I’ve put together a 50kN hydraulic pull ram for testing anchors, helped by a few groups including mainpeak, so I’d like to ship it over to WA next year for 2 months.

I started this due to the poor rock in the Blue Mountains NSW, I think your Southern limestone might be interesting too.

Theer are a few rules, don’t destroy yourself (there’s a lot of energy invovled), don’t destroy real climbs (pulling a good bolt will proabably result in rock damage), write up the rsults in a way which are useful for other testers, and ship it on the next user.

I rarely test on cliffs, a flat slab is much easier and safer to test a stringh of anchors on. Most of the testing is shear testing, but I I have a rig to test outwards also.

I’d also like to test trad gear in real placements, get a few people to place gear and all to rate all the gear out of 10 and see how much it actually holds, I suspect experienced people might be better and placing and more accurate at assessing than noobs, and cams might be a bit variable too.

There are a lot of pictures on Chockstone

If you’re keen, email me on

mlx at ansdto.gov.au