xcathodex wrote:ek wrote:While many of you are more experienced than I, I must say I don't agree with the pervasive notion that a helmet not suitable for vertical caving can be suitable for horizontal caving.
hear, hear. when horizontal caving you're often traveling on muddy slopes, scrambling around and over breakdown, sloshing through streams where no one but the first person can see exactly what's on the bottom before the silt starts to swirl. you can stand up in a passage 6" too short for you, you can walk into an outcrop or formation, you can slip, you can trip. it's not all about rockfall and i don't see the sense in retrofitting or adapting non-caving helmets for caving.
Exactly. So why do you all insist on recommending CLIMBING helmets for caving, when one is not climbing anything more crazy than the side of a hill (albeit underground). Incidentally, mining helmets don't have to be retrofitted. They come with lamp brackets of various kinds. Many CLIMBING helmets have to be retrofitted with those headlamp clips to accommodate a light.
ek wrote:No disrespect taken!
EK
is argumentative and thinks too much. duh.
...but, without getting too flowery here, it's the people willing to ask "why" who create change.
Which is why I continue to insist that one does not need climbing helmets for horizontal caving.
Hey, I think I just came up with a whole new product line. Hiking helmets. Because one might slip and fall in a stream, on a muddy hillside, have a rock fall off a bluff, etc. while outside, and conk one's noggin. Heck, I think we need to have all housewives wear cleaning helmets, (ever bonked yourself while cleaning under a bed?) and auto mechanics need under vehicle helmets (might slip in grease, or rise up too far and smack one's self on the edge of the car body crawling out). How about requiring all drivers and passengers in cars to have helmets? You might be in a wreck, and heaven knows, I've smacked my head on the door frame getting out of a strange car a time or two. They've got helmets for hockey and rollerblading-- why not figure skating? Ever been dancing with a partner and accidentally got whacked upside the head with an errant move? Dancing helmets...of course! Or sideswiped while kissing? Need a helmet for that! I've even hit my head while picking something off the floor, against a low lintel, (my grandma's house was famous for the headbanger between the second and first floors), under numerous desks, tables and pieces of industrial machinery, storage shed openings, cabinets...
I think I will found an organization called Helmets for Life. We can just wear helmets from the cradle to the grave. Think of the money it will save on hairstyling!
(Oops. If I'd had a helmet, that smack wouldn't have hurt so bad.)
(tongue firmly in cheek!)
Teresa