First Ride: Giro Montaro and Montara helmets
Attractive profile of the Montaro (click to enlarge).
The Giro Feature is a wonderful All Mountain helmet that provides good rear coverage at an affordable $75. To complement this, Giro introduced the Montaro helmet for men and Montara for women that retail for $150. Giro sought out to deliver the best qualities for Trail and All Mountain riding with a multitude of features such as MIPs, ventilation, moisture absorption and goggle compatibility.
We took it for a ride in the the trails surrounding the Whistler Bike park area and came away with some pretty solid first impressions.
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The biggest thing we notice is the helmet ventilates rather well. Without resorting to the often meaningless ’30+ vents’ claims, Giro focused on airflow. They ensured that air had a good entry path, proper air channels above the head and an exit path while the rider is in motion. When raised up, the visor helped ventilation as well as it acted as a scoop to guide air through the forward vents.
In a bold move, Giro employed a material that is extremely moisture absorbent. It is the same material found in those Shamwow pads made famous in those infomercials of old. During our test ride, sweat was indeed absorbed by the liner pad as none of it reached our eyes and face. This is an interesting move as it does indeed absorb sweat but that should be cleaned or washed regularly since it is designed to retain up to 10x more moisture than regular pads.
Side by side with the different colors (click to enlarge).
Finally, the visor is huge and folds up very high to leave room for a google to rest under it. This is indeed a useful feature as goggles are becoming more popular with All Mountain riders. The visor has 4 distinct indexed positions as it clicks into place and stays there until moved.
Continue to page 2 for a list of features and action shots »
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