Before we tested, we polled a number of top mountain shops to see which helmets were their most popular. We then read about 150 online reviews to help us decide which eight helmets to select and what features to test ourselves. We then factored in our collective experience to select the final eight contenders.
We tested these helmets in the rugged Fisher Towers, chossy FA’s in Colorado’s Glenwood Canyon, ice routes in Ouray and Redstone, CO. and big walls, both free and aid, in Yosemite. We also took them to the gym and climbed a lot of pitches in warm conditions to evaluate ventilation. We biked up and down steep hills in San Francisco and ran around our houses a lot with heads turned way up We generally wore helmets in all sorts of odd applications to spend as much time as possible with them on. Finally, we had more than 40 people try on every helmet to get feedback on what felt best from as many people as possible. This feedback often came late at night in Yosemite employee housing and involved some antics not publishable here. Each tester tried on each helmet more than 200 times — it was often that hard to come up with significant differences.
We then put each helmet on the same postal scale to see which one really was the lightest (we found our weights differed 5-10 percent from those listed on manufacturer sites).
Ultimately
Chris Van Leuven and
Chris McNamara made most of the editorial decisions and recommendations. We also had feedback from Ian Nicholson and Randy Spurrier.
