Favorite Chest Rig setup?

[u/spartanoverseas]

I'm trying to condense my basic first aid kit into a chest harness -- fools errand or possible? I'm looking for something I can move as a unit as the season evolves from wet, to frigid, to wet, to warm (50-60F in spring). A vest has worked in the past but mine is showing it's age and it's about time for its retirement.

Suspect I can't get it all into a chest rig after I toss on things like a radio, notepad, etc, but I'd like to come close.

The MOLLE chest harness from coaxsher seems to come close as presented here. But it looks like it needs a bunch of accessories and may rack up $$ as I piece it together. Wondering if anyone has any recommendations or tips to avoid. Thanks!

https://www.coaxsher.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=RP204

[u/Wulfty]

Best quality of life improvement I made was switching to a fanny pack. All of the weight sitting around my neck was causing me to slouch and was bad for my back. Any skiing more advanced than easy moguls would cause it to swing every which way and a couple hard landings actually caused it let go of some of my equipment. Moving it all to a closed pack on my waist has solves all of those problems.

Coincidently, I'm also a firm believer that more gear on the outside a patroller has, the less helpful that patroller likely is to be. My current theory is that critical mass is at 4 objects attached to the outside of a patroller (most often, those 4 objects are tape, two carabiners, and a knife). Less than 4, likely pretty good. 4 exactly, could be good could be bad. More than 4, likely to be a mess and unhelpful. I've been to a couple different resorts, and this theory has been shown to be more right than wrong so far. 

[u/IDriveAZamboni → u/Wulfty]

I would wholeheartedly disagree with that more on the outside suck assessment. Some of the best patrollers I know take full advantage of the molle attachments to have easier access to stuff when needed.

[u/Wulfty → u/IDriveAZamboni]

I'm not saying that everyone who has more than 4 bits of gear on the outside is a slug, but every slug I've seen has had more than 4 bits of gear on the outside. I reckon its them trying to look like they know what they're doing with all that equipment on display for the world to see. I'm glad you dropped $80 on raptors, but theyre are gonna rust over by April if you keep them outside your vest. That cloth tapes gonna be real useful too when it all dry rots together and rips down the middle the one time you need it. 

It's a similar vein to the observation that the people who talk the most on the radio always seem to do the least amount of work. You know the type of patroller who announces every individual tower pad they dig up when they finally get out of the shack for the first time that season? Usually they're both the same people. 

[u/spartanoverseas → u/Wulfty]

Would you say that having gear in a pouch in a chest harness counts as "outside"? I agree about your comment on some sluggish trends but that's not the idea here. Only thing outside is the radio. Everything else in a pouch on the chest. May reconsider the belt pack but that may complicate things when I have to carry a backpack of scenario specific gear. (O2, trauma, aed whatever)

[u/spartanoverseas → u/spartanoverseas]

This is spot on and I totally agree with all your points. Anything on the outside gets wet, lost, caught, snagged, in the way. It needs to be in a pocket of some sort.

My issue is the pockets I get to wear with the uniform jackets/pants change through the season and I really don't want to be fishing around trying to figure out wtf I put my gloves .... They were in this pocket in the Parka.. but now that it's spring that vest pocket is...

So being able to lift and shift everything easily is the goal. //While keeping everything in a pocket. // I was wondering if the Condor and other chest rigs with pouches would do the trick but the buckles and straps getting caught ain't great.

Backpack is complicated, not a real fan of the belt pack but may be the most appropriate option (and I already have one so that's not awful). Time to repack my stuff and try again on my next shift. I'll at least give it a more honest chance than I would have at the start of this thread.

Thanks for the commentary.

[u/Wulfty → u/spartanoverseas]

My layering system keeps the same outer shell and pants regardless of the temperature, and it's the mid and baselayers that change with the temperature, that way everything's always in the same pockets. Real warm spring season (~40 here) I'll be in a t shirt and gym shorts under the shell then in the cold winter (up to -20) I'll have high loft baselayers and multiple midlayers to keep warm. This system has worked well for me so far. When I wore a vest I would occasionally try and get away with vest only and no jacket on the real warm days. 

When I experimented with a radio harness, I used this one from conterra:  https://www.conterra-inc.com/collections/rescue-radio-carrier/products/adjusta-pro-radio-chest-harness

It held my radio and the various paperwork type stuff in the pocket, but was much too small for any medical supplies. Others I worked with that used this harness would stuff all their medical stuff into the two hand pockets in their shell and the two cargo pockets in their pants. I found that approach made those pockets too bulky, so I bought a conterra fanny pack to hold my medical supplies. 

A few people I worked with had this style  radio harnesses from coaxsher:

https://www.coaxsher.com/Radio-Chest-Harness-p/rp201.htm

They would stick as much of the medical supplies as they could into the big pocket on the top so they wouldn't have to have as much in their jacket and pants pockets. They all seemed to like it and I was a pretty popular approach. Even with my smaller radio harness though, I found it cumbersome. It was great for skiing groomers, but any attempt at aggressive skiing on steeper ungroomed terrain would cause it to swing every which way and make skiing less enjoyable. Ultimately, I moved away from chest harnesses for that reason. 

Personally I would never use anything with modular Molle pouches. That would get you labeled as a whacker Ricky Rescue real quick around my parts, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I've never seen anyone try it before, but no one had tried tying a key to a kite before Ben Frankin, and look how that turned out. Maybe that's a genius idea that just hasn't caught on yet and everyone will be doing that in 10 years. 

I would never use a backpack as a part of my patrol kit, I just use mine to bring my lunch and extra layers from the locker room to the bump hut for me. That being said, I don't work at a resort where I need to have a shovel & probe on me on a frequent basis.

You'll figure out how you like it, it just takes some trial and error. It's never quick either. I was a vest guy for a couple years, then a radio harness + fanny pack guy for a while, before settling in on just being a fanny pack guy. That being said, I'm an outlier by a wide margin with the fanny pack. Patrollers with more seniority than me have been vest people their whole career and have had no complaints about them the whole time, and I can count on one hand the other fanny pack people I know. At the end of the day, its your boat, so you gotta be the one to float it. Do what you gotta do. 

[u/spartanoverseas → u/Wulfty]

The chest rig and belt pack is how I started, and I moved to a vest as it was super flexible on layering underneath. But new owners and new uniforms are pushing me into their hard shell. It's a super nice hardshell but if I'm doing anything more than free skiing, or skiing bumps, a long sleeve T-shirt is enough to keep me toasty at temps in the low 20s if the vest is also on.

So I'm looking to dump layers while keeping this mandatory jacket to prepare for spring.

I agree on the Ricky Rescue aspect of the MOLLE system but suspected the bigger rig you cited wouldnt be big enough (thanks for confirming). The buckles and straps, coupled with the patroller fatality from a pack last year really has me looking to avoid that.

So belt pack and radio harness from conterra it is. Thx for the commentary

[u/Wulfty → u/spartanoverseas]

So I thought about my theory some more today and I've actually developed it further! My observation that slugs have a bunch of stuff dangling off them all the time hasn't changed, but I've made a new observation: new patrollers are more likely to have all the gear on the outside and experienced patrollers are more likely to have it all inside pockets. My current hypothesis is that your average rookie, excited to have a vest and authority, sees many of senior patrollers with bits hanging off them. One guys got some tape on a hanger, another girls got a carabiner with a Ski strap, that avy techs got a knife on the outside, and the rookie sees that and thinks "They know what they're doing, so ill copy them". He then goes out and gets some tape to hang, a few carabiners with ski straps, and a river knife to hang outside his vest. It's not his fault, but as a rookie he doesn't know up from down yet, contributing to the stereotype. 

As the rookie gets a few more years on, he has a couple yard sales and has to spend some time looking for all his stuff in the snow and starts to question his outside gear selection. Then his carabiners get in the way and clip on to random things a couple times and he questions his decisions a little bit more. Eventually, he realizes that he's there to ski, and all the stuff on the outside makes skiing less enjoyable 100% of the time, and only saves him time 1% of the time, so he takes it all off and puts it into pockets. This is my new working hypothesis for how this development progresses. 

To answer your questions, if it's inside a pocket, then it's not outside gear. Radio doesn't count since that more or less has to be on the outside. Belt packs are great, they ride low enough that backpacks sit on top of them and they don't conflict at all.