[slackline]

With regards to 'pony tail cutouts', DanM has a valid point. Nat used to struggle for her helmet not to tilt forward or when wearing a headband, tilting any other which way. Her new girly-specific lid has fixed this (same model).

I've long hair and have never worked out the need for these cut-outs when you can just have the pony-tail positioned lower down. 

[Will Hunt]

I'm one of those punters that you see wearing a helmet at Malham. With the potential that there is for inverting on sport routes, I find it astonishing that more people don't opt to do the same. I can only think that people are either less risk averse or helmets still have an image problem.

On sport routes? I'll give you Malham (or low angle sport)  due to the nature and angle of the climbing but in general I'd say there's a lot less chance simply due to angle.

With regards to 'pony tail cutouts', DanM has a valid point. Nat used to struggle for her helmet not to tilt forward or when wearing a headband, tilting any other which way. Her new girly-specific lid has fixed this (same model).

Sorry Paul, you've confused me with someone who climbs anything other than low-angled sport.

[lagerstarfish]

I've long hair and have never worked out the need for these cut-outs when you can just have the pony-tail positioned lower down. 

yeah, but how does your hair look after you take the lid off?

helmet hair?

[ellis]

Are there any recorded instances of people sustaining head injuries when bouldering? I've never come across any.

I managed to sustain a nasty gash behind the ear falling off Banana Reverse onto the boulder behind a few years ago, from all of 1.5m above the deck... Should have taken a spotter.

[slackline]

yeah, but how does your hair look after you take the lid off?

helmet hair?

As crap as it did before I put it on.

[moose]

I've twice ended up driving to A&E after bouldering at Almscliff, careering up the A1 whilst mopping blood out of my eyes with a beanie.  Once after missing the slap on DBS - hit head on the pointy little boulder at the left side of the roof; once after coming off Patta's Arete when a heel-hook pinged (to this day I have never been able to find the rock my head hit). 

Also had a few near misses when my head swept the ground on Pebble Wall and Crusis (the problem that slaps up the crack on the Virgin) - trapped heel-toe and head pendulum action. 

Never occurred to me to wear a helmet - I have always found the ones I own to be an uncomfortable encumbrance.   Just feel that it's not worth making every bouldering session more unpleasant, in view of a very small number of near-misses over many years.  That said, I have never tried one of the ultra-light helmets - could change the balance of the matter.  I am pretty paranoid about the risk of leg breaking after-all - careful about pad positions and making sure straps are tucked away and clip-stick the starts of everything at Malham and Kilnsey.

[Will Hunt]

I've twice ended up driving to A&E after bouldering at Almscliff, careering up the A1 whilst mopping blood out of my eyes with a beanie.  Once after missing the slap on DBS - hit head on the pointy little boulder at the left side of the roof; once after coming off Patta's Arete when a heel-hook pinged (to this day I have never been able to find the rock my head hit). 

Also had a few near misses when my head swept the ground on Pebble Wall and Crusis (the problem that slaps up the crack on the Virgin) - trapped heel-toe and head pendulum action. 

Never occurred to me to wear a helmet - I have always found the ones I own to be an uncomfortable encumbrance.   Just feel that it's not worth making every bouldering session more unpleasant, in view of a very small number of near-misses over many years.  That said, I have never tried one of the ultra-light helmets - could change the balance of the matter.  I am pretty paranoid about the risk of leg breaking after-all - careful about pad positions and making sure straps are tucked away and clip-stick the starts of everything at Malham and Kilnsey.

Shit, that's a lot of close calls! I think you do most of your bouldering on your own Moose? I didn't mention it when you originally asked about Unknown Stones as it seemed pretty obvious, but Sigsworth et al are not the sort of places you want to have an accident if you're on your own!

[moose]

I do pretty much all of my bouldering on my own - well as alone as you can be at honeypots like Almscliff and Caley!  It's why I have never tried problems at the top of my wish-list like Ben's Wall - just cannot be adequately padded without spotters.  It doesn't strike me as too many incidents to be honest - over around ten years, including several years of unemployment when I climbed 4x week.

[tomtom]

I had a near miss at Woodwell where I pinged off Rigpa and tumbled down the slope, as I stopped I was face to face (about 10 cm away) with a large pointy sharp limestone boulder...

Other than that, I had a rock fall on my head at Baildon Wank once - when toproping as a student (instant Karma one might suggest...)

[Offwidth]

Depends what you're doing. Risk of falling rock on grit, and probably the majority of established single pitch crags,  is almost zero.

Sorry but got to cal that out Dave... maybe for you and for what you climb but not for the average punter. Grit quarries often have loose tops: on some starred routes at Millstone you need to be a ninja to avoid dropping something and in such cases it's more important for the belayer to have a lid than the climber (I'd add that a rope moving over such crap is rarely ninja-like when the seconder climbs). Even on the best crags, other people knock off and drop stuff that can hit a rock and shoot off at tangents... its a consideration to keep a lid on when under busy sections especially with novices. I've been hit a few times on grit by dropped gear (sometimes lidless) and have lost count of the gear Ive seen wizzing down the pretty solid Idwall slabs. The worst thing, when I was really glad for my lid, was shit from a startled owl at Chatsworth... how can such a smallish thing hold that much nastiness.

[dave]

In my defence I was thinking natural grit not quarried grit (and Millstone is very much the worst case scenario), and I did say falling rock not dropped gear.....

[danm]

Useful accident statistics for climbing are hard to come by, mainly because there are no rigorous methods of collecting data from people attending A&E, seeing their GP etc. The only useful data available is from Mountain Rescue, which is self selecting in that it tends to focus on the serious injuries. If you got concussion climbing at Stanage for example, you might get driven by your partner to hospital meaning your injury and the cause are never recorded.

All that aside, the MR data is pretty interesting. The injury and fatality rate as a result of rock fall is less than 5% - most injuries and fatalities are caused by lead falls. Head injuries are fairly common although nowhere near as much as lower leg injuries (not that surprising).

[Wood FT]

Useful accident statistics for climbing are hard to come by, mainly because there are no rigorous methods of collecting data from people attending A&E, seeing their GP etc. The only useful data available is from Mountain Rescue, which is self selecting in that it tends to focus on the serious injuries. If you got concussion climbing at Stanage for example, you might get driven by your partner to hospital meaning your injury and the cause are never recorded.

All that aside, the MR data is pretty interesting. The injury and fatality rate as a result of rock fall is less than 5% - most injuries and fatalities are caused by lead falls. Head injuries are fairly common although nowhere near as much as lower leg injuries (not that surprising).

Do they get any more specific in regard to lead falls i.e. do they mean decking out?

[slackline]

there are no rigorous methods of collecting data from people attending A&E, seeing their GP etc.

Not true.

There are Hospital Episode Statistics from the Health and Social Care Information Comissions which includes details of A&E attendance and subsequent hospital admissions and the duration thereof.

For GP contacts there is the Clinical Practice Research Data Link.

Whether either record the cause of injuries to a sufficient level of detail (and both contain a lot of detailed information)  is a slightly more nuanced question than the above assertion suggests is the situation. 

[danm]

Guy, apparently most accidents result from sweaty kipper hands slipping off holds after a lash for a jug (which turns out to be a sloper) 

Alright, alright I have the following figures from 1988-99:



Apparently 105 rescues were due to ripped gear, 123 from ground falls (out of 450).

Slackline - unfortunately the only useful historical data from medicine was a small Scottish study based in a pathology unit. Usually an A+E dept are not focussed on whether a helmet was worn, if it was a lead fall etc, they are busy treating injuries. I'll have a gander at those links though, perhaps times have changed.

[slackline]

Slackline - unfortunately the only useful historical data from medicine was a small Scottish study based in a pathology unit. Usually an A+E dept are not focussed on whether a helmet was worn, if it was a lead fall etc, they are busy treating injuries. I'll have a gander at those links though, perhaps times have changed.

It was what appeared to me the broad assertion that there is no rigorous method of collecting data from A&E or GPs when there is.

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) can have as many as 16 reasons for an A&E attendance recorded (sometimes more).  Whether they record whether helmets were worn when treating head injuries is as I wrote a slightly different and more subtle questions and I very much doubt they do.

Here are some publications I've got in my references database that I've tagged with 'climbing AND injury' (lazy copy and paste as I'm busy)...

✔ Rock Climbing Injuries 
In Sports Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 4. (1997), pp. 261-270, doi:10.2165/00007256-199723040-00005
by MichaelD Rooks
     
✔ Rock climbing injury rates and associated risk factors in a general climbing population 
Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, Vol. 19, No. 6. (December 2009), pp. 850-856, doi:10.1111/j.1600-0838.2008.00851.x
by S. Backe, L. Ericson, S. Janson, T. Timpka
     
✔ The epidemiology of rock-climbing injuries 
British Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 42, No. 9. (01 September 2008), pp. 773-778, doi:10.1136/bjsm.2007.037978
by G. Jones, A. Asghar, D. J. Llewellyn
     
✔ Injuries to the Finger Flexor Pulley System in Rock Climbers: Current Concepts 
The Journal of Hand Surgery, Vol. 31, No. 4. (April 2006), pp. 647-654, doi:10.1016/j.jhsa.2006.02.011
by Volker R. Schöffl, Isabelle Schöffl
     
✔ Injury Trends in Rock Climbers: Evaluation of a Case Series of 911 Injuries Between 2009 and 2012 
Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, Vol. 26, No. 1. (March 2015), pp. 62-67, doi:10.1016/j.wem.2014.08.013
by Volker Schöffl, Dominik Popp, Thomas Küpper, Isabelle Schöffl
     
✔ Pulley Injuries in Rock Climbers 
Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, Vol. 14, No. 2. (June 2003), pp. 94-100, doi:10.1580/1080-6032(2003)014[0094:piirc]2.0.co;2
by Volker Schöffl, Thomas Hochholzer, Hans P. Winkelmann, Wolf Strecker
     
✔ Acute finger injuries: part II. Fractures, dislocations, and thumb injuries. 
American family physician, Vol. 73, No. 5. (1 March 2006), pp. 827-834
by Jeffrey C. Leggit, Christian J. Meko
     
✔ Make or Break: Don't Let Climbing Injuries Dictate Your Success 
(10 February 2015)
by Dave MacLeod
     
✔ One Move Too Many. How to Understand the Injuries and Overuse Syndroms of Rock Climbing 
(2003)
by Thomas Hochholzer and Volket Schoeffl
     
✔ The epidemiology of injury in mountaineering, rock and ice climbing. 
Medicine and sport science, Vol. 58 (2012), pp. 17-43
by Volker Schöffl, Audry Morrison, Isabelle Schöffl, Thomas Küpper
     
✔ Acute injury risk and severity in indoor climbing-a prospective analysis of 515,337 indoor climbing wall visits in 5 years. 
Wilderness & environmental medicine, Vol. 24, No. 3. (September 2013), pp. 187-194
by Volker R. Schöffl, Georg Hoffmann, Thomas Küpper
     
✔ Injury risk evaluation in sport climbing. 
International journal of sports medicine, Vol. 32, No. 10. (October 2011), pp. 794-800
by A. Neuhof, F. F. Hennig, I. Schöffl, V. Schöffl
     
✔ Evaluation of Injury and Fatality Risk in Rock and Ice Climbing 
In Sports Medicine, Vol. 40, No. 8. (2010), pp. 657-679, doi:10.2165/11533690-000000000-00000
by Volker Schöffl, Audry Morrison, Ulrich Schwarz, Isabelle Schöffl, Thomas Küpper
     
✔ Injury in traditional and sport rock climbing 
Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, Vol. 9, No. 1. (March 1998), pp. 2-7, doi:10.1580/1080-6032(1998)009[0002:iitasr]2.3.co;2
by Todd E. Paige, David C. Fiore, Jeffrey D. Houston
     
✔ The UIAA Medical Commission injury classification for mountaineering and climbing sports. 
Wilderness & environmental medicine, Vol. 22, No. 1. (March 2011), pp. 46-51
by Volker Schöffl, Audry Morrison, Urs Hefti, Schwarz Ullrich, Thomas Küpper
     
✔ Estimation of finger muscle tendon tensions and pulley forces during specific sport-climbing grip techniques.
Journal of biomechanics, Vol. 39, No. 14. (2006), pp. 2583-2592
by Laurent Vigouroux, Franck Quaine, Annick Labarre-Vila, François Moutet

✔ Characterizing the Consequences of Chronic Climbing-Related Injury in Sport Climbers and Boulderers
Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, Vol. 24, No. 2. (June 2013), pp. 153-158, doi:10.1016/j.wem.2012.11.010
by Alex K. Folkl

The DOI's can likely be used in conjunction with http://sci-hub.io/ if anyone is interested in reading the papers in full.

Only the last one specifically mentions bouldering though and its the consequences rather than the causes.

[danm]

OK, my comment was rather cavalier. There does not appear to much useful data in there. I've learnt that A&E admissions for "sport injuries" are higher at the weekends though.

[slackline]

We agree, because as I wrote I doubt they record the data of interest to the question being discussed in this thread.  This is one of the major limitations of using routinely collected data.

I've learnt that A&E admissions for "sport injuries" are higher at the weekends though.

Standardised for increased participation rates or not?

[Will Hunt]

Dan, the phenomenon you are currently experiencing is commonly known as "Slackbot". Statistics indicate it is most commonly encountered when Neil is having a slow day in the office 

[Paul B]

Not in relation to bouldering nor the UK, but the NPS published similar data for Yosemite Valley in their guide to staying alive (easily found online, alas I'm on my phone on a ferry).

[Oldmanmatt]

I have found the answer.





Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[tomtom]

Or this....

[Oldmanmatt]

Or this....

Yeah, but if you turn up at the crag wearing mine, you instantly get the place to yourself...

[SA Chris]

Not in relation to bouldering nor the UK, but the NPS published similar data for Yosemite Valley in their guide to staying alive

Does it come complete with lyrics sheet and dance steps?

[moose]

I think one of these would be useful for bouldering at crags above sloping ground - no more bouncing down hill.