by Tubo Longo » Jun 22, 2011 11:29 pm
Jansen, I stand to partially correct myself. I was a bit in a hurry when I answered your post and got side tracked by the second half of it. You got it in part right, the small maillon get added below the Croll. But not to disconnect it from the chest harness, that won't make any sense: to disconnect it from the lower (or seat, if you'd prefer) harness, without having to open/close every time the screw link (or D-link or Maillon Rapide whatever you'd like to call it).
As you well know and correctly point out, there're a number of possible solutions to either loosen up the chest harness and/or disconnect the Croll from it.
Chh, this tech is of course only used in those caves I described: otherwise I agree is un-necessary. You however point to two different scenario: the use of Omni and the climbing only situation. In Italy at least Omni is not well considered, as far as I know, to close the seat harness, mainly for two reasons: is made of alloy and is basically a biner. The Maillon Rapide comes also in steel, which is considered (there) THE choice for any serious caver, being steel considered better than alloy. Then, being a biner and as any biner, the Omni has a possible very weak point, the pin. A weak point that isn't present in the Maillon Rapide.
To be clear, it's NOT my intention to open a thread on the Omni, I'm just reporting what the situation is, as I know it, in the Italian caving scene. Not to say that nobody use alloy Maillon or Omni: but for an hard core caver those aren't choice. As a matter of fact I'm not aware of any caver I know using them.
So said, nobody like the idea to continuosly screw open/close the Maillon Rapide at every darn pit of a cold, alpine, vertical cave, which could be several hundred meters deep: exp. if you could find yourself in a position where a visual inspection of the maillon may be hard if not possible at all. Like a tight crevasse that opens up in a pit. As I wrote in the other post, please consider that any caver in Italy wear the Croll even while rappelling, just in case. So if grueling tight passages are present between pits, the Croll will be removed both on the way in and out of the cave.
Why bother not to open directly the lower harness? Because that's where usually cave packs are hanging or being towed from. So nobody wants to open the harness when yours pack(s) is hanging from it and you're, for example, at the end of a vertical crevasse, right where it opens up into a pit..
That's also why, Chads93GT, cavers there completely remove the harness only in extreme situation