February 16, 2010
Helmet safety debate continues
by Tony Chamberlain/
A cold winter day skiing Sugarloaf led to a debate on helmets. (photo: Tony Chamberlain)
What you can tell from the picture is that it’s just plain cold, as is often the case on the tip top of Sugarloaf where the wind can blow like misery. So half the time we spent there with these dear old friends of ours was a lengthy debate on the necessity of helmets.
Andy, the fellow pictured here in the yellow parka beside his wife Rhodie, is also a doctor at a large Boston hospital. As we cruised down Tote Road twice, then pulled off trail for a morning warmup at Bullwinkle’s Cafe the debate went on, with me playing devil’s advocate just to clarify a few things.
As the sun strengthened in the valley between Sugarloaf and the beautiful Bigelow Mountain in the distance, he was saying, “On a day like this there’s no hat that can give you the warmth of this helmet.”
Said helmet was produced and I examined it (no I was not going to put on someone else’s headgear after it was … well worked up a bit.)
“My problem with helmets is, it kind of spoils the aesthetics of the sport,” I said, paraphrasing something Tom Corcoran (former Olympian and Waterville Valley founder) once said. “Skiing is supposed to be a glorified walk in the woods. Putting on a helmet puts you back into something like a capsule.”
We left Bullwinkle’s, geared up and began to crank along down Cinder Hoe, a groomed blue cruiser with a few terrain features for the twin tips crowd to leap off. I ran up and down a couple with the speed appropriate for my age, and I noticed that down here in the trees the cold was … bearable. Who needed a helmet?
So the debate resumed in the Superquad that lifted us back into the wind that was strengthening his side of the argument once again.
“I think what a helmet can do … just sayin’ can do,” I said, “is make a young skier feel so invincible he goes faster and is probably more reckless than he would be ordinarily. And yes, I do mean he. And then if he does have a high speed crash, he has a false sense of security that a helmet can protect him … which it can’t.”
We had warmed up by then. The CVA kids were not on the mountain yet – in their sweet spot of Narrow Gauge and Comp Hill, so this was our time to rip. Off we went over some well groomed snow, whose GS ruts from the day before had been groomed out.
I love how Narrow Gauge starts at a fairly mild pitch, then gets steeper and steeper till you always see those few stragglers hanging at the top of the headwall. That for me is how to tell whether, in advancing years, you’re still in some kind of shape – if you can keep going down the headwall without stopping at the lip.
Tip: If it’s icy, that’s the only way to do the headwall. Try to stop and out reason it, that quick, hard right-footer will get you every time. My motto: get down it before it knows you’re there.
And, quick as that we were down again, and the old argument resumed.
“So you’re saying if you — or a kid — gets in a ski crash, and hits his head, he’d be better off not wearing a helmet than wearing one?” asked Andy indignantly. “I think saying that borders on an arrestable offense.”
Then, we were on the Spillway Cutoff, heading over to Widow Maker and Haulback, where the wind was less intense. Midwinter sunlight flooded the valley now, but the temperature kept it from touching the snow, which was hard and perfectly packed.
“So,” I said, “sounds like you want to make helmets a legal issue, is that it?”
I might add, Andy and I have known each other since childhood, and this stuff has gone on ever since. But what a spot to continue a lifelong argument with an ancient pal!
