Less than a thousand feet from the summit, on the north face of the Eiger, Gaston Rébuffat hooked a finger into a piton, left behind from a previous ascent. The night before, as they bivvied, Rébuffat was surprised to find himself sleepless, with a sense of bad omens. “The stars seemed so near that you could touch them, and the Milky Way shone with sinister brightness,” he wrote in his book Starlight and Storm.
On that July day in 1952, their surroundings did prove sinister. Stuck behind several slower parties and faced with warming temperatures, Rébuffat’s team had to inch their way across the tedious traverses that guarded the summit, often taking alternate routes in order to avoid bottlenecks.
As luck would have it, Rébuffat hooked that piton at the exact moment a thunderous crack boomed from above. A massive rock came tumbling down, bursting and splitting into pieces that struck Rébuffat on the head. “But the finger hooked through the piton still held. It was very painful, and felt as if it had been sawn through.... A little blood fell from my cap and reddened the snow-flecked rock.”
Yet, with his head aching and the motivation drained out of him, Rébuffat carried on. Rumor has it that Rébuffat had stuffed his hat with socks, as was the custom at the time when climbing in areas with rockfall danger, and some credit this habit for saving his life. Well, that and the piton.
Without the padding of his rudimentary “helmet,” Rébuffat might not have become the first man to climb all six of the great north faces of the Alps.
Since then, it’s fair to say climbing helmets have undergone an evolution.
The history of head protection in climbing starts earlier than Gaston Rébuffat’s injury on the Eiger. There was a parallel evolution, but staggered, between those climbing in the mountains and those exploring underground in caves.
In 1936, the trailblazing French caver Pierre Chevalier reported, “Helmets are beginning to be considered essential in sport caving.” However, during this period, and until around 1950, climbers aboveground were still wearing wool berets as the standard headwear. In 1948, Chevalier’s Escalades Souterraines (Subterranean Climbers) was published. It was one of the seminal works in early caving.
In the early 1950s felt hats became the norm. When there was risk of rockfall, they would occasionally be stuffed with socks or newspaper. This is where Rébuffat’s story takes the stage.
Four years later, in 1956, the ninth edition of Accidents in North American Mountaineering (now Accidents in North American Climbing) already showed an increasing preference for protective headgear. In comments preceding the accident reports, the editors wrote: “Another point that should be re-emphasized is the desirability of wearing a plastic helmet to protect the head from falling rock in areas where this danger is present. This has become a standard practice for some rock climbers in the Yosemite area.”
As helmets for other sports evolved, so too did climbing helmets. In 1954, Amisano Gino Valenza (AGV) produced the first fiberglass motorcycle helmet. It was used by many climbers until climbing-specific models became available.
Walter Bonatti knew helmets were critical. Describing his last ascent of the north face of the Matterhorn, done solo in winter, he wrote:
Again once more, I look to lighten my pack to move more rapidly. I toss food, two étriers, some pitons. I am tempted to get rid of my helmet as well, the glorious plastic helmet that, for four years, accompanied me on the most difficult enterprises. But after an instant of hesitation, I stay my hand and hold the helmet to my chest.
I caress its bumps as if they were wounds: each one of them corresponding to a rock, fallen off Mont Blanc, the Andes, so many other mountains. I placed it back in my pack.
It’s clear Bonatti recognized how many times the helmet had prevented injury. Despite the weight of early helmets, anyone who had their life saved by one would appreciate their value.
The new, lighter fiberglass motorcycle helmet and its growing use by serious climbers spurred the creation of helmets designed for climbers. Sporthaus Schuster was one of the earliest to come...
Safer Than Socks in Your Hat — American Alpine Club
A History of Climbing Helmets and an Updated UIAA Standard By AAC UIAA Representative Stephen Gladieux, with research support from Denis Pivot, Lionel Kiener, and Alain Maurice Translations of Chevalier and Bonatti by Stephen Gladieux Originally Published in Guidebook XVII
American Alpine Club (americanalpineclub.org)
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