ttriche

It would appear that adventure racers, backcountry skiers, and alpine light freaks have figured out the same thing I did—this harness weighs almost nothing. It was therefore quite difficult to find one, as it is backordered from CAMP Italy world-wide at this time. There is a reason for this.

Nothing else on the market comes close to the elegant simplicity of this rig. It is an Alpine Bod for the current generation of fast-and-light pushes. I had trouble finding a locking carabiner that would accept a Munter hitch without doubling the weight of the rig (turns out a DMM Sentinel, at 45 grams, is about the best you can do). Think about that for a second—this harness weighs the same as two carabiners, or one large HMS locker. Pick up your regular harness and your belay ‘biner, and you'll quickly understand why this thing is so hard to get a hold of. There is nothing like it. You will have to sew your own rig if you want to find an alternative.

For dropping cornices, rapping cliff bands, or belays on iffy avalanche aspects, the light weight of this harness makes it a tremendous advance. I would not want to take a whipper in it, though—it would probably cut you in half like a ripe tomato. But you can probably figure that out from the picture.

I have a "real" climbing harness for technical routes and I'm very happy with it. This thing, on the other hand, is for ski mountaineering and mostly-unroped alpine pushes, and it weighs about the same as a daisy chain. If you need something like it for ski touring or the like, and you can find it in stock somewhere, I think you will be very pleased with the margin of safety offered by its negligible weight.