I'm looking to purchase a comfortable and durable harness for tree climbing and rapelling. I have narrowed it down between the Petzl Sequoia and New Tribe Tengu. Anyone have any experience with both of these?
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New Tribe or Sequoia?
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moss
ArboristSite Guru
I've only climbed in the Tengu, it is durable and very comfortable. It is built to New Tribe's work saddle spec so it's tough enough to use every day if you want to. I don't think there is any arborist harness as comfortable as the NT work harness for long hang times. The exception would be a butt strap harness but you lose some leg mobility with those.
-moss
-moss
The feature that is drawing my attention to the sequoia is the fact that it has a floating bridge, wich is adjustable and replacable, and it also as another front central attachment point for a croll when using SRT. I plan on using both DdRT and SRT. Not just climbing trees, I will also be rappeling into and climbing back out of some pits.
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moss
ArboristSite Guru
Floating bridge anchors are great but not required for tree climbing. What's good about them is that you can go horizontal or invert very easily when you need to. This is more a feature for experienced work climbers. On an NT harness you can go horizontal or invert, just not as smoothly or as quickly as you would with a floating anchor bridge. For novice climbers I don't recommend floating anchor bridges because it's too easy to get tipped over and out of control. The front attachment for a croll is a more valuable feature for you than a bridge anchor. If you want to go multi-purpose on a harness you have to expect to lose optimization for any given climbing discipline. It seems like the purpose designed caving harnesses make a lot of sense, especially how sleek and light they are for a cave/pit situation. In a wet cave environment I think they'd be less of a problem than a bulky and waterlogged tree harness
-moss
moss
ArboristSite Guru
I don't know a lot about caving, didn't realize pit climbing was a separate discipline, thought that cavers used the pits to get to the caves. So it sounds like you'd be good with either tree harness in the pits.
Yep, you can do a ropewalker on the Tengu. The Croll can attach to the center delta, I'd recommend ordering the pear screwlink option instead of the stock delta screwlink to give you the room to put a Croll on and other hardware as needed. I attach a hitch (substitute for Croll) to an inverted HMS biner on the legstrap D for my primary ascender backup, I think you could use maybe a Petzl OK biner to attach a Croll to the legstrap D. The thing to do is call up New Tribe and tell them how you want to configure your SRT system and they can tell you what will or won't work best with the Tengu. They're based in the PNW and work with a lot of SRT climbers.
The Sequoia is designed for a Croll attachment so you'd be good to go if you went that route.
For the Tengu they'll do custom work and add an attachment point on the back for a Petzl Secur shoulder strap etc. if you want it.
I'm probably not helping you make a decision, you'll be happy with either harness. You'll spend considerably less on the Tengu even with custom attachments.
-moss
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