Cairns - Yes or No

[Wandering Sagebrush]

The NPS has conflicting policies.

 

[PaulT]

Don't be a cairn Karen. Simple rules.

On public land,
1. If one is there, leave it.
2. Don't build a cairn.

YOMV

Paul

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Don't be a cairn Karen. Simple rules.

On public land,
1. If one is there, leave it.
2. Don't build a cairn.

YOMV

Paul

 

[Lighthawk]

I generally knock them down. It's become rampant to build countless rock piles and diminishes the natural environment, sometimes placed every fifty feet. Critters live under those rocks.

On the other hand, there have been glacier crossings, untrammeled mountain descents and desert rambles where the odd cairn has been a welcome sign in my experience. No new markers have been needed for decades. Less is more.

 

[teledork]

I walk along the West Walker River with my dog. I pick up trash, fish sometimes, sometimes bring my watercolor paints. And I build little cairns - rocks the size of a fist or smaller. I've always loved the game of Blockhead. So shoot me.

But really - the climate is going to kill everything and people have hissy fits over a temporary pile of rocks? Yeah - having spent many years looking under rocks for insects to fish with I know they live beneath rocks. I guess collecting your own bait is going to be a criminal act now, eh? Better go buy me some Power Bait like everyone else does. The sparkly kind. That smears on the rocks, Florescent colors too! It lasts for nearly ever!

I think what flavors the whole rock cairn = bad thing for me is that the initial argument is almost always something along the lines of it "ruining their experience" or "the scenery" with the concern for the environment second. Here is a quote from an opinion piece in High Country News:

"A stack of rocks left by someone who preceded us on the trail does nothing more than remind us that other people were there before us."

I am pretty sure that anywhere you might go someone has been there before you. I mean - trail, anyone? Knock down the cairn if your delusion is that important to your "experience" (hey - maybe pick up some trash and clean up some fire rings too! - and carry out your #@$%^%& toilet paper) ) but then try real hard to get over it. When I read an article (and the comments) insisting that rock stacking be made a chargeable offense I know the human race has entirely lost the plot.

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

I walk along the West Walker River with my dog. I pick up trash, fish sometimes, sometimes bring my watercolor paints. And I build little cairns - rocks the size of a fist or smaller. I've always loved the game of Blockhead. So shoot me.

But really - the climate is going to kill everything and people have hissy fits over a temporary pile of rocks? Yeah - having spent many years looking under rocks for insects to fish with I know they live beneath rocks. I guess collecting your own bait is going to be a criminal act now, eh? Better go buy me some Power Bait like everyone else does. The sparkly kind. That smears on the rocks, Florescent colors too! It lasts for nearly ever!

I think what flavors the whole rock cairn = bad thing for me is that the initial argument is almost always something along the lines of it "ruining their experience" or "the scenery" with the concern for the environment second. Here is a quote from an opinion piece in High Country News:

"A stack of rocks left by someone who preceded us on the trail does nothing more than remind us that other people were there before us."

I am pretty sure that anywhere you might go someone has been there before you. I mean - trail, anyone? Knock down the cairn if your delusion is that important to your "experience" (hey - maybe pick up some trash and clean up some fire rings too! - and carry out your #@$%^%& toilet paper) ) but then try real hard to get over it. When I read an article (and the comments) insisting that rock stacking be made a chargeable offense I know the human race has entirely lost the plot.

Thanks. Maybe a "stack" of rocks is the same to our time as the rock art was to the original peoples.

 

[craig333]

Its usually pretty easy to tell which are marking a trail and which are someone's "art" project. I must be going to the wrong areas. I don't run into them often.

 

[teledork]

Its usually pretty easy to tell which are marking a trail and which are someone's "art" project. I must be going to the wrong areas. I don't run into them often.

The trail to Anna Lake, Hoover Wilderness - the sign goes missing from time to time. Last year someone had also kicked apart the cairn at the junction and many of the "ducks" making the route. The trail barely exists and it is rather difficult terrain so whoever is doing this is a jerk.

I spend a lot of time in wilderness and rarely run into "art projects" at all (and never beyond the first hour of hiking) but I am eternally grateful fo the "ducks" that mark some of the trails. So I just don't get it. People are complaining about a stack of rocks "ruining the experience" and I'm thinking - but your car is right there parked on the side of the highway. (edit to clarify - if you want to be somewhere no one else has ever been you need to get at least a wee bit further from your automobile)

This is one I found along the W Walker. I was impressed. It was gone within a week.

 

[buckland]

I saw that Yosemite park is asking folks that if they see a stack of rocks to knock them over.