Harness advice

[Brixton]

Why exactly is a Harness that is perfectly good enough to catch me should I fall while climbing - indoors and outdoors - not up to PPE standards?

 

Basically because if you want to climb rocks and run the risk of falling onto a two piece harness then that's you're own decision for your own hobby in your own time. PPE regs are for people instructed to do stuff by their employer in exchange for money

 

If you were to climb an 8m. HVS climb then that's your choice and your choice whether to wear a harness or not. If you got injured then that's your look-out but no one made you do it.

If I employed you to climb the steel in the MEN Arena then it's not your choice. If you fell and were injured or injured someone else by falling on them then it's a different thing entirely

[Chris Adam]

Cheers for the advice although I fully understand the legalities behind the " want to climb that" and the "made to climb that" scenarios, but I was really more interested in why a full body harness is seen as better than a sit harness. I would fully expect my harness to catch me whether I was climbing for fun or not. As mentioned by someone else, I would hope that there aren't any half baked products on the market that wouldn't catch a fall.

For the record, I'm also fully aware that "that's the law and you'll just have to get used to it" and would never dispute the official Health and safety regs. I was only asking the question as I own a sit harness and hope to hell it would catch me if I went arse up on a climb. (which I have and it has - those damn overhangs).

cheers anyhow.

[Pete McCrea]

Your right in that the sit harness will catch you- it's the method that it does it in that is important. If you fall backwards with a point in the middle of your abdomen, then there is the potential for you to effectively be snapped in half, as your head tries to meet your feet with your spine bending the wrong way. Bear in mind that if your working there is the possibility that your not in an upright climbing position, but stretched out trying to reach something, or sitting on a beam etc.

 

A fall arrest harness will require the use of the Sternal or Dorsal attachment points (i.e. the ones at chest/back of the neck level) to prevent you being snatched as the arrester finishes extending. The point at the waist is not for fall arrest or side points- it is for work positioning on a taught line that will not enable you to fall. This is where the importance of properly understanding the use of the harness is important to make sure that the correct methods are being used to ensure the system works as designed.

 

Fall arrest harness are designed as a system to prevent you being hurt. Taking a chest and sit harness and combining them could result in injuries too if they are not designed to work together.

[Ken Coker]

All belay devices can be used as descenders, to an extent,

 

Indeed, but one is faced with the issue of how to back them up; technically, the prussic/karabiner/leg-loop technique is a misuse of the harness. Having said that, I use it, everyone I know uses it and my SPA manual shows one how to use it.

 

Seano: as you're in South Yorks, PM me if you fancy a bit of climbing - I'm in Edale. It might stop raining sometime this century

 

KC

[Ike]

Bear in mind that if your working there is the possibility that your not in an upright climbing position, but stretched out trying to reach something, or sitting on a beam etc.

...and as we all know recreational climber never layback or climb roofs, overhangs or chimneys in anything other than an upright climbing position. :)

[Pete McCrea]

There was me thinking they just climbed up vertical walls......

 

I guess the point I was making was that there maybe more to the fall type than a 'simple' climbing fall if there is such a thing, with the harness having differing requirements because of this.

[Seano]

Hi Brixton, welcome aboard. I hope you manage to waste less time on here than I do. :)

 

Basically because if you want to climb rocks and run the risk of falling onto a two piece harness then that's you're own decision for your own hobby in your own time.

 

I take the point regarding accepting risks recreationally that wouldn't be considered acceptable at work. But regarding the choice of harness: what risk?

Like everyone who climbs (or at least everyone who climbs trad), I'm constantly assessing risks "can I make this move?", "is that last bit of gear ok?", "the next bit looks run out, should I back off?" etc. etc. ad nauseum. One question I have never asked myself is "should I be wearing a full-body harness for this route?". (Actually I suppose I might contemplate a parisien baudrier if I were wearing a heavyish rucksack, but I digress.)

 

There are a lot of very busy indoor climbing walls these days (I spend a lot of time in one of the first of the 'modern' walls to open for business) - they're full of people of (almost) all shapes and sizes, falling off things in sit harnesses all day and all evening and yet the floors, strangely, are not littered with the dead and the dying.

 

Your right in that the sit harness will catch you- it's the method that it does it in that is important. If you fall backwards with a point in the middle of your abdomen, then there is the potential for you to effectively be snapped in half, as your head tries to meet your feet with your spine bending the wrong way. Bear in mind that if your working there is the possibility that your not in an upright climbing position, but stretched out trying to reach something, or sitting on a beam etc.

 

This is an argument I've seen/heard before, but I've never seen any evidence to back it up. Do you have some, or are you just basing what you say on your own intuition? As Ike says, climbers adopt a wide variety of positions too - considerably more so than trussmonkeys and riggers in my experience.

 

I've never taken a fall in my work harness. (Actually, I may take it to the wall one quiet morning and give it a try, I'm curious now to see what it would feel like.)

In a sit harness however, at a very rough estimate I'd say I've fallen somewhere between 5000 and 8000 times over the last 15 years. When clipping bolts ('sport' as opposed to 'trad' climbing), and especially indoors, its the done thing to push at the limits of ones ability which means failing regularly. "If you ain't flyin', you ain't tryin'!" And yet I've never experienced, seen, or even heard of the phenomenon you describe.

 

A fall arrest harness will require the use of the Sternal or Dorsal attachment points (i.e. the ones at chest/back of the neck level) to prevent you being snatched as the arrester finishes extending.

Here again, an interesting point. What do you suppose might happen if the faller is not vertical when arrested by the sternal or dorsal attachment point on a full-body harness? I suspect the 'whiplash' effect might not be insignificant in some cases - being 'snatched' might describe it very well. I don't know though, like I said, I have no real experience (first hand or otherwise) of people falling in industrial harnesses - long may it continue that way.

 

{on the subject of belay devices used for abseil} Indeed, but one is faced with the issue of how to back them up; technically, the prussic/karabiner/leg-loop technique is a misuse of the harness. Having said that, I use it, everyone I know uses it and my SPA manual shows one how to use it.

 

Recreationally, my personal preference is not to bother with the autobloc, though if I did I'd probably go for the french prusik on the legloop method too.

Its worth mentioning though that the Petzl Shunt was specifically designed as an autobloc backup device for abseiling on a doubled rope. Its easy to forget that, since its the one thing that almost nobody ever uses it for.

 

At work, of course, I'd never dream of using a descender that doesn't comply with EN341 such as a <ahem> figure-8. So the use of a separate autobloc device, prusik or whatever, is moot.

 

Seano: as you're in South Yorks, PM me if you fancy a bit of climbing - I'm in Edale. It might stop raining sometime this century.

Nice place to live. Cheers Ken, I may take you up on that. It'd be nice to spend a bit more time on the grit (and a bit less time working) this year. I've said that the last several years, but who knows, maybe this time I'll mean it. :)

 

Sean

x

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

There was me thinking they just climbed up vertical walls......

Ahem. ;)

[Chris Higgs]

'Full' harness because (in no particular order):

 

Spreads load

Prevents you slipping out

Holds you in a sitting position thus probably hindering circulation less

Helps to 'right' you in a head first fall

Allows attachment point to be well above anyone's centre of gravity (pre-sternal or dorsal)

 

Some of these points are related to others, probably best summarised as holds you upright and stops you falling out.

Gri-gris don't meet EN341 as required when used as PPE, as has been mentioned already.

A fall on a dynamic rope and a sit harness isn't the same as a fall onto an energy absorbing lanyard followed by potentially lengthy suspension.

[Seano]

'Full' harness because (in no particular order):

Spreads load

How so? Seems more an argument for a fat harness than a full harness.

Some full-body harnesses, especially the type without a waist belt, seem to actually concentrate the load. Or maybe it just feels that way because of where they concentrate it - ouch!

If you're hanging upright, spreading the load may not be such a good thing anyway - you really dont want a significant load to be borne by the 'chest' part of the harness, as thats likely to constrict the chest, leading to so-called 'mechanical asphyxia' - very dangerous.

 

Prevents you slipping out

True. But unless you are very overweight (or possibly heavily pregnant), a prepubescent child, or wearing a very poorly fitted harness, slipping out of a sit harness simply is not a problem. Doesn't happen.

If you are any of those things, you probably shouldn't be working at height anyway, regardless of what kind of harness you're wearing.

 

{quoting out of order a bit here} ..

Helps to 'right' you in a head first fall

 

Yep. Cant argue with that. Though I might be tempted to question the underlying assumption that its necessarily always a good thing - I can image a few scenarios where this might actually increase the chances of a head or spinal injury.

 

Holds you in a sitting position thus probably hindering circulation less

<some snippage>

probably best summarised as holds you upright...

You seem to be contradicting yourself a bit here. I'd be inclined to go with the latter, and characterise it more as 'holds you upright' thereby probably hindering circulation more, in the case of a dorsal attachment point much more.

 

A fall on a dynamic rope and a sit harness isn't the same as a fall onto an energy absorbing lanyard followed by potentially lengthy suspension.

True. The characteristic of the shock absorption is different - a dynamic rope is like falling onto a foam crashmat whereas an energy absorbing lanyard is more like a pile of cardboard boxes. In the case of low fall-factors, the forces involved are less. Probably no more than a few dozen of my thousands of falls into sit harnesses have involved arresting forces as high as 6kN. But I can't really see how the difference is significant in terms of the behaviour of the harness.

 

As for potentially lengthy suspension, and with orthostatic shock in mind - I think you need to differentiate between dorsal and sternal attachment points here.

With a sternal attachment point the body position is likely to be more upright than with a sit harness, which may not be entirely good news.

 

A dorsal attachment point on the other hand is very bad news from an orthostatic shock point of view. Not least of all because it is extremely difficult for someone hanging from the rear attachment point of a full body harness to self-rescue, thereby making a potentially lengthy suspension all the more likely (and the consequences potentially more severe).

 

Incidentally, I had a bit of a search for information relating to chest harnesses and mechanical asphyxia while writing this post. I didn't find anything particularly helpful, but I did happen across this paper.

Regarding LittleDJ's point above about the "potential for you to be effectively snapped in half" when falling in a sit harness - the paper documents some research at Innsbruck Medical University into exactly that. The paper is titled "Pattern of Injury After Rock-Climbing Falls Is Not Determined by Harness Type". It turns out the technical term for being "effectively snapped in half" is "hyperextension trauma of the thoraco-lumbar region", and as far as I can make out from the abstract their conclusion is that while its a theoretical possibility, in the real world it doesn't actually happen.

 

Sean

x

 

ps: to recap:

My list of reasons to use a full body harness:

1. Bureaucratic: it complies with EN361 and is therefore 'legal'.
   
2. PR: Its looks professional, and you're therefore more likely to be taken seriously.
   
3. er...
   
4. thats it.
   

Actually, while I can't help being a bit flippant (cut me a bit of slack, its the middle of the night and I've had a couple of glasses of wine) - these are sufficiently compelling reasons to wear a full-body harness. I'm not advocating the use of sit harnesses in the workplace folks, merely arguing that for most people, many of the reasons given why you shouldn't don't really hold water.

[Pete McCrea]

There was me thinking they just climbed up vertical walls......

Ahem. :)

It's all photoshop..... :) I must admit to wanting to climb more, but there never seems to be the time- last time I'd arranged to go with some friends, my son decided to arrive on the scene!

Incidentally, I had a bit of a search for information relating to chest harnesses and mechanical asphyxia while writing this post. I didn't find anything particularly helpful, but I did happen across this paper.

Regarding LittleDJ's point above about the "potential for you to be effectively snapped in half" when falling in a sit harness - the paper documents some research at Innsbruck Medical University into exactly that. The paper is titled "Pattern of Injury After Rock-Climbing Falls Is Not Determined by Harness Type". It turns out the technical term for being "effectively snapped in half" is "hyperextension trauma of the thoraco-lumbar region", and as far as I can make out from the abstract their conclusion is that while its a theoretical possibility, in the real world it doesn't actually happen.

 

Sean

That's interesting to know. It is not something I've ever seen (thankfully), but was me drawing my own conclusions based on the suspension point and possible mechanics of the fall. I'm not an expert.

 

Personally- I feel safer wearing the full body harness. Now maybe this isn't a good thing? But I wouldn't dare head out to work at height without one even if the relevant standards allowed for the use of sit harnesses.

[Seano]

...I'm not an expert.

Personally- I feel safer wearing the full body harness. Now maybe this isn't a good thing? ...

 

I'm not an expert either, just a bit opinionated is all.. :)

 

And I dont see any reason why it isn't a good thing, even if you're not safer in the full body harness its extremely unlikely that you're any less safe either.

And I reckon you are safer if you're comfortable and confident.

 

Sx

[Chris Higgs]

Re full harnesses.

 

These aren't my opinions (you really don't want to know them) but the best advice from people wot are a darn sight cleverer than wot

I am and have spent a darn sight longer thinking about it and testing their theories than any of us.

 

Sorry, fair point re 'holds you upright'. As opposed to upside down/head first, not holding you in a vertical position. Not clear.

Spreading the load is when you career downwards head first, it helps spread load over the harness and on you, some evidence it helps

prevent hyperextension of the vertebrae.

 

A parachute harness is undeniably better for the spine but may not address the circulation issues.

A dorsal attachment on an industrial harness may not address whiplash or circulation issues but protects your neck/spine better.

A pre-sernal attachment on a full harness may cause facial injuries and a whiplash effect but you're facing what you fell off.

Airway obstruction is even more vital (90 secs w/o O2 - [edit! oxygen, 90 seconds without O2 would be a delight] is all it takes)

Venous pooling is less pronounced in a sitting position than an upright position, maybe easier on the heart too.

 

I think it's fair to say that the design of harnesses most of us recognise as 'legal' are a trade-off between all these competing factors.

 

Slipping out of a sit harness doesn't happen? Upon what evidence are you basing this? I too was a very active climber for a loooong time.

Never did I fall 2-4m onto a length of rippy webbing which arrests the fall in about 400mm; essentially what the testing standard is based on.

Apples and pears.

If someone comes up with a really 'soft-stop' energy absorber it could change a lot of things...

The Innsbruck research was for 5m+ falls on a rope.

 

Suspension for a potentially lengthy period of time is another issue - in time, a sit harness won't offer much support.

 

Mr Amphoux (who you may remember from your research, Seano) has a lot to say about impact forces and the pelvis, and others (Ewing & Thomas, Ashton-Miller & Schultz, for example) have things to say about transmitting forces through the spine.

If you read Crawford, it can be the 'jolt' (his words, not mine) that can severely injure or kill you. The internal organs getting severely yo-yo'd. Nothing to do with harness design.

 

I did say these aren't my opinions, I'm just passing on what the research I know of has shown to be the case.

We have to use full harnesses; the law may be an ass, but the PPE Regs call up testing standards.

The manufacturers have to use these standards in order to sell them in the EC, employers have to provide/use PPE to EC standards.

 

Quite agree about how we feel affecting the likelihood of making good decisions (feeling 'safer'). There's research on that, too...

[Brixton]

Following on from the (rock) climbers versus the riggers/industrial work at height folk

 

Yes climbers are using harnesses as a fall arrest device. However the distance of travel is not normally an issue, so long as the fall doesn't stretch down to the ground then generally it's not a problem As Chris says they are not falling onto a shock absorbing lanyard that stops you in a short distance.

The impact on a person falling is mathematically a combination of speed of travel and deceleration. So a 20m. fall on a dynamic rope is decelerated by a the stretch in the rope and b the person belaying who would naturally let some rope through the belaying device and indeed have some play in their method of fixing to whatever they are fixed to be it ground or ledge.

If you do fall off a crag then I , as your second, can lower you back down to a safe place, floor, ledge etc.

Industrial workers do use a short lanyard because they may be working above something that will hurt if they hit it, scaffold, general site stuff, lighting trusses etc. and do not generally have a second to lower them back down without the system having some element of re-rigging

Therfore surely an industrial harness may have to deal safely with larger impacts

 

The climbers I know are (to be charitable) proud of thier own ability or (not to be charitable) up their own arse and 'love' to bang on about falls they have barely survived. To quote Sean "if you are not flying you are not trying" (no offence Sean)

It sounds cool in the pub to come in with your arm in a sling saying how you fell of an E9.

It's not cool to say how you fell off the grid in the MEN. Nor is it cool to have an injury preventing you working for maybe a month.

 

Apart from ice-climbing generally climbing is a fair weather sport for a short duration ; an afternoon or a day or two. So your harness is over your relatively few clothes for not very long. You are not generally hanging in it day in and day out for a number of years.

 

I have trained climbers and industrial at height workers and generally have found that climbers are more interested in making sure that thier harnesses are fitted better so a two piece is going to do it's job properly. The industrial people I have trained do not seem to be as interested so a harness with shoulder straps is in the case of a poorly fitted harness is indeed safer.

 

The 'work positioning' element in sports climbing is basically hands and feet. Apart from a rack and a rope they are not generally dealing with tools either.

Industrial harnesses are not solely fall arrest but also work positioning and generally if one is working at height one has tools to deal with, drills, power washers, klein tools, Bee-bees etc. It is in my experience more comfortable being suspended for a long period in an industrial harness than in a sports one. Try rigging the Queen Elizabeth Halls in a sports climbing harness and you'll know.

 

However the most important benefit of an industrial harness is as follows.

The attachment point in a climbing harness is at crotch level The attachment points in an industrial harness are at waist level or above. Why? You(if a bloke)can use the loo without taking it all off.

[Ken Coker]

The climbers I know are (to be charitable) proud of thier own ability or (not to be charitable) up their own arse and 'love' to bang on about falls they have barely survived. To quote Sean "if you are not flying you are not trying" (no offence Sean)

It sounds cool in the pub to come in with your arm in a sling saying how you fell of an E9.

It's not cool to say how you fell off the grid in the MEN. Nor is it cool to have an injury preventing you working for maybe a month.

 

Wise advice indeed. It may be me - and I'm old - but I was taught that the whole point of leading a route was not to fall off. I'm afraid I'm one of those who get no pleasure watching Seb and the boys fall off "Parthian Shot" time and time again. I'd feel exactly the same way about the MEN Arena.

 

KC

 

(PS: If any older climbers want to get really depressed, this lad lives in my village...I'm very depressed)

[Ike]

Industrial harnesses are not solely fall arrest but also work positioning and generally if one is working at height one has tools to deal with, drills, power washers, klein tools, Bee-bees etc. It is in my experience more comfortable being suspended for a long period in an industrial harness than in a sports one. Try rigging the Queen Elizabeth Halls in a sports climbing harness and you'll know.

In my experience the opposite is true. Almost all my harness work is work positioning with the odd bit of fall prevention (restraint) and as such I use a sport style sit harness (Petzl Navaho Vario) almost exclusively as I find it more comfortable and less restrictive. Even with lots of weight hanging from my harness I always prefer it to be hanging off my waist rather than shoulders especially when a lot of movement is required. I really cant see a full body harness working for me.

 

Just my 2p