MoapaPk wrote:People tended to stuff all sorts of smelly stuff inside

Sorry to go off topic, which I know never happens here, but why the hell would anyone put anything inside a register other than a signature?

I don't mind summit registers, or cairns for that matter. I can think of a few times where cairns really bailed me out of potentially sketchy situations. That being said, should I have had a map, I wouldn't have needed them. But, shit happens, weather blows in, and your average day hike can become an epic. Registers are fine IMO as well. They are usually small enough to be hidden under a few rocks, and the visual impact of a tube is minimal. Registers occasionally help in SAR operations as well, allowing rescuers to see if someone had made the summit or not. Of course, if they don't sign it, they are SOL.

Catamount wrote:Getting pissed at a register or actually taking the time to disassemble a cairn seems to be the act of someone who needs to get a grip.

+1000

Muddeer wrote:

MoapaPk wrote:I've known people who bristle at the thought of any tiny sign of humanity on the tops of mountains; but they will happily avail themselves of all the man-made way stations, roads, trails, and mule paths for the summit bid.

Stations, roads, trails, and mule paths have practical uses. If you don't want to use them, you don't have to. And one can always take another route up. Seeing trash on a summit can't be avoided if you want to summit.

I don't think many of us go to summits for "practical" reasons. In the remote areas around here, I read seldom-visited registers with fondness; they are like communications with friends, some too old to travel now, some long dead. Maybe there is some dog-peeing associated with placing registers; but I know the people who placed many, and I'd say they were more interested in saying "hello" and leaving behind time capsules.

For example, what is the practical use of climbing a mountain like Aconcagua, at all? It seems like a huge amount of energy and materials is expended, and CO2 produced, to get to a distant summit... when there is probably something less prestigious, but more impressive, in your backyard. Not that I object to people going to Aconcagua; but I would prefer if people were more consistent about their sentiments. A substantial infrastructure has been built to get people to Aconcagua; the best "practical" use I can see is that the local economy has been greatly helped by tourist dollars. But the benefit of giving climbers joy and a sense of accomplishment, perhaps a life-changing experience, is real, if not "practical".

I find far more real trash on mountains in the form of old survey towers and mylar balloons. I know a guy who practically flies into a rage every time he sees remnants of a survey tower from the 1950s... and every other peak out here has such a tower. I just look on with puzzlement.

Bob Sihler wrote:

MoapaPk wrote:People tended to stuff all sorts of smelly stuff inside

Sorry to go off topic, which I know never happens here, but why the hell would anyone put anything inside a register other than a signature?

Beats me. I think some people feel they are doing a "favor" to those who follow, while they really just want to jettison extra weight. I've found granola bars, bags of granola, toys, tubes of scented sunscreen, money, cigarettes... and most recently, two grape-scented cigarillos. Oh yes, I found three Tecates in the register on Griffith Peak, and another brand of (bottled) beer on Bunker Hill, NV. Of all these, I think the beer was the most practical, except with 15 miles ahead of me, I didn't drink any.

I do a lot of hiking in the Nevada and Utah areas and love to find registers left by B & G, or John V. I found one this past saturday and it had two signatures in the past 5 years. Few people go to these summits and so you have all the isolation you really need if you are chasing the obscure and remote peaks but if you don't want to find a register on a peak, don't look for it. I for one enjoy and appreciate them. I've been known to place a few registers myself. I also enjoy finding USGS benchmarks.

Dean wrote:I do a lot of hiking in the Nevada and Utah areas and love to find registers left by B & G, or John V. I found one this past saturday and it had two signatures in the past 5 years. Few people go to these summits and so you have all the isolation you really need if you are chasing the obscure and remote peaks but if you don't want to find a register on a peak, don't look for it. I for one enjoy and appreciate them. I've been known to place a few registers myself. I also enjoy finding USGS benchmarks.

Dean, I've actually found a few summits that Vitz never made! There is a particularly charming mountain N of Hayford, reachable by modest clearance car from the west... and a brutal cross-country hike through beautiful country, with 5000' elevation gain. I would like to name it "Mount Vitz", because I know he attempted it years ago. I didn't leave a register, but I did pee on the summit.
http://hwstock.org/quij/ <= here is "Mount Vitz".

I've been proud to sign the registers on hard to climb summits where only a few have been. It was a thrill to open the old can on top of El Corprale in The Gorge of Despair and see only a few names, all legends, from many years ago. I was pleased to find the register on Castle Rock Spire as well. But when a register gathers hundreds or thousands of names it seems kind of silly.

Cairns for the most part annoy me. Either the trail is obvious, in which case they serve no purpose, or it is not in which case I prefer navigating on my own over being misled by cairns.

On the other hand I have built cairns to mark out a new trail to a new cragging spot, so we'll all take the same route each visit and it will become a use trail, but that's usually more about establishing an approach to a crag than travelling in the mountains.

cp0915 wrote:

MoapaPk wrote:That summit, along with Kraft mountain, has been tagged by spray painters.

Charming.

How 'bout all those irresponsible gun nuts who leave their broken bottles (targets) scattered all around the base of the peaks around Frenchman Mountain? Getting to some of those peaks is like walking through a minefield. Who needs cairns when you have glass shards to lead you back to your car at the end of a long day.

I love living in a hellhole.

I want to make a joke about the bodies found near Frenchman and Lone Mountain, but even I demur. I was just reading that Norman Clyde was very skilled in finding lost hikers by tracking the buzzing of flies.

This is an opportunity to share the following:

In Iceland, cairns are called "prestur" (priests), "because they point the way to others but they don't go there themselves."

MoapaPk wrote:I don't think many of us go to summits for "practical" reasons. In the remote areas around here, I read seldom-visited registers with fondness; they are like communications with friends, some too old to travel now, some long dead. Maybe there is some dog-peeing associated with placing registers; but I know the people who placed many, and I'd say they were more interested in saying "hello" and leaving behind time capsules.

By practical, I mean of use to people who wants to enjoy the mountains. And again, you don't have to use them if you don't want to. But leaving stuff on summits, which may or may not have any meaning at all to others coming after you, is being selfish, taking away something from their experience.

My complaint is less about small, not-too-intrusive summit registers, and more directed toward crosses, flags, and mementos that idiots leave behind, as if rest of us has to share their glorious (personal) triumph. I repeat: "If they mean something to you, fine, take them up to the summit and pray/remember/honor whatever. BUt they don't mean shit to other people who will be there after you: THEY ARE FUCKIN" TRASH! So bring it back down with you and leave the mountain as you found it."

Muddeer wrote: leave the mountain as you found it."

That really doesn't happen. Each ascent we make leaves a subtle trail, that gradually builds with repetition. It starts far away, when a person drives a relatively gas-guzzling 4x4 to a trailhead, or alters the habits of the animals that either avoid, or seek humans on the route. If you take horses or mules on the approach, they leave even more non-native remnants.

I do agree somewhat; for example, I'm somewhat depressed when I find cell phone repeater towers on remote peaks that are reached by a brutal scramble ... or by a helicopter. I think of the cell phone repeaters as religious shrines to iPhones and teenage text-messaging.

I enjoy summit registers -- both finding them and signing them. They're just fun, like easter eggs, or the toy in a box of cereal. Sometimes I take a notebook & pencil with me in case an existing register needs a new one, but I have yet to place one.

I remember getting up top of Rainier and not being able to find the damn register .. oh well Several times on Shasta the register has been thoroughly buried. There are lots of cool peaks to scramble & climb that don't have registers, no big deal.

Some other possible summit antics -

Candlelight Peak (Whitney region)


Laurel Mountain (near Mammoth)


Crystal Crag (no register)


Gonna have to look for little plastic llamas I can put in those big metal Sierra Club register boxes

MoapaPk wrote:

Muddeer wrote: leave the mountain as you found it."

That really doesn't happen. Each ascent we make leaves a subtle trail, that gradually builds with repetition. It starts far away, when a person drives a relatively gas-guzzling 4x4 to a trailhead, or alters the habits of the animals that either avoid, or seek humans on the route. If you take horses or mules on the approach, they leave even more non-native remnants.

Ok, MoapaPK. Your superior intellect and knowledge, already well established here on SP, convinced me that, as usual, you are right. I am trashing the mountains, so I shouldn't be upset that others are too.

Btw, have you found any more articles on the growing ice mass of Greenland? Or may be you have published your own paper, describing the areal averaging proving that.

I used to be a die hard cairn knocker. I've mellowed a bit, especially if the cairns are used to mark use trails where the impacts of travel are meant to be funneled into one spot. But in the middle of nowhere on cross country routes--zap! One of the points and joys of cross country hiking is to figure out your own route, which is completely contrary to the creation of cairns. If you made it through several miles of cross country travel, you don't need no stinking cairns to tell you which way to go.

Registers on the other hand are a joy.