Inukshuks, Cairns or Rock Piles: What to Do or Not Do?

[Glenn MacGrady]

Pick whichever term you like.

I confess I have never built one or touched one, but have seen a few. Paddlers see them as well as hikers. The topic is to discuss what seems to be confusion, ambiguity or outright cognitive dissonance about these things. Can you build them, alter them, remove them? It seems that in some places it's actually illegal to damage one, in other places park services are removing them, and in still other places you are strongly discouraged to build any.

Here are a couple of articles that just popped up on my phone:

Why You Shouldn’t Stack Rocks On Hikes And What To Do If You See Them

What are rock cairns? Why were they invented and what should you do if you across them when hiking?

www.iflscience.com

The World Doesn't Want Your Inukshuk

These little stacks of stones might be fun to build, but their proliferation around the globe is turning into a real problem.

www.treehugger.com

I was especially impressed by this reason for not touching a rock in one of the articles: "If you move a rock from one place to the next you may have inadvertently disturbed the home of a tiny critter living beneath it." Oh, sob! And I can't even tell whether this ecological catastrophe is a counsel not to disturb an inukshuk or a counsel not to build one, or both.

Some of these rock piles are near sacred because they're supposed have been navigation aids or spiritual monuments for historical people. Others are considered to be completely contrary to the sacred "leave no trace" philosophy of wilderness travel. Still others are considered works of art, while yet others are deemed ugly vanity flings by selfie-seeking narcissists.

I'm confused. If one is not an anthropologist, ethnologist, geologist or art critic, how is he or she supposed to distinguish the good from bad existing stacks of stones? And whether one can or should build a rock pile as one's own navigational aid, spiritual monument or work of art?

 

[Gamma1214]

I've seen more and more of them over the years but my philosophy of live and let live extends to these also. I neither build, modify nor destroy them but typically shake my head at someone's attempt to say "I was here" while remaining grateful that they didn't use paint.

(then again... pictographs used paint did they not? I wonder if there were "cease and desist" articles written back in the day?)

 

[snapper]

I will admit to having dismantled a few in my day. It came about after speaking with some backcountry rangers who discovered that people followed them like trail markers, only to get lost off trail. From that point on, if I was confident the stack of stones would lead someone astray, I broke up the stack. The rangers in NYS are overworked already with some senseless rescues. No reason to add to their work load.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time....be well.

snapper

 

[jdeerfoot]

They have been handy a few times while marking trails. Other times they just appear to be someone leaving their mark. I wouldn’t make one unless there was a need to. But at least the unnecessary ones can be dismantled and are far more acceptable than more permanent marks such those which are carved or painted.

 

[scoutergriz]

there is one spot on a marked trail through a provincial park that covers a huge expanse of bare rock ledge that had the "official" trail marked with rock cairns. Last time I was there, there were literally dozens of cairns and inukshuks all over the place- some appearing to lead to steep, bare rock slopes that would become slides when wet, other ending abruptly at cliffs dozens of feet high, and still others just disappearing into the bush. it had gotten so bad that the rangers would do extra patrols to dismantle them, and ended up painting arrows on the rock itself and stamping out and flagging the route in winter, removing the rangers' ability to do other, higher priority tasks.

 

[Keeled Over]

Like in Ontario above, the ADK's we have stunning yellow hash marks about 2 feet long painted on the rocky surfaces to guide hikers and hopefully have them avoid delicate vegetation. Works great right up to the point of snowfall. Not a huge fan of cairns, and have never built one, but I have used their magical powers from time to time as scoutergriz points out above. Snow covered cliffs can be traversed with map and compass, but cairns can save you from taking a BIG wrong step.

I have never added to nor dismantled one. Didn't I see a large rock/island somewhere in the ADK's with a bunch of small cairns on it? Rock Pond? I did smile at that one

 

[ppine]

If they are marking a trail leave them alone. In the remote country of the North I would leave them alone.
In the Front Country where lots of people travel, I knock them down.
Keep wild country wild.

 

[yknpdlr]

If they are marking a trail leave them alone. In the remote country of the North I would leave them alone.
In the Front Country where lots of people travel, I knock them down.
Keep wild country wild.

Right, As with with colored plastic flagging, some people just have to leave these to mark what they try to make into their own "trail" into certain significant trailless remote landmarks. I know the Forest Rangers pretty well where I travel, and I also know where long existing marked trails are. New official trails in the wilderness are extremely rarely if ever created. It is not legal to mark your own trail, especially with long lasting materials, including paint, flagging, and even by staking rocks. There are certain bushwhack only destinations in designated "Forever Wild" wilderness areas that I like to visit, and where I in fact have for many years trained students in Land Navigation using only map, compass, and terrain association techniques. I will often come home with a pocket full of colored flagging that I have removed and have scattered stone piles that have no business being there.

 

[ScottS]

There are no inukshuks or rock cairns marking routes in my area. I knock rock piles down, as should the dorks that build them. And I try to not leave any sign of my own passing.

 

[Odyssey]

To my way of thinking (get off my lawn) spray paint tagging, tree carving, and rock pile playing are the original forms of taking everlasting selfies long before cell phones fell into our virtual laps and lives. So much and yet so little has changed. For some reason or another some people still feel inclined to exercise their egos by leaving behind puerile marks of their passage to no benefit to anyone, least of all to nature, which is far better off left unblemished for all to really enjoy.
Whew! Angry man rant over. (Now, about that lawn of mine...)

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

The world's tallest inukshuk, "Little Joe", built by our ancestors in 2007 by the owner of a granite quarry in Shomberg, Ontario.

Allstone Quarry Products rocks Guinness Book of World Records, with the help of an inukshuk - constructconnect.com - Daily Commercial News

Most Canadians spell it inukshuk. The government of Nunavut says it’s inuksuk. No matter how you spell it, Joe Melo owns the largest one in the world and the Guinness Book of World Records is ready to honour that achievement.

canada.constructconnect.com

 

[memaquay]

Dang pain in the buttocks, people are stupid, most of the time. I'm not that concerned with the Leave No Trace philosophy in my neck of the woods. There is a long history of using the boreal forest for travel, and associated methods for making that travel possible. Lobsticks were pretty common to mark tough to find portage entrances, blazes were and are still used to mark trails, flagging tape is common now as well. The boreal is almost like a tropical jungle, growth happens very quickly, and established trails can disappear in as little as three years, particularly when travel over them is infrequent.

There have been many instances when we are re-opening a portage, and finding a weathered piece of 30 year old flagging tape on the ground has been a massive help in knowing we are on the right track. We flag and blaze all our trails, because one wind storm in the early winter can turn the whole area into a jungle of blowdown. I'm pretty sure that if the local Indigenous people had flagging tape 300 years ago, they would have used it too, they were practical people.

However, if I see a pile of rocks imitating an inuksuk, I will kick that thing down while using the choice words my longshoreman Grandfather inadvertently taught me. I don't know why, I just can't stand those things. All the cool kids tell me i'm supposed to eat avocados too, but I can't bring myself to eat something that tastes like rubbery dirt. So many things today are soulless, masquerading as something real, when they are in fact phony expressions of misguided and uninformed ignorance, used by people of small intellect and poor judgement.

And to echo Odyssey's thoughts......get off my lawn you dang kids!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[clemency]

I was especially impressed by this reason for not touching a rock in one of the articles: "If you move a rock from one place to the next you may have inadvertently disturbed the home of a tiny critter living beneath it." Oh, sob! And I can't even tell whether this ecological catastrophe is a counsel not to disturb an inukshuk or a counsel not to build one, or both.

I don't see many cairns except the ones above tree line in the Whites where they are very helpful while trying to find your way down in iffy weather. They are literally life savers. They are large and unkempt, and obviously trail cairns. Were I to see small "ego cairns" (I just made that up), I might knock them down or I might not. Would depend on the setting and my mood at the time. Wouldn't ever build one though. And to Glenn's comment above, USFS in NC actively discourages folks from building cairns or otherwise moving rocks in the rivers and streams there because it may inadvertently disturb endangered Hellbender habitat. And who wouldn't want to help out a creature called a Hellbender?

Hellbender - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[CaptainOllieWest]

I have noticed more and more cairns in my travels. Sometimes they make sense. Like the ones used to mark rocky trails etc. Often they seem to be just graffiti. They generally don't bother me.

Here is an example from hike last week.

 

[Patrick Corry]

I don't see many cairns except the ones above tree line in the Whites where they are very helpful while trying to find your way down in iffy weather.

I will second this in New Hampshire's White Mountains. More than once, in exceptionally foggy or whiteout conditions above tree line, I have depended on those decades old cairns. On at least one occasion we tied into a climbing rope and the leader would range out ahead until the next cairn was located, then via tugs on the rope, bring the others to the 'found' cairn in order to make safe progress.

Lobsticks

Thanks Memaquay.... I learned a new word today!

I have recently been following a Youtube content provider "Trek Planner" who finds man-made structures in the US southwest on Google Earth, then treks to the location and films the find. At a number of locations there are petroglyphs (rock art made by removing part of a rock surface by picking, pecking, incising, etc.) Perhaps the curious depictions are a sort of signature, or the carver's personal totem. In a like manner, the pictographs with which many are familiar in Canada made by presumably First Nations people. Though this example may seem like thread drift I tend to think that leaving an " I was here" message- whether an inukshuk, cairn, or pictograph/petroglyph is not significantly different from the jackasses who insist on leaving their names and dates of visits on every surface of Adirondack leanto interiors!

But yeah.... I typically destroy the "ego cairns" which are clearly not marking important trail junctions. Having said that, I was thankful for a small pile of sticks and stones blocking a wrong turn in the Hardigan Pond Carry in the Whitney Wilderness, ADKs last Fall. I was tired, and with daylight nearly gone and my headlamp left behind in my pack, I might otherwise have stumbled along indefinitely looking for the pond rather than easily making the last right turn near camp!

 

[scoutergriz]

I will second this in New Hampshire's White Mountains. More than once, in exceptionally foggy or whiteout conditions above tree line, I have depended on those decades old cairns. On at least one occasion we tied into a climbing rope and the leader would range out ahead until the next cairn was located, then via tugs on the rope, bring the others to the 'found' cairn in order to make safe progress.


Thanks Memaquay.... I learned a new word today!

I have recently been following a Youtube content provider "Trek Planner" who finds man-made structures in the US southwest on Google Earth, then treks to the location and films the find. At a number of locations there are petroglyphs (rock art made by removing part of a rock surface by picking, pecking, incising, etc.) Perhaps the curious depictions are a sort of signature, or the carver's personal totem. In a like manner, the pictographs with which many are familiar in Canada made by presumably First Nations people. Though this example may seem like thread drift I tend to think that leaving an " I was here" message- whether an inukshuk, cairn, or pictograph/petroglyph is not significantly different from the jackasses who insist on leaving their names and dates of visits on every surface of Adirondack leanto interiors!

But yeah.... I typically destroy the "ego cairns" which are clearly not marking important trail junctions. Having said that, I was thankful for a small pile of sticks and stones blocking a wrong turn in the Hardigan Pond Carry in the Whitney Wilderness, ADKs last Fall. I was tired, and with daylight nearly gone and my headlamp left behind in my pack, I might otherwise have stumbled along indefinitely looking for the pond rather than easily making the last right turn near camp!

actually pictographs are full of meaning far beyond "I was here" and depict everything from a safe water-source to a portage route or prime hunting area, they're literally the road signs of pre- columbian NA

 

[Seeker]

I do not build them. I don't like when people build them add something foreign to the perceived beauty of an area in the US. Where there's a pile of rocks to mark a trail or turnoff, I'm all for it. As mentioned, they can be lifesavers. Piled next to a stream for whatever 'aesthetic' reason, I do not go out of my way to knock them down, though if a stick or rock I happened to throw in the vicinity happened to do so, I wouldn't feel badly.

In the areas of the world where such practice originated (Scotland, Himalayas), I wouldn't touch them; they are fitting.

 

[Tsuga8]

"If you move a rock from one place to the next you may have inadvertently disturbed the home of a tiny critter living beneath it." Oh, sob! And I can't even tell whether this ecological catastrophe is a counsel not to disturb an inukshuk or a counsel not to build one, or both.

I have to chime in here as an ecologist. The issue, as is often the case, is one of scale. Disturbance is natural - rocks move all the time, geologically speaking, from snow, ice, water, tree-fall, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, etc. But humans act at the speed of light traveling through a fiberoptic cables these days. The insta-idiots see a thing and mimic the thing. Outdoor spaces are overrun.

And, yes, rocks are important microhabitat features, home to many invertebrates, fungi and bacteria that are critical to nutrient cycling, not to mention things like salamanders that are critical to mediating the above 'detritivores' [eaters of detritus, i.e. decomposers]. There's even a bat that nests in rock crevices that is of conservation concern in the Northeast. I don't sob for an overturned rock any more than I do for a single plucked flower or tree cut down for firewood. The impact is in the scale, and the scale these days is the problem. People make these rock piles because they saw it on social media, and when everyone does it, ALL the rocks in an area get moved. The little forms of life critical to making nature what it is can't function properly. The impact builds over time.

As others have said, I recognize the use for cairns as wayfinding devices and indigenous cultural features - all well and good. But the sheer volume of insta-idiots acting with rampant ignorance of the natural word, all so they can join the chorus of 'look at me!' is indeed a problem.

 

[Robin]

In Woodland Caribou Provincial Park I remember a portage on the route heading towards Wrist Lake. At one point you had to climb a rock escarpment and the trail was marked with small rock cairns, very helpful.
On other occasions there, I would see a piece of red flagging tape on a branch along the shore. some were very old. Trappers, miners, hunters, I don't know but I left them.

 

[Blukanu]

Only ones I encountered have been due to misguided people just having to leave their mark.

I consider the desire to always leave signs of humans out in nature a travesty. Therefore I consider it a duty to knock them down.