Petzl Tour Harness

We've come a long way since the days when ski mountaineers used hip belays to keep their partners safe on steep pitches and lashed crossed curtain rods to their backs to catch crevasse falls. Nowadays, purpose-built harnesses for steep skiing and glacier traversing alike have reached a high level of sophistication. Petzl stepped back from the goals of their ultralight Altitude and Fly harnesses to create the Tour, using wider webbing on the waist belt to keep long rappels more comfortable and adding a doubled-back waist buckle that skiers can use with gloved hands. Color-coded polyester webbing on the inside and outside of the Tour makes it near-impossible to don the harness backwards, even during groggy early-morning starts, and you can store your long V-thread screws neatly in the elastic sleeves on each leg loop. If you're gearing up for the Wapta Traverse or skiing off the Aiguille du Midi, the Tour harness is likely to spend serious time on your waist without you even noticing, and at 238g for the size small/medium, adding it to the pack for a day of touring is an easy sell.

• Wider, more rugged webbing than on ultralight offerings makes for more comfortable rappelling.
• Harness can be put on/taken off while wearing skis or crampons.
• Wide straps and steel doubled-back waist buckle are easy to use with gloved hands.
• Well-sized gear loops and belay loop ensure you have space to carry and use critical gear.
• Ice-screw retainer sleeves on each leg loop allow for no-rattle transport of two screws.
• Harness comes in a protective carry bag.

Update 2023/24: Fancy new color scheme doesn't shave weight, but does increase the cool factor.