Leave no trace.

[RayRay27]

If you see rock cairns, knock it over.

Push these over, say rangers at Yosemite National Park

YOSEMITE, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – Have you ever passed by a rock cairn and felt the urge to knock it over? Well, officials with Yosemite National Park strongly advise that you do. Rock cairns ar…

www.yourcentralvalley.com

 

[DaveInDenver]

Cairns are a point of contention and some people get really sore about them. I don't like seeing them in places like National Parks on tourist trade route trails.

But you may NOT want to knock them over in the desert unless you have a good reason to and know it's fine.

For one you often actually need them for reference when there's sparse vegetation. Also, when they get knocked down in high traffic areas the trails start to braid and wander, paradoxically causing the amount of disturbed surface to increase.

 

[Cruisertrash]

Agreed on both of the above accounts - the pointless ones put there by wooks, knock 'em over. The ones that are necessary for navigation - leave 'em up.

When I was in the Flat Tops a few weeks ago we saw several cairns in some huge (1-2 mile wide) fields that looked very old. They were out several hundred yards from a trail and more or less in a straight line parallel to the trail. Built like 4-sided log cabins with flat stones on top, 3-4' tall. Some looked dug out under the base as if the whole thing was meant for lighting a fire under it so it would be a lantern. There's been sheepherding in that region going back to Spanish times - and there are still herds of sheep run up there with Peruvian shepherds. I wonder if they had something to do with that work. We left them though. Any idea what they were?

 

[nakman]

so the next time you hike the Joint Trial in the Needles, you gonna kick all those down? please don't.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Rock Cairns (U.S. National Park Service)

www.nps.gov

The NPS standing rule is that you're not supposed to knock over cairns like those on the Joint Trail unless local rules are different, such as apparently Yosmite. In some cases, the website mentions Acadia, the cairns have their own unique style (called the Bates cairn and it's illegal to vandalize them).

The cairns of Acadia: Objects of wonder, subjects of vandals

The iconic Bates-style cairns of Acadia National Park point the way for hikers, but they also attract vandals and tempt visitors to randomly stack rocks.

acadiaonmymind.com

 

[J1000]

It's easy to tell the legit ones from the hippy dippy ones. I'm all for it.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Agreed on both of the above accounts - the pointless ones put there by wooks, knock 'em over. The ones that are necessary for navigation - leave 'em up.

When I was in the Flat Tops a few weeks ago we saw several cairns in some huge (1-2 mile wide) fields that looked very old. They were out several hundred yards from a trail and more or less in a straight line parallel to the trail. Built like 4-sided log cabins with flat stones on top, 3-4' tall. Some looked dug out under the base as if the whole thing was meant for lighting a fire under it so it would be a lantern. There's been sheepherding in that region going back to Spanish times - and there are still herds of sheep run up there with Peruvian shepherds. I wonder if they had something to do with that work. We left them though. Any idea what they were?

Maybe they cleared them from the fields to minimize damage to blades? I've also read they would mark irrigation wells and springs or ditches or migration patterns for early hunters. Maybe they act like heat sinks to melt pockets in the snow for grazing herds?

 

[Hulk]

I've started seeing them everywhere, often in places where there is no need to have a cairn because there is no fork in the trail and no difficulty in discerning where the trail goes. I've scattered many of them now.

@nakman I don't love the cairn cathedral on the Joint trail but I'm not gonna be a dick and touch them. I think they are getting dismantled and rebuilt constantly there -- it's like a cairn playground.

 

[Cruisertrash]

Maybe they cleared them from the fields to minimize damage to blades? I've also read they would mark irrigation wells and springs or ditches or migration patterns for early hunters. Maybe they act like heat sinks to melt pockets in the snow for grazing herds?

I should have clarified - these were natural fields, no cultivated ones. Perhaps that's the work of sheep going back hundreds of years, but a lot of the area where were were was mostly treeless on the high plateaus. There were too many to be wells, every 1/4 mile or so. The snow melt idea for grazing is kind of an oddball idea that makes sense. Interesting.

Too bad I didn't get a great photo of them. They're near Heart Lake if you're ever up there, on the west side of the lake. That's south of the Flat Tops wilderness area, up Coffee Pot Road.

 

[Cruisertrash]

Maybe they cleared them from the fields to minimize damage to blades? I've also read they would mark irrigation wells and springs or ditches or migration patterns for early hunters. Maybe they act like heat sinks to melt pockets in the snow for grazing herds?

Amazing what a Google Search turns up:

"I’ve photographed cairns high in the Flat Tops Wilderness of northwestern Colorado near Deep Lake and Bison Lake. These are ancient cairns with lichen growing between the stones. They are Ute landscape markers positioned within sight of bison wallows made by a smaller mountain bison, which are now extinct but were once pursued by Ute hunters with bows and arrows centuries before the Spanish brought horses to the West."

The cairns we saw were 1/3 mile directly north of Bison Lake. They extended west to a Forest Service Trail and east to the edge of Heart Lake.

 

[J1000]

I saw some cool ones in Iceland built by the Vikings to mark land borders and mountain trails.

If you see them at a common lunch spot or along hiking trails in CO they are likely built by the same types that go off trail to get sweet Instagram shots and leave poop bags etc.

 

[DaveInDenver]

I saw some cool ones in Iceland built by the Vikings to mark land borders and mountain trails.

If you see them at a common lunch spot or along hiking trails in CO they are likely built by the same types that go off trail to get sweet Instagram shots and leave poop bags etc.

It's not always easy to tell. Although this is actually Utah it's true around here as well. From this point to a landing strip is about a mile through the brush and the end of the trail (an overlook of the Colorado and Green) is another mile or so distant from that. The whole plateau is a few miles wide.

Without a cairn periodically you could of course navigate with a map, compass or GPS but there'd be a dozen different paths people would walk.



What's interesting is that the route isn't always stacks of rocks. The uranium prospectors that put in the jeep trail originally (now hiking only) used other stuff it appears to cookie crumb their path. This used to be a two-track not that long ago.



There are places where the cryptobiotic soil is chewed up badly so it's easier to tell. Others would start to disappear quick. There are two sets of boot prints, my hiking partner and mine from the evening before and these on the way back. Not to mention if you relied just on disturbed soil you might start following a game track who couldn't care less if they meander or get from here to there.

 

[RayRay27]

Cairns are a point of contention and some people get really sore about them. I don't like seeing them in places like National Parks on tourist trade route trails.

But you may NOT want to knock them over in the desert unless you have a good reason to and know it's fine.

For one you often actually need them for reference when there's sparse vegetation. Also, when they get knocked down in high traffic areas the trails start to braid and wander, paradoxically causing the amount of disturbed surface to increase.

I should have probably added a little context to my original post. If the area you are in i.e. national park or forest says it's ok to knock them over, like in the article knock away.

 

[KC Masterpiece]

Cairns are tough. Should only be knocked down or put up by people who know what they are doing. I have taken down quite a few over the years primarily because they were directing people towards a hazardous route. There were 5 deaths on Capitol peak in 2017 and I believe all were due to two cairns that led climbers to suspect there was an alternate descent route.

If you do knock them down a roundhouse kick is the correct method.

 

[AlpineAccess]

Cairns are tough. Should only be knocked down or put up by people who know what they are doing. I have taken down quite a few over the years primarily because they were directing people towards a hazardous route. There were 5 deaths on Capitol peak in 2017 and I believe all were due to two cairns that led climbers to suspect there was an alternate descent route.

If you do knock them down a roundhouse kick is the correct method.

Roundhouse is a good call. I've used Sparta kick in the past on fire rings and will say channeling some more chuck Norris would have helped.

 

[On the RX]

We have a cairn in our neighborhood that could use a roundhouse kick every few days to keep her in line.

 

[RayRay27]

We have a cairn in our neighborhood that could use a roundhouse kick every few days to keep her in line.

 

[AlpineAccess]

We have a cairn in our neighborhood that could use a roundhouse kick every few days to keep her in line.

Cairns, the Colorado Karen. Love it

 

[mcgaskins]

View: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ct7ajM_A6g1/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

[RayRay27]

Should you push over these stacks of rocks? Here’s what NPS says​

MSN