People Are Stacking Too Many Stones

[mrchad9]

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbi ... any-stones

Sounds like the NPS has completely and totally run out of people to needlessly harass...

[T. White]

I disagree. It's a worldwide plague, and I've personally witnessed several natural areas that've been fouled by this mindless vandalism: Dome Rock in the Southern Sierra and Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas, to name a couple.

[Bob Sihler]

Red Rocks is the worst I've seen. And many of the cairns there actually lead one into dangerous terrain.

I'm not saying making needless cairns should be a crime, but I've knocked down many a pile, including on wilderness routes in the Winds where they had no business, and I encourage others to do the same.

Good cairn vs. bad is subjective, of course, and I'd argue that only those marking key spots where a wrong turn could turn into a SAR fiasco belong, but if I had to pick one side, I'd say knock 'em all down.

And some summit cairns are so huge that you can see them from afar and maybe the USGS needs to change the elevations on maps.

[Puma concolor]

Interesting bit on Acadia National Park in Maine ...

#StoneStacking is showing no signs of slowing down. In Acadia National Park, volunteers destroyed nearly thirty-five hundred rock stacks, on two mountains alone, in 2016 and 2017. “I would probably equate the rock-stacking phenomenon with the painted-rock phenomenon, in how it’s driven by social media,” Christie Anastasia, the public-affairs specialist at Acadia, said. Painted rocks are a kind of social-media treasure hunt; people leave brightly decorated rocks in parks, with their social-media handles noted on the undersides. The person who finds the rock can then send a message to the person who left it. Acadia park employees have collected hundreds of them during the past year. The painted rocks now sit in a purgatory of bins, while the park staff figures out what to do with them. “We’re still cogitating on it,” Anastasia said. “We thought about throwing them into the ocean, but there might be chemicals in the paint. We’ve thought about throwing them in the fire. We’re still deciding. But they really have no place in a national park.”

Have never veered off into that area of Maine, which is overrun by tourists and I would say is extremely non-representative of the cairn strategy that is employed in the Northeast mountains. From the Adirondacks (NY) to the Whites (NH) to the more wilderness-type areas of Maine, you generally only see cairns being used for two reasons:

1 - Above treeline navigation on the more popular routes where fog or snow conditions can lead to disorientation in fairly quick order. These cairns (typically completely unpainted but often used in combination with single blue, yellow or white stripes on exposed rock) tend to be big enough to see from a distance or in limited visibility conditions but are not obnoxious.

2 - To mark the breaking off part of a herd path or bushwack route from the main marked trail and at critical points along the standard off-trail route. Generally speaking, very small, unpainted and very unobtrusive.

Not gonna say fake news, but I think the Acadia example paints a poor picture of what is going on in the Northeast mountains as a whole, where cairn usage has been pretty standard and unchanged over the last 25 years since I got my start.

[Bob Sihler]

I erroneously assumed we were talking about cairns in general. Now that I have read the article, I believe even more so that what is going on is vandalism.

The people who do this are losers; those who follow them on social media are even worse.

And shit like this gives land managers excuses to further restrict access for everyone. These people suck.

[Jow]

https://www.backpacker.com/stories/down-with-cairns

[mrchad9]

I've seen the fields of cairns in Aruba... and some other places like in Koh Samet... but what is in Aruba goes on for 1000s of meters... its crazy.

Not really a fan of cairns myself actually. I knock them down all the time actually. They are all over Sawtooth Mountain in Sequoia and completely misleading and useless. But when you see something like what they've done in Aruba it is at least as interesting as what would otherwise be a completely unnoteworthy beach.

Not saying those that do it are not losers... but who cares?!?!? To call it vandalism, a plague on the environment, or something the NPS needs to address is over the top and ridiculous.

[Scott]

Not saying those that do it are not losers... but who cares?!?!? To call it vandalism, a plague on the environment, or something the NPS needs to address is over the top and ridiculous.

Some of these places are collecting literally thousands of cairns:

[hightinerary]

Looks like a plague to me...

[hightinerary]

Yes, definitely a plague.

[mrchad9]

Not saying those that do it are not losers... but who cares?!?!? To call it vandalism, a plague on the environment, or something the NPS needs to address is over the top and ridiculous.

Some of these places are collecting literally thousands of cairns:

Yip.... still not hearing the enormous negative consequences tho.

[Marmaduke]

Sorry, this funny to ridiculous.... belongs on that "off route" or whatever they call it these days.

[lcarreau]

Sorry, this funny to ridiculous.... belongs on that "off route" or whatever they call it these days.

They call it: What the fook is going on with all the fookin' stones atop one another -- like they're breeding or something.

[freakyclimber]

Sorry, this funny to ridiculous.... belongs on that "off route" or whatever they call it these days.

In that case, I have a riddle:

How many conservative disinfo shills does it take to build a needless cairn?

[Marmaduke]

Sorry, this funny to ridiculous.... belongs on that "off route" or whatever they call it these days.

In that case, I have a riddle:

How many conservative disinfo shills does it take to build a needless cairn?

The same amount of CNN watching liberal Kool-Aid drinking shills.