Lava wrote:I suspect that many of the people who are picking "I can imagine caving situations that shouldn't require the use of a helmet" are doing so because they have such tight spots in mind
I don't know what they are thinking. Should a helmet be required when visiting a shelter cave? Can you imagine visiting a shelter cave?
I copied Chad's comment from the other thread:
Wrong. Ive compressed my spine twice by violently ramming my head into a wall. When you are tired, hungry, cold, and leaving the cave after a long survey, SHIT happens. You tend to hang your head down, you stare at the floor and all the sudden you ram your head into a small outcropping. A guy i know put his eye out on a rock flake. Not wearing a helmet because you think its easy to watch where youa re going, yeah ok.
Last year a friend drowned and lost his helmet in the process of saving his life. I rescued him, but we had to make it 3 miles out of the cave with no helmet on two guys. If you dont think a helmet is important, go drown yourself, get revived, then try to make it out of the cave on yoru own power before you go hypothermic, all without hitting your head.
Most cavers think nothing bad can ever happen to me, You are apparently one of them. I suggest you start wearing a helmet, even if you have to push it in front of you in tight crawls because ohio caves are no different than southern illinois caves and everyone who caves in SoIll wears a helmet, even if they are pushing it in front of them 50% of the time.
As impossible as this may be to believe, I'm not a reckless person. I'm by nature a timid and fearful person. I don't think, "nothing bad can ever happen to me." I know that bad things can happen unexpectedly. I suffer from irrational dread of tragedy. Despite these truths, I feel safe without my helmet in some cases. The fact that freak accidents can happen doesn't mean that they should be allowed to dictate our habits. I don't know what a compressed spine is, or how you managed to obtain a pair of them, but the other examples don't really have a place in this squabble. I read your accounts of the drowning incident, and it sounds truly awful, but that story has nothing to do with the question at hand. Nor do missing eyes, or fire hose attack, or accidentally swallowing a fork, or death by the neighbors pet goose. We do not need to protect ourselves from wildly unlikely events. You think that Ohio caves are no different from Illinois caves? This morning we established what I believe is the longest natural through trip in the state. It's about 700'. At no point (beyond the large entrance) does the passage exceed 3' in any dimension, and most of it is between 10" and 20" in at least one dimension. What disaster could I reasonbly expect a helmet to protect me from in there?
Chads93GT wrote:even doing vertical at cliffs where rock climbers climb without helmets, we wear them.
And that makes good clean sense. There's both the possibility of a fall, and the likelihood that someone will knock rocks on your head. I've several times wished for a helmet when belaying climbers. Climbing rope or rocks is many times more dangerous than exploring some caves.