down is hard to find, and rappelling takes you over a 25m overhang
down to quite steep scree. Al started to rapel down with his 20kg pack, but soon got his prussic caught in his rapel device. Because he had
no chest harness he had trouble staying upright, and he couldn't rig an ascension system. Luckily we had another rope, so after a long period
of wondering what was happening, I could rig the other line and go over the edge to help out. No big deal, and I probably wouldn't even
mention that incident, if it hadn't been repeated soon after by another party. Al had climbed back up when the girl in the picture
started down her rope, and stopped half way. At first I thought she was checking out the routes, but after maybe 10 minutes of silent hanging
(and slow rotation towards the horizontal) I called up to ask if she was OK, and was answered with a sheepish 'no'. I tried to talk her through
making a chest harness out of a sling, and escaping her prussic while I gave her a fireman's belay, but with no luck. Eventually I could shout
at Al to get him to lower another rope to her, and all ended undramatically again, but the two incidents wasted many hours of the day,
and with slightly different circumstances, could have become big epics. One of the biggest problems was communication - once Al had gone
over the edge it was very hard to get into a position to see or hear what was happening, and shouting up 25m is only practical in the very
calm conditions.
© Mark Harris 2004