We’ve covered a lot of divisive issues, but none seems to generate more heat than the subject of rock cairns. The last time we looked at the subject, the focus was primarily on whether cairns were necessary for navigation and their impact on the sense of wilderness and solitude that so many of us seek. Since then, however, social media has amplified the practice and now, in practically every part of the world (but especially national parks), it’s exploding.
This isn’t just an aesthetic problem. In a Facebook post in late 2018, the folks at Zion National Park in Utah pointed to more tangible damages:
They may in some cases have a useful purpose such as defining a critical route over hard ground where there is no visible path or perhaps marking an otherwise obscure trail junction. In Zion National Park trails are well used and the route is almost always obvious. Trail intersections are signed with directional arrows and mileage so cairns are not needed. Most often, visitor-built cairns appear with no intent to direct hikers, but seemingly erected as a personal mark left behind, perhaps just as a way to say “I was here.”
Leaving your mark, whether carving your initials in a tree trunk, scratching a name on a rock, or stacking up stones is simply vandalism. Visitors who build cairns probably don’t look at building cairns as vandalism since rocks can be unstacked easily, but moving rocks around still can lead to resource damage by exposing soil to wind and water erosion. Moving rocks also disturbs the many critters that make their home in the protected underside of a rock. Leaving behind stacks of rocks also can lead hikers astray, possibly into dangerous terrain. Most importantly, most visitors enter the back country to get away from signs of civilization and do not want to see mementos left by others, whether stacked rocks, trash, or graffiti. So please, enjoy the park but leave rocks and all natural objects in place.
I have had a somewhat mixed relationship with cairns. They have been tremendously helpful over the years. In the fog on New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington, I went from cairn to cairn to the summit; without GPS it was really the only way not to get lost. But in many places, they are pointless. In the bottom of a canyon in Utah? Along a well-worn trail in Joshua Tree National Park? In places where they serve no purpose but to act as handrails, I’ve been enthusiastic about scattering the rocks (while also feeling slightly superstitious about karma). And that was before I started considering the impacts Zion outlined above and the amplification of social media.
So, what’s to be done about it? Building cairns violates Leave No Trace principles. Over two years, volunteers at Acadia National Park took down more than 3,500 cairns on just two mountains. The parks don’t want them and lots of other people don’t want them. But the question today is how do you, AJ readers, deal with them?
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Photo by Thomas Diis
Seems as though the rules/need of Cairns have been lost within one generation. Cairns have saved our bacon on barren slickrock trails when trying to find our way. Their need is warranted as a method of low-impact wayfinding, not a “I was here” marker.
Couldn’t agree more.
I agree, they can save a life. I’m a firm believer in LNT but not at the cost of a life.
Cairns are markers left by travelers or sometimes markers for a mining boundary.
Most of theses are history and often can be traced to persons or places. I say leave them. There is to much destruction of our history these days.
As someone who has hiked extensively in the Canadian Shield, I absolutely agree that they have limited use as way-finding aids on sheer rock. That is the only purpose for them.
“I was here” piles actively annoy me, because I like the illusion of solitude and actively seek time away from people.
Cairns: generally I find them intrusive to the natural landscape. They loose meaning and significance when placed randomly by back country visitors. I leave them alone as I do not know how to ‘naturalize’ them.
In Scotland Cairns are used to mark paths, such as along the Fife Coastal path, but others are built as a sign of having summited a mountain in the “Cairngorms” it’s a traditional thing to do. I don’t do it but there is a lot of shale that doesn’t get disturbed if the rock is moved.
if it’s a cairn marking a trail on large expanses of granite then by all means leave it. if it’s a bunch of rocks people are balancing at an overlook, or scenic area etc. then kick them over. leave no trace.
Agree. Keep cairns as navigational aids, the rest have got to go.
In Acadia I remember the park’s method of Cairns shown by the main visitors center. I could see why the park would be against “I was here” Cairns being built by those unable to leave no trace. Carry a camera take your pictures post them online to show you were there leave the trail as it was before you were there.
First time I saw a rock cairn was about a week after I had seen “The Blair Witch Project” in theaters. The movie shook me to my core. Then, my girlfriend at the time and I went camping up in Plumas National Forest. We were not terribly far from a little town called Blairsden, which already spooked me, on a long day hike when I spotted my first cairn. I freaked out until my girlfriend explained what it was to me.
Knock them down… unless they’re for marking a trail over a boulder field or other rocky expanse. Also, scold anyone you see making them, just like switchback skippers.
The problem with knocking down the cairns that are not being used for trail markers is knowing which ones are legitimate trail markers. Sometimes it is difficult to tell. And the ‘I was here’ crowd probably sees the legitimate markers and thinks that cairns are therefore permissible.
I think many people can think of a time a cairn helped in the backcountry, even with maps and GPS. But in some situations and for inexperienced hikers, it’s not always easy to tell the difference between a helpful, intentional cairn vs an Instacairn. If you know something is an Instacairn, knock it down. If we can’t count on cairns as meaningful route indicators, they are dangerous and people will get lost.
The number of times I’ve been helped out by a trail cairn is easily balanced out by the alternative cairns that have led me astray. Knock ’em down. There’s enough signs of us humans in the wilderness.
When needed for navigation, as when we were on slickrock in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (pre-downsizing), they are useful and should be left alone. They shouldn’t be built otherwise.
You put it pretty accurately above- At times cairns serve a vital purpose. I try to be discerning, and dismantle those that obviously serve no purpose. The more pointless ones exist, the more people will think it’s okay.
I’ve hiked in the foggy conditions of the White Mountains and the cairns proved necessary, if not essential. I’ve hiked in the desert of the American West, where cairns again were necessary on bare rock that showed no signs of a “trail” … But I’ve also seen them “for no purpose” in Zion, Arches, Joshua tree and the Appalachia region, where a trail couldn’t be more obvious. I scatter them, toss em, put em back in the water, whatever to just get rid of them if it’s obvious they serve no directional purpose. Also, super frustrating when you’re in an area that RELIES on cairns and the decorative ones lead you astray.
1,000% agree. The pointless ones are a distraction and sometimes danger at a place where there are multiple cairns; say a water crossing.
In the White Mts in NH, in the fog or a whiteout, they save your butt. Otherwise, they can be a danger.
If they are an obvious trail marker, I leave them be, otherwise I knock them down and spread the stones back out. I really dont like to see them in the river, what purpose are those ?
Sometimes a cairn is an NGS survey monument. As a land surveyor I have stumbled across people scattering a rock pile only to show them the map and explaining to them what they were destroying. On the flip side as a hiker and outdoorsman I am a firm believer in leave no trace. Additional cairns built because some thought it would be cool is a violation of this principle. It can also create confusion in mapping when as a surveyor I come across multiple rock piles and only one of them is the section corner.
I can’t help but draw similarities between this debate and chopping bolts on sport rock routes. Our mere presence in the wild changes the wilderness regardless if we leave a mark behind.
I leave them. Ultimately because I don’t necessarily know the purpose of the particular one(s) I run into. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t marking a trail though.
Generally do my best to knock them down I can’t say I haven’t been far off trail or on a scrambling route and been glad to see a cairn confirming the way. Can go a long way mentally.
The only cairns that I leave are in deep backcountry or totally unmarked trail as a means of pathfinding.
As a guide as well so many of these cairns are narcissistic or just plain pointless. Many of them have led people astray and into far more dangerous paths. This isn’t even taking into consideration environmental impact.
If I knock them down aren’t I violating the Leave No Trace principles? (How’s that for stirring the pot?)
They don’t really bother me, but I’d have no objection the park officials having them removed.
it’s a disease/invasive detritus … scatter them all far and wide. take them all down. all of them. take no pictures either. be present and get lost, get cold, go the wrong way, miss your ride. “live or die but don’t poison everything ….” s.b. in herzog.
Piles of stacked rocks on a large flat rock out in Tenaya Lake definitely wasn’t marking a trail so I waded out there and scattered the rocks. I leave them if they are spaced out marking a hiking trail across smooth granite slabs where it would not be obvious where the trail goes.
On a popular nearby unmarked backcountry route to a favorite local swimming hole the trail is easy to follow but nonetheless gets many cairns built of all shapes and sizes. Every so long a ‘do-gooder’ knocks them all down which actually leads to the families and groups walking all over the place, creating new trails, walking through the cryptobiotic soil and building even more sucker cairns. So this is a place we rebuild cairns, rake over the false trails and make it supremely obvious where to go to keep the crowds on one marked route obvious as it may be.
Nearby on a multi day backcountry route that appears in many guidebook and maps the route is not always obvious as it crosses long expanses of slick rock or winds it’s way out of a deep canyon bottom. Pretty easy to follow if ones pays attention but many people these days are just flowing their gps app. This routes tends to get wickedly over cairned. As you crest a rise you may see 5, 7, or 10 cairns making the way. So unnecessary. On this route I will knock down almost all, just leaving enough so one must pay attention. Keep walking in the general direction and you will find scratches on the rock and the next cairn. Have a little sense of adventure fercryinoutloud. Then in the wild nature, the true backcountry where to find a cairn making a way up or down a cliff band is a relief to know you’ve found the way, thereby saving possible hours of searching. These are useful and are often just 2 rocks, just enough to know there is a route. Navigation using one’s senses is so satisfying, paying attention to a heightened awareness. Backcounty travel where a cairn is unusual, where it’s crucial.
I was recently seeking a backcountry archaeological treasure located at the top of an island mesa. It actually took me four trips over a few years to figure it out. The approach to the base of the 800-foot cliff, which is long and not obvious, was not cairned. And people were savvy enough not to create a use trail, but rather to spread out. Once you figured out the single way to get on the top of the first ledge, it was cairned the rest of the way. I don’t know how many ledges there were—more than a dozen—but it would have taken all day figuring out the access to each one.
I understand why someone might argue there should be no cairns at all there, but to me it seemed an elegant option. If you’re dedicated enough to a) learn about it and b) figure out where it is roughly and c) unlock the tricky approach, you’ve c) earned a bit of help from your fellow seekers.
It should be noted, though, that on the spectrum of treasures, it was pretty light. No artifacts, no ruin, nothing to steal. If there had been artifacts, I would have spent the day removing cairns.
Destroy them all.
I was on Isle Royale National Park talking to a ranger who said that the rangers would put cairns to mark the tricky parts of some of the trails. In another conversation, with another ranger on the Island, I was told that rangers were obligated to tear them all down due to LNT principles. This story doesn’t really have much of a point, other than not everyone agrees on these things.
My personal opinion is that I don’t want to hike with a person dedicated to knocking down every cairn, or someone who feels the need to build them all over the place. Moderation is key.
I always liked the Finnish way of leaving a small stone in a summit cairn by way of saying you made it. Otherwise forget it
Been gleefully obliterating them for more than 40 years. Rock tossing is a very good workout for the upper body, especially if augmented by removing technical features erected by mountain bikers.
Agreed with the above comments endorsing moderation — if a cairn is clearly marking a trail and there’s not another indication where the trail would lead otherwise (ie some of our 14ers here here in CO), of course I leave it alone.
However, if it’s not near a trail, or is a duplicate, or otherwise serves no useful purpose then it’s open season in my book.
My friends and I have had cairns save our butts in fog while traversing the Whites of NH. Such markers are a huge benefit in bad wx. However, on nice days uninformed hikers might assume they are useless and knock them down as aesthetically displeasing. I generally leave them when I find them.
As an aside, I have also seen paint slashes on boulders and slick rock used to mark the trail. They were certainly necessary for those spots but would most hikers consider them preferable to a rock cairn?
Cairn-haters know nothing about backcountry navigation when the trail isn’t obvious. Cairns have their place in overgrown meadows, scree and boulder fields, on each bank of a sketchy stream crossing, etc. Leave ’em be for visitor safety and to lessen environmental impact of trail braiding.
I agree with most of the comments. Using cairns for for information/directional purposes and with moderation. Having just returned from hiking in Greenland, the placement of cairns, in an ever changing terrain, was extremely helpful. There were just enough. I haven’t hiked anywhere that has had so many cairns as to be an eyesore, so I wonder if I would feel differently if so. Toilet paper, trash, cutting trails-those are my bones to pick. Plus, I am probably too tired to knock down excess cairns. For those, who answer with ” knock down all of them”, may I ask why. Esp in those areas where because of weather and terrain, are necessary. And that would be for an experienced, prepared hiker. As always AJ, great topic.
I build rock cairns to top my cat hole, y por eso mucho cuidado compadres! bring gloves if you gonna mess with my cat hole cairn!
The concentration of human impact on backcountry trails is generally a good thing (with exceptions of course) and in their ideal form cairns work to that end. Rock stacking needs to be thought of in an entirely different light and treated as a violation of LNT.
It’s interesting to think about cairns along the lines of how climbers handle route development ethics. Though it is a topic not without it’s own controversies, generally the rule of thumb is to develop any new routes in an area according to the ethic of the area’s original developers. Some crags were developed in traditional style from the ground up – new bolted routes aren’t kosher. Other areas were developed through rap bolting at their founding – bolt away.
The takeaway – trails that have traditionally had cairns to mark difficult areas to navigate should see those cairns left to stand. Other trails that did not feature cairns from the beginning should see any cairns built dispersed.
The LNT Center already has a policy on what they call “authorized cairns”. They need to work with the major trail apps (All Trails, Gaia, etc.) and trail organizations, like the Washington Trail Association, to digitally mark or note which trails have traditionally had cairns to leave those be and which trails haven’t and shouldn’t.
Maybe we could focus on removing the heaps of garbage that litter many of our trails before we lose our collective shit over rock piles.
While I never build cairns and find them kind of corny, I also tend to mind my own business and probably wouldn’t knock them down. Maybe more education about why it’s not a good idea is needed. I never really thought of it as a problem until reading this article. However, I have seen some in some local state parks which have been helpful with trail markers and others I’ve seen just randomly scattered about.
Apart from all the points raised in the Zion National Park post, there is also the issue of using cairns to find one’s way. Such use dumbs down your navigation skills and your ability to read the landscape and match what you are seeing with the map in your hands.
I’m sure many, many readers of AJ have all had that experience of navigating into the wild with a map and compass in hand, carefully reading the topography, following a compass bearing and estimating how far they are walking per hour. On some of those trips, there often comes a point, when you have a good idea of where you are, but you can’t pin your location down exactly. When you do continue to trust your navigational skills and you arrive at say that entry point into the right slot canyon, it not only feels great, it reminds you that “hey, I can navigate my way through tricky terrain or in foggy conditions or enter whatever the challenge may be”.
Such experiences help keep you connected with the rawness of being outdoors, the adventure of it all and they help you keep your navigational saw sharp.
A line of continual cairns marking ‘the way’, serves only one purpose really: to dumb down your navigational skills.
Isn’t it supposed to be an adventure after all?
I’m betting there are bigger issues to grapple with, this one is most definitely a first world problem.
Ever consider whether being there to see a cairn is in itself a violation of nature?
Maybe we ought to stay in cities where we belong?
I do something similar to the hunting blinds I find on my hikes, but with no exceptions: I tear them all down.
Unless you are an Inuit hunter don’t build one.
Those are inuksuit, as you probably read two issues ago.
Leave them for sure,
If you need a rock sign post to find your way, maybe you don’t belong there. What happened to the old skill of using a map and compass to orienteer yourself to your destination?
As much as I want to knock down every one, I can’t help but think that that would do secondary damage to an ecosystem that’s already been messed with by the cairn being built initially.
Ideally, people wouldn’t be moving rocks around and building them in the first place. I always knock them down.
The only ones I have ever built were while fly fishing at the river’s edge on tailrace rivers, which were subject to sudden rises due to increased generation at the upstream dam. If the speed of flow or sounds of the river rushing past alerted me, I would look over my shoulder to determine if my rock stack was being engulfed by the rising river. If so, it was time to find higher ground.
Once, while fishing on a wilderness canoe camping experience in Quetico Park, my canoe partner built a small cairn on the front of the granite island on which we were camped. Shortly thereafter our guide knocked it down without any comment.
Enough said I guess.
Cairns – which are used to mark trails – should be left alone.
Stacked rocks – which are done mostly for Instagram – should be scattered.
Depends on what mood I’m in at the moment I encounter a rock stack. Others feel in the mood to stack and leave, I might be in the mood to un-stack and leave. Circle of life.
Trail marking cairns that are large piles, sometimes with a vertical post in the middle, like on the Colorado Trail … I’m not touching those. Why would I? Clearly there to keep us on a designated path or within a narrow corridor.
Safety is a false premise, as is navigation. No trail or trail marking or cairn or tree slash or whatever is ever ‘necessary’ or ‘required’ for anyone’s personal safety or navigation. While it is certainly helpful and human nature to a large degree to want to help each other out, let’s not get carried away with labeling cairns as a ‘necessity’ or ‘requirement’ for saving another’s bacon.
Keep when needed for navigation. 80% or more should be taken down. Agree with some of other commentators that litter & trash along trails is a greater pet peeve and problem in my mind than cairns.
You know it’s time they come down when something of pure practical necessity in rare instances throughout the backcountry becomes the subject of an entire article and 53 comments (and counting). The spirit has been lost. If there’s a hint of self gratification, kick them down.
Not just us covering it. New Yorker, NY Times….
If it has been built according to the specifications outlined here by the forest service, a trail crew wanted to make sure the trail was correctly marked and the pile of rocks won’t easily come down. https://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/programs/trail-management/documents/plans/trail_pdfs/STD_955-01_Rock_Cairn.pdf
However, many times there are climber trails to and from obscure peaks that help climbers find their way to and from the car. These are small piles of two or three rocks left where no trail is clearly visible.
How about leave them all!!! Leave the cairns.
Instead, educate others why and when to build them!
Most cairns are built by people who want to create ‘art,’ or think they’re going to get lost, or are just too incompetent to navigate using the terrain, rather than blindly following rockpiles that only indicate some fool once stacked rocks there.
If you think cairns are necessary in remote wilderness (and pretty much anywhere aside from already over-marked Appalachian ridgelines) you need to up your navigation skills rather than creating monuments to your presence, or incompetence.
99% of the time, no one on that track, slickrock, or climber’s approach trail needed a cairn – perhaps for decades – until some urban gerbil just had to build one.
If you think you need cairns, stick to an obvious dirt rut trail, because that’s where livestock belongs.
Don’t build them- but don’t knock it down. It’s bad luck. Had a trek team member lean against one and inadvertently crumble it. Came down with poison oak in the middle of the high desert. Just one example
1. My kids just gave me a wonderful book on Cairns. I absolutely love them for their purpose, beauty, simplicity, ease on the environment… If I am on a marked trail I hope to and love finding the ones that lead me to where I am going, so I (kind of) depend on the makers to keep them in good condition. I would never build a cairn on a trail, but I always thought I was responsible to keep them in good condition. If I notice a few rocks have been knocked off, I just add them back on.
I do enjoy rock stacking a lot! I find it to be meditative and challenging and artistic and fun, but I always knock them down when I’m done.