It’s as simple as this: you don’t want to climb up a rock wall without the proper protection. Sooner or later, stones come hailing down from any mountain, even without human interference. And you want to be prepared.
Rock climbing without the proper helmet could quickly turn ugly. For this reason, you want to make sure that you’re keeping up with your options and staying up to date on all of your rock climbing gear.
Today I’m going to give you the scoop on one of the most affordable and reliable helmets on the market: the Black Diamond Half Dome Helmet. Despite being considered a budget item, the Half Dome packs a powerful punch and works hard to keep you safe. In this guide, I’ll examine what you should look for in a climbing helmet and see how the Half Dome stacks up when it comes to your safety, comfort, and budget. In doing so, I’ll cover the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can determine whether or not the Half Dome is truly for you.
Let’s begin!
What to Look For
To better understand how the Black Diamond Half Dome Helmet stacks up to the competition, let’s first find out what a good rock climbing helmet offers. As it turns out, there are a number of factors one must take into consideration when choosing their helmet. Let’s examine just a few of these so that you’ll have a better understanding of what you need to be looking for.
Comfort
While the main goal of any helmet is to protect your head and keep you safe in the event of an accident, you don’t want to ignore the secondary aspect of comfort when it comes to your helmet. Remember that you’ll be wearing your helmet in safe environments a majority of your climb, so you’ll want something that’s snug and comfortable. An uncomfortable helmet can place a damper on your climbing experience, making it harder for you to focus and (ironically) cause undue distractions that can actually hinder your safety.
For this reason, you want to make sure that you have an option that fits well and provides the right amount of ventilation and adjustability. This will give your head room to breathe and make it easier to endure those longer climbs.
Weight
Here’s the deal: some helmets are just heavier than others. While heavier helmets tend to be more durable options, they can also be a burden, especially if you’re embarking on a particularly long or challenging climb. You want to make sure that you have a helmet that’s fit to the climb at hand. As such, I always recommend that you determine the weight of any helmet beforehand to make sure it provides the right balance between comfort and safety.
Helmets can weigh from around six to nearly ten ounces, meaning there’s a ton of variability when it comes to finding the right helmet for you. In general, the weight of your helmet will be determined by the amount of padding and the material used to construct the helmet’s “shell.” In most cases, weightier helmets include more padding and are made of harder, more fall-resistant material.
Durability
This leads me to my next point: durability. Your rock climbing helmet won’t do you any good unless it keeps you safe. So saying, you’ll want to make sure that you are going with a helmet that’s durable and can hold up under pressure. As mentioned, the durability of your helmet often increases with weight. This means that harder, weightier helmets are generally the best for those more treacherous climbs.
Depending on your skill level and the type of climb, however, you may opt for a less durable and lighter option. These helmets are great for when you need to move quickly and there’s not much danger involved. In general, rock climbing helmets are constructed with a mixture of EPS foam and polycarbonate, and the levels of each involved can affect the durability of your piece.
The Positives
With all this in mind, it’s time that we took a look and examined how the Half Dome stacks up to these guidelines. In this section, I’ll go over a few of the positives I noticed with the Half Dome helmet. These advantages have helped establish the Half Dome as one of the most popular helmets for budget climbers.
Adjustability
A quick look at reviews and customer testimonials from experienced rock climbers shows that the Half Dome offers superior adjustability. This is because the device comes with a large adjustment click-wheel on the back that can be easily manipulated to alter your helmet’s level of fit. Just how bit is this wheel? According to the data, it’s large enough to turn with one hand, making the helmet easy to adjust even if you are preoccupied with other matters. This means that you can literally adjust your helmet with the spin of your fingers.
The Half Dome also comes with an adjustable chin-strap that features a below-the-ear buckle that can be loosed or tightened without difficulty. What’s more, the device comes with two plastic pieces that allow you to position the straps more comfortably. All of this combines to make the Half Dome one of the best current helmets in terms of adjustability and fit.
Durability
Perhaps even more importantly, however, the device is a hard-shell constructed of hard acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). This special construction makes the Half Dome superior when it comes to providing you with a safe climb. Simply put, this option stands above other, more lightweight helmets for those tougher climbs or treks that involve more danger.
With added EPP foam on the inside to keep you safe, the Half Dome certainly gets the job done. If you’re looking for a reliable helmet that can get you through your climb as safely as possible, I can think of few other options that can rival this one—especially within its price range.
Affordability
That leads to me to my next point. The Half Dome is available for less than half the price of more expensive options. For this reason, it has become a popular option amongst beginner climbers and those who ae on a budget. Truly, you can get this helmet without having to break the bank or scrimp on any other rock climbing gear that you may need for your climbs.
This, combined with its durability and adjustability, make the Half Dome a solid option for interested climbers. Despite this, there are a few negatives you’ll want to keep in mind when it comes to the Half Dome. In the next section, we’ll go over a few of these so you can make the purchase that’s best for you.
The Negatives
Though the Half Dome scores highly in some areas, climbers frequently raise complaints about the device’s performance in a few critical categories. In this section, let’s take a look at two of the biggest drawbacks associated with this device.
Weight
Here’s the thing: for all its durability, the Half Dome is heavy. This is largely due to the thick material that is used to create the device, as well as the padding that lines the forehead area of the helmet. While some climbers may not mind the weight or may see it as a necessary tradeoff for safety, you may find that the Half Dome is too heavy and burdensome as you climb. At 340 grams, it’s heavier than the leading models put out by Petzl and even than other major products from Black Diamond. This may reduce the helmets marketability and make it undesirable for some consumers.
Comfort
What’s more, many who have tried the Half Dome lament the discomfort that’s associated with the device. The Half Dome comes with five ventilation holes, one large hole on each side of the helmet and three smaller holes in the back. While the helmet provides more ventilation than some earlier Black Diamond models, users still complain that the back holes are still too small, reducing the amount of ventilation in the device. To accommodate, the helmet features its padding mainly at the front of the device, a move that helps but doesn’t exactly make for comfortable wearing.
Overall, the comfort level of the Half Dome is what you might expect from a budget item. While this doesn’t mean it’s bad, it does suggest that those who are looking for comfortable devices look somewhere else. The Black Diamond Vapor Helmet is, for example, widely lauded for its comfort.
Final Thoughts
The Black Diamond Half Dome has established a name for itself as one of the most affordable and durable helmets for rock climbers on a budget. Despite this, it comes with some major drawbacks in terms of comfort and weight. For this reason, I’d recommend this device to anyone who doesn’t mind a bulkier device with a bit of extra weight. If you’re a more experienced climber with money to spare, it’s likely that you can do much better than the Half Dome.
Still, the Half Dome works quite well for a budget item. For this reason, make sure you take a moment to check out the device for yourself!
