In an abandoned quarry, is it possible to pry loose rocks from walls until stable?
I have an abandoned quarry near my house, in which I would like to make a hiking route.
Almost all of it is enjoyable hiking and easy scrambling, except one part, which requires climbing (estimated French grade - 4) up about 5 metres, on a wall with mostly unstable holds. So I wonder whether it would be possible to remove (with bare hands or tools like crowbar) all the unstable rocks, and leave a rock face that would be safe to climb.
The rock at the quarry is limestone with varying quality. We have a climbing wall with bolted routes not far from there (I mention that to make it clear that the rock itself is climbable).
So, is such "cleaning" possible? Does the answer depend on whether explosives were used in the quarry?
(BTW I am not interested right now whether this is legal)
For reference, here is a picture:
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I live in an area (in the UK) with a lot of limestone (and gritstone) quarries, some still working and many abandoned.
Some of the abandoned quarries have been equipped with bolts for sport climbing (NOT the gritstone though!) and are regularly used. However, the rock itself is a compact limestone with not much in the way of natural fracturing and once the odd loose bit from quarrying operations had been removed, what is left is pretty solid.
Looking at your photo it looks like this area of limestone is highly fractured, probably due to geological movement rather than due to quarrying.
I don't think you would ever get down to a section to solid rock no matter how much loose material you removed.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/6207. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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