Yosemite Declares War on Cairns

[WanderingJim]

Looks like Yosemite National Park has given the go-ahead to knock down cairns.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=841925900982269

Probably best to leave ones that CORRECTLY indicate the proper path for trails and topple others. I've been detoured too many times by cairns that don't point in the right direction.

[balzaccom]

Hallellujah. I am sick of hiking in the Sierra and finding that someone has decided to decorate the wilderness with their stacks of stones.

On one trip to Margaret Lake last year near Carson Pass, I knocked down more than 100 cairns on the two miiles into the lake (as directed by forest management0--i left TWO that were helpful for navigation). On my hike back out of the lake 90 minutes later, I knocked down another 35 that had been erected in the meantime.

And in Yosemite, the areas around Mirror Lake and the granite slabs on the way to Glen Aulin, it has turned into a competition---I can build more and bigger stone towers than you can. Literally hundreds of the damn things, some of them four feet tall.

Do it in your backyard. Leave our parks the way you find them.

People, give the rocks a break!