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Topic split: Outdoor urban boulder parks (Read 7542 times)

SA Chris

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Limestone blocs would solve a lot of these transport issues. Simply blast the block in to small, manageable pieces, then mix with tar and use on drive.

Fixed.

Dexter

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Limestone blocs would solve a lot of these transport issues. Simply blast the block in to small, manageable pieces, transport at your leisure then rebuild them on location with huge quantities of sika. Et voila, a replica of the tor in your location of choice.

Surely the easier option here would be to break down the limestone into small sizes roughly equal to handholds and footholds, then attach them to a frame build of cheaper lighter materials such as wood and metal...
you could even put something like this into a warehouse so it stays dry and if you wanted to go all out you could serve coffee and cake and teach kids classes.

SA Chris

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or you could replace the limestone pieces with custom shapes made of some mouldable, wear resistant material.

Actually sounds shit, never catch on.

mrjonathanr

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  • Getting fatter, not fitter.

Surely the easier option here would be to break down the limestone into small sizes roughly equal to handholds and footholds, then attach them to a frame build of cheaper lighter materials such as wood and metal...

and spray on resin and you’d have Bendcrete’s Broughton wall. The only wall that ever felt like a crag.

seankenny

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Wonder if it'd come in under £100k...

Thanks for the cost breakdown. This has to be small beer for a London local authority. We got a new skatepark in my local park, annoyingly I can’t find any figures for its cost but I did find a suggestion for rebuilding a skate facility at a leisure centre that’s being refurbished. That came in at £375k so a couple of boulders - or a Broughton style structure - would be perfectly reasonable. And as FD says, it is very dry down here.

petejh

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Still haven't factored in Bonjoy's problem-sculpting fees (maybe get a comparison quote from MEdwards as its granite that needs chipping), plus my 'local fixer' middleman transaction fee for arranging purchase of suitable boulders from the guys who own the Trefor quarry. But yeah it looks like it should be doable for well under £100k per location in theory.

A Jooser

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Just to provide some validation to the remarkably accurate, back-of-an-envelope guesstimates on this thread I have some *FACTS*  to share with the group...

According to the Evening Standard (To boulderly go... in the name of art (19 Aug 2008)) the 'two 12ft high granite boulders', 'each weighing up to 85 tonnes', installed in Shoreditch Park and Mabley Green were 'funded with £100,000 from Deutsche Bank plus contributions from Hackney council and the Shoreditch Trust'. Figure does not include raw material as: "The boulders were donated by Carnsew quarry near Falmouth."

Further, there's 'The Seed', Peter Randall-Page's 13ft (4m) high, 70 tonne sculpture which was transported by lorry from De Lank Quarry on Bodmin Moor to its home at the Eden Project in 2007.

https://youtu.be/tU0boVX6b4k?t=15

Crane-logistics geeks can read all about it in Cranes Today where they'll learn the 3x3x3m-ish lump of rock was actually 67 tonnes -  :icon_welcome: tomtom, nice to see you here again.  :hug: It was 'whittled down' over four years from a 167 tonne quarried block.

Really, check out the artist and his work, it's amazing what can be achieved.


https://www.peterrandall-page.com/

But even better to show what's possible with imagination, inspiration and a bit of art commission/municipal funding there's the Traoñienn ar Sent (Valley of the Saints) in Brittany.



The 100th sculpture here weighs 5 tons, stands 3.5m (11ft) tall, and is a 'beautiful statue' of St Piran carved by sculptors David Paton and Stephane Rouget out of Carnsew granite in Trenoweth Quarry near Mabe. It was transported from Penryn by traditional sail boat to Brittany where I believe it was taken by horse and cart to its final destination. The Cornish granite saint was then - as legend dictates - given an Irish granite millstone around his neck and secured on its base of Breton granite.

https://youtu.be/Jaeck-RB5No?t=11

I'm with Bonjoy on this, a bit of money and vision is all it would take. £2 million could easily get you a dozen boulders or more put wherever you want. Stick a couple close to each other to get cracks, chimneys, corners; capstones on top. It could be great.  :2thumbsup:

Bonjoy

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Bonjoy what would the investment case be for a bunch of large granite boulders to be purchased from Trefor quarry (finest grained granite outside of some Scottish islands, still used for curling stones) and dumped in city centre parks, for you to chisel away at? Or would it be purely altruistic to keep you in new problems?
I've always wondered about Trefor Quarry, the rock sounds amazing. Have any locals checked it out for (in-situ) climbing potential?
Boulder parks would be a hard sell in terms of commercial return. I think it's totally feasible that something of sufficient size and complexity could charge entry, but it would be hard to get something like that built until viability/logistics/popularity were proven on a smaller scale. I guess it could be commercial as part of a larger facility e.g. some sort of hipster version of Centreparcs. I reckon a well made boulder would make an amazing piece of 'live art' in a sculpture park, and you might get commissioning on that basis, at least for a single block.
I do think though that from a cost and practicality point of view the best way forward would be built boulders rather than chiselled monoliths. The current first generation outdoor boulders are not a million miles away from being great, they just need an extra level of design and finish.
I think steel frame and spraycon is fine up to a point, but could the spraycon incorporate a surface mesh which can then be layered over with a textured resin finish?
Even spraycon lines could be greatly improved by pre-designing the problems on paper/CAD prior to applying the concrete, such that the short setting time can be wisely and carefully used, rather than it being a race against time.
Another idea would be to not just rely on trowelling wet concrete to make the hold shapes, but to use pre-made moulds, or shotblast the surface after it's solidified.
Ideally what you want is for the location to have ample space and the construction technique to be fairly cheap, such that you can afford to make pure inescapable lines up boulders. At which point the world is your oyster and you could in theory produce problems as good or better than anything thrown out by nature.

Andy W

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There was also this one by the same artist John Frankland, back in 2001

https://warwickshireclimbs.weebly.com/compton-verney.html

edshakey

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Johnny Brown

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I thought Trefor quarry closed in the sixties? And if it's anything like the microgranite at Ty'n Tywyn you'd struggle to get a block much bigger than a fridge out of it. Shap might be a better bet, right on a motorway too.

Were the lines on the Shoreditch boulder chipped? I got the impression it was just left as is.

jwi

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I’d be _well_ keen on someone dropping  a dozen or so big granite blocks in Regents/Hyde/Queens Park, Hampstead Heath, Wormwood Scrubs etc. It’s so dry down here you could climb outside nearly every day of the year.

Unfortunately - the logistics of this are really hard/expensive. Having worked with people who dump large rocks in rivers to stop their banks eroding (etc..) once you get above 1m by 1m by 1m it all starts getting really expensive. Such a rock will weigh 2-3 tonnes - which is do-able with regular flat bed artic and a JCB etc..

If you wanted a decent sized bouldering boulder. You're probably looking at something 3 by 3 by 3m - which is 27m3 (assuming 2.5 tonnes per m3) is 67 tonnes. Even if smaller you're looking at north of 40t. Not transportable via regular road networks - and would need a very special crane to get it into place. I guess you could slice it into bits - but wouldn't be a nice solution. If you look at actual stone blocks as sculptures/monuments/things outside buildings - they only ever go up to a certain size...

Hence - fibreglass/sprayed concrete options etc..

:(

I looked into the weights of a gneiss boulder when we wanted to tilt an erratic boulder standing on flat rock situated close to downtown where I used to live ten years ago. We had already done all the obvious problems on the steep side and thought if we jack it up so it is about ten degrees steeper and pour some concrete under the other side, they would become about one grade harder. Turns out that the hydraulic jacks needed to flip a boulder are really expensive to rent. So it came to nothing, alas.

That's interesting, I wonder what it is that makes them expensive? I know hydraulic presses in machine shops routinely go up to 100s of tons so presumably the components aren't super expensive. Maybe it's the form factor/logistics you need for usage out in the wild?

I don't know either, when I worked at the Rönnskär smelter we just went to the depot and requisitioned 20 or 50 ton jacks when needed. They are big and take forever to pump. Checked just now on alibaba and they are not even that expensive. I guess I shouldn't have delegated the acquisition.

Bonjoy

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I thought Trefor quarry closed in the sixties? And if it's anything like the microgranite at Ty'n Tywyn you'd struggle to get a block much bigger than a fridge out of it.

Google Earth shows boulders up to 5x6m on plan in the quarry and multiple short blocky tiered buttresses which appear worthy of a closer look.

Andy W

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I thought Trefor quarry closed in the sixties? And if it's anything like the microgranite at Ty'n Tywyn you'd struggle to get a block much bigger than a fridge out of it. Shap might be a better bet, right on a motorway too.

Were the lines on the Shoreditch boulder chipped? I got the impression it was just left as is.

I don't think Frankland was interested in chipping. Have they been chipped since installation? I suspect he never imagined they would become so popular.

petejh

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Of course I've checked out Trefor. I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise  8)

I have four new routes in there - two done, two projects. One a 40+ metre 7b+ thing. The rock is perfect fine-grained granite, beautiful to climb. The approaches to the base of the cliff are chossy. Some of the boulders are huge. The place is run on a very low-key basis by a few guys with a JCB and a pick-up, the templates for the curling stones are lying around and I think they still make them occasionally. It seems like the sort of scene where they'll come in, get a bit of rock with the JCB and make a granite tabletop. Very small scale.

I haven't publicised the routes because it's still a working quarry and they don't want people climbing there - one of them approached me last year while I was bolting and asked me to leave.

It'd be difficult - probably impossible? - to get a 60 ton piece through Trefor village.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2022, 03:27:06 pm by petejh »

Johnny Brown

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Good knowledge, I should explore one day. Some good pics on urbex websites...

Are the quarries on Gyrn ddu worth a look?

petejh

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The left-hand quarry (looking from the road) has been developed as a sport crag by some of the A55 pensioner crew, it's detailed in the A55 sport climbs guide. Mostly 6s and the odd 7. Rock is excellent. Pete did a good 7b there. Not a venue you'd go out of your way to visit but worthwhile and a lovely area to hang out. Right-hand quarry I'm unaware of anything but haven't looked.
https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/tyddyn_hywel_quarry-24747/#maps

sdm

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Onsite Climbing and Petraholds took some photos/videos of them carving a granite boulder they installed in Canada last year.

Their method is to cut them in to 2 or 3 pieces for easier transport, reassemble them on site, then carve and sand blast the holds.

No idea what the cost is.

I think Petraholds did a series of posts of him shaping the holds but I can't find them, they must have been on a story or taken down.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSxmoy4DQnE/?utm_medium=copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTAAy5-AMf5/?utm_medium=copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/By25AcojXZu/?utm_medium=copy_link

fatneck

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That micro-granite, when wave washed as at Porth Howel is amazing to climb on...

fatneck

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Also, have decided all we need is shrinking technology which could minimise us (and all our kit) to make 50cm high boulders 5m high boulders for a set amount of time. Limitless possibilities in your garden / yarden / park...

SA Chris

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389072/ (I didn't finish watching it)

Durbs

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Strictly speaking, you don't actually need the WHOLE boulder, just the faces... So if you could essentially skin it, you could then reconstruct it as a hollow shell attached to a metal frame, which would make it much lighter to transport and position.

In fact you could then do a babushka doll of the same problems for kids > normal adults > lanky bastards right next to each other.

Fultonius

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Found one going free:



Just need to pick it up from the Leschuax Glacier...  Plenty more where that came from too!

Percy B

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I have harboured an urge to build a load of nice boulders in some woods for a while now. I almost bought a decent sized bit of Peak District woodland off the national park about 6 years ago with this thought in mind, but got outbid....
A Slovenian friend of mine (the guy who owns Lapis climbing holds) has a limestone boulder in his front garden that he persuaded a local crane and haulage contractor to collect from a local crag and bring to his house. They spent a long time orientating the boulder to give the best problems. I always thought it was bullshit, or the boulder would be tiny, but then went round for a barbecue one evening and was surprised to see he hadn't be exaggerating at all. It was a pretty impressive lump of rock, and has some good problems on it too. Shame it's limestone....

SA Chris

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Imagine the uproar if someone nicked classic boulders in the dead of night and moved it to a private collection..

 

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