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How many of you carry a short belay rope and wear a harness. Have you ever used it? If so, what was the situation? I'm interseted in everyones opinion- thanks!

i carry a 30m rope, a 4mx25mm ribbon and a pair of snaps

useful in case of climb extreme terrain with dangerous fall or needing to do rappel.

i use no harness, i can make a emergency harness with the ribbon, the ribbon is also useful to anchorage to trees stones ice axe etc...

to rappel with this extreme simple equipment you must master the dynamic knot


it adds some weight to the backpack, but it can take you out of big problems.

Ra

i'll try to post pics of the emergency harness

Those of you who do carry a rope are you carrying webbing for a harness if needed?

bb- If you take 10 feet of 1"webbing tied at the ends in a water knot, add one locking carabiner, you have a harness. check "mountaineering; freedom of the hills" for a good reference. You wrap the loop around your back and pull another lopp under your legs.
In '90-91, After my first two seasons of touring always when the hazard was low, I realized I had little idea what bad snow felt like. I then took a climbing harness and a bunch of new rope and began to run up to steep, wind loaded areas on high hazard days. It was a very good exercise in really paying attention to routefinding and I would only go in terrrain that you are very familiar with. I thought it was a lot of fun to cut big cornices while belayed on a stout tree or get a low rutschblock score on a 40 degree slope. I felt like I learned more about what bad snow qualitatively felt like that season than any other.
Certainly this could become a very dangerous activity, so learn all you can about setting good anchors. On the other hand, cutting out a good slide on belay will temper your enthusiasm for dropping in to runs without removing your doubts about the snow's stability. After seeing a slide plow through timber at velocity, you will feel appropriately "small" in the mountains for years to come.
Slope cutting on belay is a bit sketchier and I advise against it on higher hazard days where you are more looking to learn about snow and NOT up there to ride steep slopes. But it can't hurt on those days where you think stability is already good and you just want to ensure a long life. I fashioned a chest harness out of webbing in the real fear of tumbling in a way that your rope could be drawn against your board's edge while doing a slope cut.
That said, I rarely use a rope anymore. This is probably because I don't tour when there is a deep hard slab hazard and I usually make choices that prevent me from being on top of something that I am in the "gray area" about. I do bring a belay kit with me though when there are significant windslabs up high, and strong snowpack elsewhere. It can be an excellent problem solver.
Can you tell I'd rather be touring today than at my keyboard?