Monday, November 10, 2008

Little something about caving harnesses

I'm a caver. For about 14 years I go caving as often as I can. And there's a lot of occasions when climbing or descending special equipment is required.
I always trusted Petzl, considering them the best firm in the caving product business. And believe me when I'm telling you, caving it's not a game. Many times you play with your life, walking in daunting places you and getting yourself in all kinds of a strange situations. And when it comes to that you need to have the best gear there is on the market.
I know ... there's some differences between European and north American caving equipment and techniques for example but in my opinion Petzl is the leading caving product manufacturer and I always found their stuff easy to use and conformable.
But back to harnesses.
Petzl has two harness types for caving: FRACTIO (basic lightweight caving harness) and SUPERAVANTI (caving harness with double waist-belt). Links to the manufacturers website. Both of them are light, totally adjustable, PVC protected leg loops, abrasion resistant polyester webbing and so on.
There's a small difference between them at first sight. The new FRACTIO model has a double waist-belt. I have to tell you that my first harness was a home made one that copied the exact same model as the Fractio only it had a simple waist belt. I used it lots of times, till I realised caving it's not a game and generally caves aren't the place to gamble with your life (considering that I know little about making harnesses). So I strongly recommend: don't make your own harnesses or other equipment that your life depends on, unless u are absolutely sure what u are doing!
For both of thees harnesses you should use some shoulder straps that would keep your Croll (gear position at your chest that is used in ascending a rope).
There would be a lot of things to tell about the harnesses, mostly technical details, but I don't want to get into them. Instead I will focus on how to use the, keep them clean and what to avoid doing. But all that in another post.

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