Using loaders and an excavator to dig out a rocky hillside.

 Wow!  You have been making awesome progress!!  You moved a lot of rock!  I thought some of those were stuck there.  It shows experience, you worked around and under them and destabilized their foundation and them wiggled them out!  Millions of years have past since those stone saw daylight. Hydraulics and the determination of one person to create something that did not exist…. Is mind blowing. There is no higher learning than to create. Not university, not college, not even high school. Being a man whom see a vision and acts until its reality is why and explains the meaning of life. Cheers. Love your consistent progression.
 Although it's fun & satisfying to watch the Caterpillar loader pry the giant rocks out of the hillside, blasting would be more efficient (because it appears there is a lot of rock in the hillside he wants to remove), & without the wear & tear to the equipment. But It looks like so much fun to remove the rocks with the loader! Great job, as usual!
 About track pad grousers: The channel "The Jackson Brothers" has some videos on greatly speeding up welding new grousers on the track pads for their two D11s. They ended up using a clamp to hold seven welding rods at once and running around 350 amps if I recall right. In the videos they shared the evolution of their setup, what worked (and some attempts that did not quite work right) and a few tests to find the best current settings for a given number of sticks. The grousers on this girl look like they could generate more traction.
 If you plan to expand further down the way, you should totally look for one of those mining drills, even an old one. Here's the deal. Not only can you use it to weaken the rock face and thus expend less fuel digging it up, but you can also use it to drive stakes, and permanently set the face for good.