Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Accidents & Injuries

Report Accidents and Injuries

Topic Date User

How many time have you hit the ground falling off 1-Mar-2012 At 12:12:12 PM climbau

Message

The leg loop and waist loop connection points have extra layers of protective material because they wear earlier than other points on the harness and are also the least visible. Or maybe the wear is more likely to go unnoticed?? By the time you see wear on the belay loop, you have more than likely worn into the structural material of the waist attachment and leg loop attachment points.
Installing a carabiner to replace a belay loop seems to shift the "belay loop" wear more to the leg loop attachment. However, I think the biggest wear factor would be the rope passing through the waist and leg loops as it is constantly moving as you climb. I reckon the belay loop lets the belay carabiner slide up and down freely and puts wear in a more visible area, which hopefully means you don't end up with an attachment point failure that you were not expecting (i.e. not seeing the wear hidden amongst waist/leg loop Vs wear on a highly visible harness component).
I also reckon that a less fluid belay loop (i.e carabiner) changes the comfort of the harness when loaded???