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this is some pretentious BS if I've ever seen any. Should everyone and their dog build cairns? No. Should we try to adhere to the leave no trace principle? Yes.

by x86x87 3y ago

this is some pretentious BS if I've ever seen any. Should everyone and their dog build cairns? No. Should we try to adhere to the leave no trace principle? Yes. I am just worried that a couple of eager beavers are going to start dismantling cairn, even ones that are in place for navigation purposes and are legit leading to people getting lost and/or dying in the wilderness. Personally I don't think that this is a problem that is large enough to not be able to be managed just by the park rangers themselves. There is also a big big difference between building a cairn somewhere that frequently see heavy foot traffic vs building it in the middle of nowhere.

ultrarunner 3y ago
This also has a knock-off effect wherein tourists start pushing over navigational cairns elsewhere because "the officials" said they're bad somehow. There's even a cairn in my local city trails that someone keeps pushing over, causing me to keep missing the trail. As if that is the thing that's finally going to return Phoenix to nature.
- kuhewa 3y ago
  Vandalism?
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Are navigational cairns somehow better for the environment than just putting up a sign?
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    In my opinion yes, but both are simply a matter of aesthetics.
  - ultrarunner 3y ago
    Well, in many cases yes. Sedona (an entity that seems to actually care about its trail system) has wonderful navigational signs. With some thought, we could have signs like these and be significantly better off. They blend in until you reach them, and are useful but unobtrusive. Sedona, for what it's worth, also uses navigational cairns in several cases— often gabion cairns that cannot simply be knocked over. The City of Phoenix, however, has shown over and over again to have no idea of the value of their trail system. They have repeatedly treated it like a burden to endure instead of the asset that it is. Their navigational signage is uninspired, lazy, ugly, incomplete, and in many cases factually incorrect. Their penchant seems to be for blocking off areas to access using poorly constructed steel signs in concrete. These signs tend to rust and tip over, contributing repeatedly to the wasteland aesthetic they ostensibly seek to avoid. I could go on about how impressively poorly the City of Phoenix handles its trail system, but I'll leave it at this: for some areas the signs you get will be significantly worse than the possibility some rocks might get knocked over by some naive do-gooder. End rant :)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kuhewa 3y ago
> I am just worried that a couple of eager beavers are going to start dismantling cairn, even ones that are in place for navigation purposes and are legit leading to people getting lost and/or dying in the wilderness. Nah. Virtually any 'official' cairn built for navigation isn't going to be mistaken for something done for social media nor pushed over with a quick nudge. The exception is in remote back country, where the only people that would come across it wouldn't be naive to it's legitimacy. I'm not sure about Yosemite, but there are certainly places where it's a bigger issue than Park Rangers alone should have to deal with. A number of places in Hawaii come to mind, see [1]. On trails that see a lot of traffic, a few stacks in a cobble field can multiply almost exponentially. Having worked a good bit in ecotourism, 'Leave No Trace' has no chance if there's evidence for tourists that '[but] no one else was following it' in the form of a few stacks near each other. [1] https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/why-rock-stacking-at-hanakapiai-beach-isnt-considered-pono-right/ https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/why-rock-stacking-at-hanakapi...
- x86x87 3y ago
  You're mostly right. But again it's enough for a couple of people to get lost for the park to look really stupid for this advice. What if this was targeted at high traffic area and couple with fines to ensure people stop fucking building them.
inhumantsar 3y ago
There was a post like this on Reddit a while back where one guy posted a picture of thousands of ancient cairns in Peru and was absolutely livid. The guy genuinely thought that idiot tourists built them because he didn't take 5 mins out to actually learn something about the place he was visiting. I'm all for LNT but yes, people are absolutely stupid enough to knock over cairns which shouldn't be knocked over. https://old.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/zwxgug/comment/j1xg5nm/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/zwxgug/co...

by x86x87 3y ago

ultrarunner 3y ago

This also has a knock-off effect wherein tourists start pushing over navigational cairns elsewhere because "the officials" said they're bad somehow. There's even a cairn in my local city trails that someone keeps pushing over, causing me to keep missing the trail. As if that is the thing that's finally going to return Phoenix to nature.

kuhewa 3y ago
Vandalism?
eternityforest 3y ago
Are navigational cairns somehow better for the environment than just putting up a sign?
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  In my opinion yes, but both are simply a matter of aesthetics.
- ultrarunner 3y ago
  Well, in many cases yes. Sedona (an entity that seems to actually care about its trail system) has wonderful navigational signs. With some thought, we could have signs like these and be significantly better off. They blend in until you reach them, and are useful but unobtrusive. Sedona, for what it's worth, also uses navigational cairns in several cases— often gabion cairns that cannot simply be knocked over. The City of Phoenix, however, has shown over and over again to have no idea of the value of their trail system. They have repeatedly treated it like a burden to endure instead of the asset that it is. Their navigational signage is uninspired, lazy, ugly, incomplete, and in many cases factually incorrect. Their penchant seems to be for blocking off areas to access using poorly constructed steel signs in concrete. These signs tend to rust and tip over, contributing repeatedly to the wasteland aesthetic they ostensibly seek to avoid. I could go on about how impressively poorly the City of Phoenix handles its trail system, but I'll leave it at this: for some areas the signs you get will be significantly worse than the possibility some rocks might get knocked over by some naive do-gooder. End rant :)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kuhewa 3y ago

> I am just worried that a couple of eager beavers are going to start dismantling cairn, even ones that are in place for navigation purposes and are legit leading to people getting lost and/or dying in the wilderness. Nah. Virtually any 'official' cairn built for navigation isn't going to be mistaken for something done for social media nor pushed over with a quick nudge. The exception is in remote back country, where the only people that would come across it wouldn't be naive to it's legitimacy. I'm not sure about Yosemite, but there are certainly places where it's a bigger issue than Park Rangers alone should have to deal with. A number of places in Hawaii come to mind, see [1]. On trails that see a lot of traffic, a few stacks in a cobble field can multiply almost exponentially. Having worked a good bit in ecotourism, 'Leave No Trace' has no chance if there's evidence for tourists that '[but] no one else was following it' in the form of a few stacks near each other. [1] https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/why-rock-stacking-at-hanakapiai-beach-isnt-considered-pono-right/ https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/why-rock-stacking-at-hanakapi...

x86x87 3y ago
You're mostly right. But again it's enough for a couple of people to get lost for the park to look really stupid for this advice. What if this was targeted at high traffic area and couple with fines to ensure people stop fucking building them.

inhumantsar 3y ago

There was a post like this on Reddit a while back where one guy posted a picture of thousands of ancient cairns in Peru and was absolutely livid. The guy genuinely thought that idiot tourists built them because he didn't take 5 mins out to actually learn something about the place he was visiting. I'm all for LNT but yes, people are absolutely stupid enough to knock over cairns which shouldn't be knocked over. https://old.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/zwxgug/comment/j1xg5nm/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/zwxgug/co...