Aenergy Harness

The Mammut Aenergy Harness is a stripped-back alpine harness for glacier crossings and ski mountaineering. It weighs 188 g in size S, rolls up small in the pack, and is made to be pulled on halfway across the snow with your skis or crampons still attached.

Certification and strength

• UIAA Safety Label
• Load-bearing parts made from HMPE webbing
• Four large gear loops and two vertical gear loops, each tested to 25 kg

The Aenergy is personal protective equipment. Read Mammut's user manual before you tie in.

What it is for

Long days on snow and ice where the harness is worn for hours and only occasionally weighted: roping up to cross a crevassed glacier in the Southern Alps, a ski-mountaineering summit day, a guided climb where you want to forget the harness until you need it. Mammut rates it six out of six for both mountaineering and ski mountaineering.

The buckles and tabs are colour-coded and numbered, so the sequence for getting in is obvious even with cold hands and boots on. The single fixed tie-in point keeps your knot or locking carabiner sitting high on your front, which keeps the rope out of your stride while you walk roped up. Flat, wide webbing spreads your weight across the waist and legs if you do end up hanging.

Weight

Size S weighs 188 g. The load-bearing webbing is HMPE, the outer is recycled ripstop polyamide over a recycled mesh lining, and the buckles are 7075 aluminium.

Sizing

Size S fits a waist of 73–83 cm and legs of 56–62 cm. Measure over the layers you will actually wear on the glacier, because shell pants and a softshell add more girth than you expect.

Handling

The waist buckle has wing-shaped tabs you can grab and cinch in gloves. Elastic retainers on the leg loops hold ice screws, and two ice clipper slots take clippers for screws and other hardware. Four large gear loops and two vertical loops give room for a glacier kit: prusiks, a pulley, a couple of screws and your lockers.

Inspection

Before each trip, look over the tie-in point and the HMPE webbing for cuts, glazing or fuzzing, check each buckle holds the webbing without slipping, and run your fingers along the leg loops, which sit closest to crampon points.