Is this done with a standard sit and chest harness swapped back to front, or a purpose built full-body harness with the rappel ring/loop in the back?
Can tactical rappels which entail single hand operation (firearm in other hand) still employ prussik or mechanical backups, or is the brake hand solely responsible for control?
For tactical applications which require a rope bag, the only way I have seen this done is with a leg bag, which makes sense for a standard position rappel, but for face-first, how does the rope feed from the bag while still allowing braking with the non-gun hand? What rappel device is used in these cases (ie. an 8 or a rack)?
Only done “normal” (butt first) rappelling myself but here’s a good photo of an instructor right at the end of an Australian rappel, you can see how the gear is configured:
If you Google “Australian rappel” you’ll find a lot of links to equipment and instructional sites. It looks like a fairly normal climbing harness is used with an extra D-ring at the back. A chest harness as backup would make sense to prevent spilling out.
Looking at that photo it appears that you hook a big figure-8 to the rear D ring and thread the rope through the figure 8, then proceed similarly to a normal rappel. Since I haven’t actually done this style I dunno if an ATC could be used instead of the figure 8.
As far as what equipment is commonly available in the US, I can tell you that sport-climbing harnesses often lack a Austrian (rear) loop, but most caving and general-purpose search&rescue harnesses have them, in addition to the regular front-loop(s).
From someone I know who is qualified to do this: Austrian is most-often used by tactical police/military teams, using a safety-8 with the single-rope feeding from a bag–you can’t work the bars of a rack in that position–most all US tactical teams use only regular CMI rescue-8’s. The bag is tied to their leg, and any other gear is tied to their lower-half near the waist, so that they will hang right-side up if they loose their footing. The extra gun magazines for example are usually carried in pouches around the thighs. Their weapons are attached to the front of a chest harness, worn specifically for strapping the weapon to and that it can be quickly released from–they use small SMG’s like shorty HK’s with short barrels and collapsable stocks. The chest harness is linked to the waist harness, kind of like suspenders–but they don’t tie in the chest harness to the rope at all. You can control rope one-handed if you have to use the other for something else (they really really hope they don’t start getting shot at while still on the rope–they use only one tie-in (the safety-8) so that they can unhook from the rope as fast as possible when they land somewhere). They don’t use any belays at all–human or mechanical. Is rapelling one-handed dangerous? Well, um, yea. But so is lots of other aspects of what they do.
This page: http://www.hkpro.com/pdw.htm
shows a chest harness for a gun, if you scroll down a bit. This page is about the MP7, but I was told that pretty much all US SWAT police use MP5’s of some kind when they need a small SMG.
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Okay - my sport harness has no rear loop, but I gather there are some that do, or ideally, this should be done with a purpose-built tactical rig like the body harnesses from Blackhawk Industries, etc.?
I would still like to see a photograph showing how the rope feeds from the leg bag in this case. I presume that the bag just needs to be carefully loaded to pay out snag-free, and then is guided only by the braking hand, in a rappel or fastrope glove?
I’d think you could still use any harness for Austrian-style, you’d just need to hook a big carabiner around the rear of the waist strap (or where the single-loop crosses) and then run two straps around each side, linked to the front loops–to keep the figure-8 from sliding from side-to-side. It’d be a bit messy but would work. If you want one with a rear loop, you’d do best to ask around on a climbing forum somewhere which ones have them.
I dug my old one out, it was made by some company named Forrest based in Denver Colorado but Google turns up nothing on that name. There’s no model name or number on the tag at all. The equipment I have is probably ten years old however, it’s been a long time since I have used any of it. (-t’s not really any good now for climbing, I kept it for decorating purposes) I remember that I was into it for example back when Chouinard changed their name to Black Diamond.
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Never heard of either, not being into that sort of thing, but Google gives 9,200 for “Australian” and 811 hits for Austrian. Make of that what you will.
I had always heard it explained as "Austrian"as in “first used widely by that army in Europe”, but I seem to be getting about 50/50 with Google hits on the name variations. <?
When I bought the book, it was just about the only “general coverage” climbing book around that also covered caving equipment and techniques. Oh well. Who knows?
I never used a rack, BTW. The area shop sold them but where I live there are no decents longer than maybe 250 feet, so a rack is really more hassle than it is worth. I had a regular bobbin and I liked that it was easy to stop and tie temporarily during descent, but it didn’t have a whole lot of friction. You fall real fast if you lose grip on the rope. Some daring people used regular-8’s but generally we just used safety-8’s because they are largely idiot-proof and don’t take a lot of braking effort. If you double-wrap them, even fat or weak people can do their own braking, it’s so easy.
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When I used to rappel, we just tied our own harnesses from webbing (loop up the crotch, around the waist, etc.). To go Aussie style, we just clipped the ring in the back instead of the front. We always just used carabiners, not figure eights. No special gear needed.
I don’t know the origin of the name, but the Marines I trained with all called it Aussie style, so I assumed Australian. I’ve never heard anything Austrian called Aussie.
