“I don’t like talking to you wearing that. It’s intimidating.”
A friend said this to me—and he’s not joking. His name is Stuart. Stuart is about as affable a person as you could wish to meet, and we have skied together three or four times. Now, however, he doesn’t want anything to do with me. I haven’t upset him, we are on good terms—but he hates what I’ve got on my head. By the end of the week, so do I.
The intimidating headgear I’m wearing is the Ruroc RG2. It is, according to Ruroc, the world’s only full-face snowsports helmet—and now I can fully understand why, despite initially thinking it looked like the ideal lid to replace my aging POC. On paper, the RG2 should be a winner, despite a starting price of $379 (making it more expensive than nearly all of WIRED’s picks in our ski helmet guide). Only when you wear it do the drawbacks become abundantly clear.
The RG2 is actually an ISPO Award-winning helmet. It has a built-in Twiceme NFC chip, so you can store critical medical information that can be easily accessed by first responders in emergencies. To protect your noggin, it’s lined with Rheon, a breathable, energy-absorbing polymer (originally conceived from a NASA project looking at space shuttle foam replacements) that’s flexible in its natural state but instantly stiffens on impact.
For even more outlay, there’s an optional JBL-powered Cardo Communication System that lets you stream music, take calls, connect with a GoPro, and chat with up to 15 other equally intimidating Ruroc users on a mesh network.
The big boon of the RG2 over the original RG1, however, comes down to a simple tweak in this updated design. In the RG1, you secured the lower face plate using plastic clips that slid—usually unwillingly—into place. It worked, but any supposed cool factor for wearers was immediately ruined as others watched them attempt to wrestle those clips into place with no helpful mirrors on hand outside your average ski lift or mountain restaurant. The solution? Magnets. Ruroc finally made that call after sifting through “15 years of direct feedback.”
Gone are the plastic clips and in comes the Magnetic Mask System, which “lets users easily remove the helmet’s chin piece while wearing gloves.” Trouble is, taking the chin piece off was never the problem. Putting the darn thing on was the issue. Still, this new magnetic system is definitely easier, but it’s by no means foolproof, and you will still likely have to take two or three stabs at getting it locked in each time you want to add it to the helmet.
Which brings us to the aesthetic. On the brand’s website, the distinctiveness of that full-face design in full black (“Core”) or white (“Ghost”) seemingly elevates Ruroc above the sea of normal ski helmets (the wilder designs, including full chrome and a Batman edition, might give some pause). But anyone who has been stuck on a swinging ski lift exposed to the frozen elements will immediately appreciate the advantages of the RG2’s ability to cover your face from the nose down.
All blizzard-related boons melt away, sadly, once on the slopes. Initial shocked laughter from my group as I appeared in full Stormtrooper-esque guise for the first time quickly gave way to a nagging feeling that something was off. It took me a few days to realize it, but eventually I clocked that people I knew were talking to me much less than usual. Skiing, after all, is a wonderfully chaotic social activity, punctuated by quick stops to chat, conflabs to decide on plans of action, or laugh (kindly) at someone’s mogul misfortunes. Such moments are, I’d go as far as to say, key to enjoying time on the piste. But all of that stopped when I wore the Ruroc.
It’s not surprising at all that not seeing a person’s eyes leads to a certain amount of emotional distancing. There have been many, many studies on this, but with so many on the mountain using blackout lenses in their goggles, there’s a level playing field here. No, the answer to my snow-bound social shunning lay in that no one could see my face at all.
No lips meant no smiles, sighs, sneers, or smirks. I turned into a droid, devoid of any emotion as far as others were concerned. Worse, even, than one of Elon Musk’s comedy Optimus bartenders. Those mid-slope chats saw my wider group all happily engaging with each other, but rarely was any comment or query directed toward me. Only later in the week did Stuart tell me why.
After his confession, I began to see how this pariah status extended to restaurants and bars on the mountain, or anywhere boarders and skiers gathered. The ski community at large didn’t want to even look at me in my Ruroc full-face form. The solution was simple. I ditched the magnetic chin piece. Immediately, my fellow skiers, be they friends or strangers, treated me differently. I was one of them again. For the rest of the trip, the face plate stayed magnetically stuck to the radiator in my hotel room.
But say you’re an unsociable soul and don’t want anyone talking to you on the white stuff? Well, there are other reasons not to recommend the Ruroc RG2.
The ventilation system felt more like an open window as icy wind whistled through the RG2 with ease. The rubber feet on the removable magnetic peak started to disintegrate after just a couple of days of use. Thanks to the unique design, you must use Ruroc’s own goggles, but you only get one lens in the box. Want a yellow low-light option? That’s another $100, thank you.
Finally, there’s the fact that, at the end of last year, Ruroc went into administration, only to be immediately bought by Tytan PG, a company which only came into existence a week before, wholly owned by Ruroc Global Holdings. Such maneuvers secure the continued existence of the company (for now), but it’s a precarious situation.
Perhaps most importantly, though, if you really want to experience the full horrors of Ruroc’s full-face helmet halfway down a black run, try sneezing in one. I did. And I’ll leave the rest of that mucilaginous tale formulating in your imagination.
The post This Ruroc Helmet Ruined My Ski Holiday appeared first on Wired.
