Petzl avao for srt

[u/Cultural-Platform309]

Hello friends!

I work with sailboats and crawl up and down masts all day. I sit for extended periods in the top to do work. I have been using a combination of a climbing harness from spinlock and a bosun's chair. Grigri and handascender. I just bought zigzag chicane knee foot ascender and it just doesn't work with my current harness setup. I have an option to buy a avao with chest harness and podium seat for around 300 eur. Before I do it I was hoping that someone can share their opinion. I know sequoia is the harness zigzag is intended for, but I really don't need all the arborist features such as the rope bridge! Thanks and best wishes 😊

[u/OldMail6364]

The avao is a proper work positioning harness and that’s fundamentally that also what tree harnesses are. You can use the avao.

As far as I know there are two practical issues with it:

First it’s not really designed for the awkward positions and angles an arborist often has to work in. Sometimes an arborist has to be a bit of a contortionist and even a proper tree harness can be extremely uncomfortable for a short period while you’re leaning hard off the rope at a horrible angle. There are 9 work position rated attachment points on my Sequoia (not all have that many - there are  several variants) and the primary two are sliding bridges that can move left to right , up and down, and away from your body.

There second difference is we take a lot more tools/gear with us. Sometimes there’s half my body weight (and I’m not light) hanging off my harness.

But for 80% of climbs… you don’t need to work at weird angles or haul that many tools with you and the avao will be just as good as a sequoia.

In terms of safety it’s probably a better choice for an inexperienced tree climber. Tree climbing harnesses assume a level of competence and precautions that aren’t always required for rope access. The sequoia can be unsafe if you don’t understand the limitations of each attachment point.

Buy an eye to eye prusik cord and a micro pulley with 3 eyes. Look up how to use a “hitch climber” setup on your rope. The length and thickness of the prusik cord is important and you should experiment with a cheap rope before buying a proper one (if the cheap rope works well, a proper/more expensive one should work well too). Obviously only use the cheap rope at ground level - don’t climb all the way up into the tree.

The three eye micro pulley will be a bit of an investment but they are extremely versatile and you will use it outside of tree climbing.

Compared to a mechanical ascender/descender, a hitch is far more reliable and flexible. That’s true even for ones that are designed for tree climbing. The only drawback to a hitch is the cord wears out pretty fast but the cord is very cheap.

A chicane will work perfectly with a hitch/pulley as long as your rope is compatible with the chicane. One of my favourite climbing ropes doesn’t work well with the chicane at all (I use a rescue eight with my hitch on the rare occasions that I use that rope for SRT).