ASRC Seat Harness
The seat harness is tied with a bowline around each leg. Here is how to start the bowline around the first leg. The "crosspiece" or place where you will clip into the harness is the "tree" when tying the bowline. The short end (approx. 2 feet long) is the "rabbit."
The bowline is completed and then should be adjusted so that the loop is very tight around your leg.
Here the first bowline is tied, and the second is begun. This time the long piece is the "rabbit." The proper way to form the loop is shown. Remember that the tree comes from underneath the loop.
Now both bowlines are tied and tightened. Notice the crosspiece is about 2 inches long, and the knots are toward the inside of the leg.
The rest of the harness is formed from wrapping the remaining length of webbing around your back and through the crosspiece, always wrapping in the same direction, untill you run out of webbing. Here is the first wrap...
And here are the finished wraps. The seat is finished by tying the two ends together with a square knot.
The finished square knot is shown here with both sides backed up with an overhand knot.
Clip in the carabineer as if someone walked up to you and clipped it down onto your harness, then pull the gate out front. This will make it easy to clip things into your carabineer, and make the gate lie against you rather than the cliff when rappelling.
This is the webbing seat harness used by the ASRC. If you have a Commercial
harness, by all means use it. The harness shown here is the best tied
harness that we know of and works very well on all vertical and
Semi-technical rescue. The triple-redundancy comes from the three
independent loops that make up the harness. In order to have total failure
of the harness, All three loops would have to be cut. Compare that to the
Swiss-seat!