The ladder from the harbour-->pier (detailed_wooden_ladder)is the type of ladder that I want but the rungs at the bottom of the ladder are missing even though you can still climb them.

Is there a way to get a fully functional ladder to look like the pier style as it is exactly the type I need, one with flat bar style rungs.
I will be using it in an old abandoned mine environment, so it needs to look old and decayed. The shiny metal ones look too new. Any suggestions would be great, thanks in advance.

Yep, at least 3 of them:
1. create new texture for vanila Crysis ladders
2. Add brush-planks from Crysis libraries manually (look at the prefabs library - planks windows supports from village houses or brushes library - planks woodlog supports). And add them manually to the missing rungs places. (lol one)
3. create new ladder in 3d max, using my tut here:
viewtopic.php?f=284&t=68095&p=790902#p790902

And do not forget to use search function. Its very powerful!

Thanks for all the options here. The second option is really good as I have found some nice wooden planks to fill the invisible spaces, though the planks look far nicer than the original rungs .So I wondered is it possible to create your own ladder out of some scaled planks and poles and give it the climb function? Thanks

Heh, looking cool. About the whole ladder: i think you may create it in sandbox even without 3 d max using my second option in theory. U need some huge brick, maybe solid with invisible ladder proxy material, as i've mentioned (create material yourself). And surely u need a lot of planks. The main idea here - is that ladder proxy provides climbing animation playing, while the rest of the construction is just a sweet garbage. But honestly ive never done a ladder this way cause...i have only 2 but not 3 weekends.

Thanks for the brilliant advice, I have done it with the solid and also by using a ladder of similar height and giving it the no_draw shader. Then i just scaled down the pier/end poles model and added the wooden rungs made of planks, to the corresponding point of the climbing animation, resulting in an old looking wooden ladder, perfect for my mine map.