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Kind of a silly topic, but I was thinking about the giant cairn at the top of the Phantom Creek trail on the way to FTD. If you know the one I'm talking about, is there a bigger one on any other trail in Montana?

there a big on in the winds on top of teepee pass

Wow! Where is that pic from?

It was fairly common for the USGS and geodetic surveys to build huge cairns on peaks for optical surveys, in the period before 1970.



Katahdin used to have a 13'-tall cairn, to bring the peak height from 5267' to a full mile (5280').

Biggest cairns I've ever seen are on Mt. Washington, NH - sorry I don't have a pic, but I'm sure somebody does.

Yeah, 8 foot cairns are not unheard of in NH and Maine

VincePoore wrote:Kind of a silly topic, but I was thinking about the giant cairn at the top of the Phantom Creek trail on the way to FTD. If you know the one I'm talking about, is there a bigger one on any other trail in Montana?

Do you mean this cairn?

peakhugger wrote:
Do you mean this cairn?

Yep. That's it.

There is a hole string of tall cairns on Mauna Loa Hawaii. On my first trip in the fog I thought they were people. This place is unreal in the fog ...nothing but black white and shades of grey in the caldera. They cairns are spaced about as far as you can see in a heavy fog / storm. The biggest ones were over 10 feet most were maybe five or six feet.

Vince,

Back to your original question re: big MT cairns, I've thought back to all of my treks and cannot place one larger than the FTD plateau cairn (it is probably 7.5-8 ft tall for those who haven't seen it). There's a decent cairn on top of a ridge between Red Mtn and Table Mtn (marked Point 10136 on USGS topos) in the Highland Mountains south of Butte. It's about 5.5-6 ft in height (and is on an unofficial climbers trail).



I wouldn't be surprised if there are "bigger" cairns elsewhere in MT (folks have certainly shown us large cairns from other states/countries).

Peakhugger,

Thanks for getting it back on topic. I started thinking about it because my older brother has recently become interested in hiking where previously his summers were pretty much dominated with golf outings. In the past year he started climbing Mt Helena about twice a week with some friends to keep in shape. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take him up there, and that giant cairn is really cool.

Here's me in 2007

It is truly one big cairn. I don't know of any cairns that large anywhere else in the Beartooths. I cannot speak for GNP, I don't get up there.

There are some 6ft cairns in the Wind River Range along the Ink Wells Trail.

6 foot high cairns along the divide north of Rogers / lewis and clark pass. I've always wondered if they were built by the Indians.

These photos would go nicely in the cairns album