Three points for folks climbing at Hillwood:

• Although the climbers who opened so many of the routes at Hillwood did a brilliant job setting up Tasmania's premier and unique sport climbing area (most notably, Gerry Narkowicz, Mark Rewi and Norm Selby), some of the anchors could have been better realised. Quite a number consist of bolt hangers, each with a shackle added which tend to twist ropes badly when retrieved after doing your climb. There are now improvements to three sets of these sorts of anchors above the Chessboard, with the addition of chains to the shackles. They are on:
  • Revelation Six Sixteen
  • Ligament Laxity
  • Arse About Face/Nothing Left to Give. NB: one of the shackles on this anchor set-up is adequate, but would be better were it replaced with a larger one. Also, it would be good to take a bolt-cutter and remove one link from one of the chains so that they are equalised.
• Nothing Left to Give (19) has four bolts. The first is a bolt + hanger set-up, the following three are carrots. I found that I couldn't get a RP hanger on the second one, and the first one was very difficult to get a hanger on. If you want to do this route I suggest you either use hangers with a bigger hole or hang wires off the first two bolts.
• Not in the guide because it was done after the guide came out is Religious Rubbish (20), which uses the first bolt on Ghost Rider, then moves left and up on the black hangers. I reckon it's worth two stars, and mention it here because I was surprised to hear that a number of people who regularly visit Hillwood weren't really sure what it was and haven't been on it.

Cheers,
Doug