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I am trying to decipher a text from this page on rope solo leading:

The other way you can tie in is to create a higher tie in point between your harness and chest harness, meaning you have less chance of taking a head first fall.

So far so good. But now:

To do this take a length of full strength cord (I used dyneema, but a bit of skinny rope will do) and create an fig8 knot on a bite through your chest harness (you need to be able to unthread your chest harness from the bite at the end, so don’t tie it through any close loops), leaving a long tail from one side of the knot. Now take the tail and pass it through your sit harness and back up, rethreading it through the fig8 knot. Now you have a fig8 with two bites on each side, joining sit and waist harness. Now take the tail - which is coming out of the top side of the fig8, and create a small bite by threading it back through the fig8. You now have a fig8 with 3 bites. The location of the fig8 and this last loop (this is where you’ll clip your Silent Partner, needs to be around your belly button, so as to avoid the Silent Partner smashing you in the face.

There's no picture on the site and I am really having an hard time understanding that.

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  • I suggest you don't bother. If it's too complicated to explain easily, too complicated for it to work reliably in the field. Search for "Improvised Chest harness" and you will find something that is very simple and very reliable.
    – user5330
    Aug 20, 2015 at 3:41
  • 1
    All this accomplishes is extending your Silent Partner closer to your centre of mass, which you could do a number of ways, this is just one guys way of doing it. But Silent Partners are made to be used right off your harness, so what this guy with the blog is doing is recommending that you use a safety device differently than what the manufacturer recommends.
    – ShemSeger
    Aug 20, 2015 at 5:01
  • @ShemSeger it's not only a guy's way to do that, is one of the most important soloists in the world way to do that. Unfortunately other than being strong in climbing he's also dyslexic (for real). I tried solo aid climbing and I'd like to avoid all that clutter on the harness. Plus, the instructions are very old.
    – Dakatine
    Aug 20, 2015 at 12:03
  • Yes, the instructions still refer to using a swami belt! They also appear to conflict with Petzl harness instructions against clipping both tie-in points, and I suspect that's due to the SP instructions dating from before modern belay loops.
    – requiem
    Aug 20, 2015 at 15:21
  • I liked the earlier title :D
    – WedaPashi ♦
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:00

1 Answer 1

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It may help to take a bit of cord and work through the instructions in order. After trying it out here, I would describe the finished product as follows:

triple re-threaded figure-8

  1. You have a massively-rethreaded figure-8; instead of two side-by-side strands forming the 8, it will have four.
  2. This massive knot will have two loops coming out of one end. The other end will have one loop and the tails.
  3. When each loop is tensioned (by chest harness, sit harness, and Silent Partner), the structure will be Y-shaped, with the knot at the branch of the Y.

To me it seems the finished product is similar to a small rescue spider. For a simpler version I would be tempted to take a sling, fold it in two, and tie a figure-8 using all the strands.

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