UKC

Hi All

I am writing an assignment on the invention of the climbing harness for university and I was wondering if anyone had any information, old books with reviews of the don whillans harness, information on what the harness did to climbing as a sport, both positive and negative views. Magazines and newspapers would be useful.

Any help will be of great use

Thanks

Nathan

In reply to Nathancoward: The first harness I saw was actually a belay belt developed with a parachute harness buckle and lots of well stitched webbing (guaranteed to cut you in two if the weight allowed you off the ground) - Brighams in Manchester were the guilty parties and Ellis may still have some notes. It was a step up from the old hemp waistline in the early sixties but was rapidly superceded by the Troll harness (courtesy of Tony Howard) and then the Whillans Harness - designed by the great man but extensively worked by Troll - see Troll UK website.

In reply to Nathancoward: There was i brief article on the Whillans harness in the BMC's Summit 59, only some basic info that you probably already know though.

In reply to Nathancoward: fairly sure there were harnesses before the Whillans even if that was the first to be popular in the UK.

In reply to Nathancoward:

Not sure whether you're solely interested in the history of the Whillans Harness, or harnesses in general. However:

The Whillans Harness was designed originally for prussiking and abseiling on fixed ropes on Bonington's expedition to the South Face of Annapurna in 1970; that is to say, while allowing the attachment of jumars, descendeurs, etc, it wasn't actually equipped with a rope tie-in point, the clip-in loop being low down on the crutch-strap, ie lower than desirable for rope attachment. On that particular expedition they took the Troll Chest-harness for rope attachment purposes, that model being, I think, already in existence. Troll subsequently modified the Whillans Harness into the ground-breaking conventional climbing harness that became the standard in the UK and elsewhere for a number of years. Chouinard marketed (I think) a double-buckle version of the original for a while (his business partner, and gear genius, Tom Frost was also on the Annapurna trip), but I don't know how successful it was in the US, particularly with strong competition in that area from, among others, Bill Forrest.

As others have said, the Whillans was by no means the first climbing harness, in the UK or anywhere else; it was probably, however, the first sit harness that fulfilled all the requirements of the typical climber - rope tie-in point, abseil/prussik attachment, you could hang in it without strangling, gear loops, etc. Quite a good sit harness came on the UK market a year or two before the Whillans - the Davek Harness designed and marketed, I think, by Derek Walford, possibly based in Sutton Coldfield at the time; I don't know whether he had the manufacturing capability to actually make it , or whether that was outsourced - Troll, perhaps, who better? It achieved some notice by being used by Doug Scott on the first ascent of The Scoop on Strone Ulladale (sorry; sassenach spelling!), but disappeared without trace when the Whillans hit the market. Prior to that, in the UK at least, harnesses could largely be divided into two types: those that provided a full strength attachment for the rope, and those that simply offered padding for the rope that was still tied around the waist, generally with gear loops of some sort included.

The first type tended to be chest harnesses, and possibly owe their commercial origin to the Edelrid model which was actually made of multiple-ply 9mm rope - 4-ply at first, with a presumably more comfortable 6-ply model coming later; I'm not sure when they first appeared, but Harlin and co. certainly used them on the Eiger Direct in Feb/March 1966 - as I would imagine did the German team - and memory suggests that they may be in evidence in photos taken during the first winter ascent of the Eigerwand in March 1961. I said "commercial" because I think the first climber to be credited with using a chest harness - presumably homemade - as opposed to simply tying the rope around his chest, was Raimund Schinko who was active in the limestone of northern Austria - Dachstein, Gesause, etc - in the 1930s. As I've said Troll also had a chest harness, theirs obviously made of 2-inch webbing, as did Davek (as well as the sit harness); Edelweiss also produced a rope-based model, but I think that came later; as, I think, did Moac. These harnesses all consisted of a wide chest-strap with a loop at each end, held up by shoulder straps; they weren't adjustable, but generally came in size increments of about two inches. You put them on like a waistcoat and tied the rope through the two loops to complete the circle; a krab might also be clipped through the loops to hold them together when not tied in, but this was definitely not for rope attachment, three-way loading on a krab being a big no-no. Around the time of the Whillans, or possibly just before, Moac also produced their Moac-Irvine Harness (manufactured by Irvine who, I think, made parachute harnesses), an adjustable harness which had a metal plate at each end, one of them cranked and with a karabiner hole, the other with a slot; you fastened it by passing the cranked hole piece through the slot in the other and attaching a screwgate krab to which the rope was clipped. Although Pete Minks waxed lyrical about the harness in an advert at the time, I doubt that it would pass muster these days due to the single karabiner link, risk of cross-loading, etc. Moac had also produced a simpler webbing belt sometime in the mid-1960s which could be worn around the waist or, with the addition of rudimentary parachute-cord shoulder straps, as a chest harness; this was also adjustable, and you either clipped or tied the rope to a large D-ring. Concern was growing at this time about the possibility of strangulation from hanging for any length of time in a chest harness, so most manufacturers had started to develop an "add-on" sit harness which couldn't be used on its own but, when added to a chest harness, turned it into a full body-harness. One-piece body harnesses also started to appear but were never popular among British climbers, except occasionally lightweight models for classic alpinism and ski-mountaineering (dangling, and awaiting rescue, in crevasses!); Troll produced a technical climbing model in the 1970s which was notably used by Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker on the West Face of Changabang, but it never made much impact on the UK market.

The second type, the "padded belt with gearloops", was pretty much confined to the UK; I can't of anything of this type made by an overseas manufacturer. I'm not sure whether the first one was made by Troll or "Tanky" Stokes, but both were similar, consisting of a stiff, wide belt with transverse webbing loops, like the belt-loops on a pair of trousers, through which the rope was threaded around the waist before tying - usually with a bowline. I think Tanky's was leather while Troll's was either nylon or polyester webbing. The transverse loops might be doubled back at the bottom to enclose a D-ring which itself could accomodate a couple of karabiners or provide one of the anchorages for a system of gear-loops. Troll brought out their Mk 2 version a bit later - but still 1960's; a bit more refined, but the same principal. Moac and Karrimor both later produced belts/harnesses of this general type, though with their models the rope was almost completely encased in a protective sleeve; canvas in Moac's case, possibly nylon in Karrimor's.

Post-Whillans, of course, proper development of the sit harness got underway, mainly by the rope-manufacturers in Europe, people like Bill Forrest, the Lowe brothers and Brian Robertson in the US, and of course Troll and Wild Country in the UK; that's all recent history, and pretty well-known.

Hope this helps.

In reply to Ian Parsons: Ian, you are a genuine fount of knowledge. Thank you for sharing all this information with us.
With best wishes from Corsica,
Stéphane

In reply to Ian Parsons:

nice one.

In reply to ice.solo: Don't have a copy to hand but I'm sure there are photos of Gaston Rebuffat wearing a harness in some of his books such as Étoiles et Tempêtes &/or Glace, Neige et Roc.

To the OP - If you have access to the Alpine Club library or one the copyright libraries it would be worth looking at the photos & ads during the late 60s & early 70s, especially if you can look at some magazines from eg France or Germany as well as the UK

Its not just the Whillans harness i am interested in, however that was the first to be popular and did make the leap between belts and sit harnesses, (a change that changed climbing in a big way)

thanks to all for your information.

In reply to nutstory:

Cheers Stephane, and Bonne Annee! (Sorry; my keyboard can't do accents, acute or otherwise.) By no means definitive; only really about the 1960s, and largely relating to what was available in the UK at the time. The imported items seemed to be mostly of German origin; I made no mention of Millet who were probably in the forefront of French harness development, but whose UK market consisted principally of rucksacks, gaiters, etc.

As Doug says, various harnesses started to appear in illustrations in Rebuffat's books, certainly in later editions. I only have the 1963 English edition of On Snow and Rock, which includes sections on equipment and technique together with a number of photographs of technical free and artificial climbing on the South face of the Aiguille du Midi and elsewhere. Among these, the only reference to a harness is the following paragragh, accompanied by an illustrating photograph which includes a potentially multi-directionally loaded karabiner:-

<< - the baudrier or shoulder-harness. This is contrived from a double sling of rope with two spliced loops in which is placed a screw-type snap-link (or two snaplinks placed in opposite directions so that they cannot open at the same time). To this is hitched the connecting rope. One of the two slings, the one which passes over the shoulder, is often replaced by a strap.>>

In fact the illustration doesn't quite seem to show this, although something may have been lost in translation. It appears to show a long rope sling (probably joined with a splice - hawser-laid rope) with an overhand knot tied to form a smaller and a larger loop; the smaller loop is placed over one shoulder, bandolier fashion, with the knot sitting just above waist level, then the larger double loop is taken around the waist and clipped back into itself, and the climbing rope, with the connecting karabiner. The sling obviously has to be the right length in the first place. This doesn't look any more comfortable than the various existing methods of tying directly onto the rope; simply more convenient. If we go back a few more years to the glossary in Guido Magnone's book The West Face in which he describes the first ascent of the 1952 route on Les Drus - I have the 1955 English edition - there is a sketch illustration of a "cross-belt" which looks more like Rebuffat's description, and which Lucien Berardini appears to be wearing in the team photograph on the frontispiece.

Clearly, when rope was still hawser-laid and splicing offered a simple and reliable way to join ends and form end-loops that anyone could learn, I'm sure lots of people will have made up all sorts of kit for their own use with rope as the basic ingredient; and when ropes changed to kernmantel Edelrid, being the manufacturer, had the technology to make the continuous rope loops from which their chest harnesses were constructed (Moac's version had a big knot!). Strong webbing, and the technology to sew it, obviously goes back at least as far as WW2 and the production on a large scale of parachute harnesses, and seems the more obvious option for commercial manufacture; I doubt that Moac were the only company involved in the development of climbing harnesses to approach a parachute harness manufacturer and avail themselves of existing expertise. I expect the same was true in yachting which, with more respectability and purchasing power, was probably some way ahead of the climbing world; somewhere I still have a couple of yachting harnesses which are very similar to the Moac Irvine, but pre-date it by several years.

In reply to Nathancoward: There was a harness, with leg loops, around in the sixties. I think it was called a Davek or something like that. I only ever saw it used for aid climbing.

Al

In reply to Ian Parsons:

>Sorry; my keyboard can't do accents, acute or otherwise.

Alt Gr+e may do it.


Anyway, think there may be pics of old harnesses in Langmuir's or McInnes's mountain rescue books, can't find mine to check unfortunately but may help.

In reply to sutty:

Chéèrs Sutty - it works! And, as you vaguely suggested elsewhere, were we to delve into our respective attics I think we would both unearth a largely similar pile of old kit!

Stéphane (thanks again Sutty!) has pointed me in the direction of an advert in the Feb/Mar 1971 edition of Rocksport, which I should have dug out myself, that illustrates some of what I was attempting to describe rather better than my earlier rambling; it also reminds me that the Edelrid-like rope chest harness that I ascribed to Moac - the one with the knot - was in fact produced by George Fisher of Keswick. He might post it - I haven't a clue how to!

In reply to Nathancoward:

the modern climbing harness was invented by Mike Harness back in the 50s

In reply to doz generale:

I thought he invented the microphone.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

Great posts! I can remember getting a Davek Mark II harness off Brummie Chris ( <sigh> Whatever happened to her?) It seemed pretty good. Can't remember what happened to it.

Long hanging belays in the Whillans were the stuff of agony. And falling off not recommended. Perhaps that's what he intended!

Mick

In reply to Mick Ward:

Indeed it was, Mick! Not only the best available sit harness pre-Whillans - this side of the pond, at least - but also, realistically, the only one. While it was claimed that one or two of the "add-on" legloops could be combined with a belt - generally one of the Moac ones - to make a sit harness, this didn't really work; they were designed to link up with a chest harness at sternum level and any other arrangement didn't properly distribute the load onto the legs. I suppose the Davek suffered from a reduced level of this in that the legloops were attached somewhere between the hips and the front, depending on fit, but it was as you say pretty good. I took my first proper lob onto mine, off Minus Ten at Stoney; a headfirst twenty-footer onto the chockstone - where did that go? - when my hands melted somewhere near the top (this being some time before learning to jam properly)!
I must admit to the fairly early purchase of a belay seat, thus avoiding a certain amount of pain, and, during a trip to the US and Canada in 1977, of a Forrest Harness, arguably the forerunner of all modern belt/legloop sit harnesses; as far as I know these had by then been in production for a number of years.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

My first harness (after using a hemp waistline) was the Davek, which as you say came out quite a long time before the Whillans.