Getting material out of a big pile

I may have the opportunity to work around a 60+ft pile how does one go about getting material out without making and undercut? Or letting the upper reaches of the pile get you. This would be wood waste or compost but I'm sure the same idea applies to all material. Thanks for the help!

we have a 150ft telescopic radial stacker at work that will produce a fairly lare pile. material density and pile seggragation, along with moisture content play a large factor in how you should load out a stockpile. is this a conical stockpile or a ramppile built by loaders or dozers? if its a conical stockpile you want to load the whole pile. when i say whole pile i mean dont just dig out of the middle leaving wings on the outside and inside of the pile. if you look a stacker when it is running corse or heavy material goes farther than fine material, causing pile seggragation. if undermining the pile is an issue drag the pile before it becomes dangerous. hope this helps.

What do you mean by "drag"?

drive your loader up the face of the pile, lower your bucket into the pile then back down the pile draging material down the face.

How do you even get up a conical pile to drag if it is 60ft tall?

your rear wheels will still be on the ground. the point is to drag the face before undermining becomes a problem.

What happens when it does get undermined? The material that we will be working with will be wet and it will want to undermine. Prevention is great but I'm pretty sure that undermining will happen no matter how it is handled.

I recently had a big pile of mulch to load out that had sat all winter long and was hard as a rock. It was about 40' high. I simply dug in until the face was getting near vertical then went around and pushed the corners off where I had cut in. Just kept working like that all day with some back dragging as described above.

I saw a mate up the road with his loader and he volunteered to come down and knock some of the pile over for me.....he nearly put himself through the windscreen when he first hit the pile......well...I told him it was packed hard:beatsme

If you keep the wings pushed in and drag the face it should break up before any serious undermining. I loaded out of a 40 foot pile of 4 inch today which was partly froze and was piled with a loader so the ramps were packed and didn't have any problem, I was using a Volvo 180 so that helped. Also gravity always works eventually !

I know this thread has been dead for awhile but I'm going to be facing the same situation next week where i'll have a cat 924g or 906 wheel loader and will have a large pile of compost/top soil mis that is easily 40ft if not higher...with reading the above replies can you refer to my drawing and see if I understood it correctly...We did cover this issue when I took operating school back in 04. I'm finally starting to work my way into an operating career!
Thanks everyone for the help

when you push the corners in it will have the part undermined fall down, atleast a good majority of it...