Emergency harness with "bigger" folk
Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 6:40 pm
I normally carry a 12' piece of webbing that I can tie into a Swiss seat (lower part) in an emergency. I have a 31" waist, and my waist is smaller than my hips, so this length of 15mm webbing works nicely. When there are bigger people, I normally just tie a 3-point diaper sling, with 7-9' from the same piece of webbing, as here:
http://cdn-www.trails.com/imagecache/ar ... 95x195.png
...and just tension the belay rope enough to keep it from falling down.
I was recently faced with tying a diaper sling (same max 12') for someone who was in decent condition, yet had enough of a paunch that the waist could not be cinched tight enough to keep the diaper from falling off. I tied the knot so there was only about 9' for the diaper, and it seemed pretty tight when the guy was standing up. The problem was that when he bent over, there was a redistribution of webbing among the three bights that clip through the carabiner, which always resulted in the waist area becoming too loose.
It seems like there must be some way to modify the set-up, still using just 7-9 feet of the webbing, so the waist band does not redistribute and get looser.
http://cdn-www.trails.com/imagecache/ar ... 95x195.png
...and just tension the belay rope enough to keep it from falling down.
I was recently faced with tying a diaper sling (same max 12') for someone who was in decent condition, yet had enough of a paunch that the waist could not be cinched tight enough to keep the diaper from falling off. I tied the knot so there was only about 9' for the diaper, and it seemed pretty tight when the guy was standing up. The problem was that when he bent over, there was a redistribution of webbing among the three bights that clip through the carabiner, which always resulted in the waist area becoming too loose.
It seems like there must be some way to modify the set-up, still using just 7-9 feet of the webbing, so the waist band does not redistribute and get looser.