UKH

Once went hill walking with friend who's family's tradition is to each carry a small stone/rock to put on the cairn at the top,, Do many people do this??????

In reply to count:

I usually choose a fairly noticeable rock / sheep skull and put it in my partners bag to be carried.

In reply to count:

Too many. Which helps to explain why there are too many cairns and they are too big

In reply to Wiley Coyote: would you mind if they were on the top only?

In reply to count: you should do this in reverse - take a stone from the many cairns along the way and dump it somewhere innocuous that wont attract others to place one in the same place.

In reply to higherclimbingwales: their are alot of random cairns in random places, how do you feel about cairns on the very top

In reply to bouldery bits:
This is a popular jape amongst geologist groups, 2-3 kg being limit one can get away with, without being rumbled.
Tip: check your own rucksack after lunch....

In reply to count: because of people like them I was always made to take one stone off the summit cairn and carry it back down to the carpark....

In reply to Wainers44:

When we starred taking my godson to the mountains aged 6, we told him that cairns were piles of stones he could take as a souvenir. Thus depleting every cairn en route, and getting him used to heavy loads. I am a bad godmother LOL! (he's 12 now and has stopped believing me)

In reply to count:

Yup - I take a small stone from the summit cairn of each hill I visit and add it to my collection in the garden at home.

In reply to count: I tend to carry house bricks and breeze blocks to the top, i find they make a brilliant foundation allowing the cairs to get even bigger!

In reply to count: lol,, liking the idea of taking one for the garden

In reply to Caralynh:

Kids are great, just so gullable. For years ours believed the old haggis...small furry animal...legs on one side shorter than the other so they can run around the hill on the level stories. One even had an argument with his teacher when she suggested it was a wind up.



...it is just a wind up, right??...

In reply to count:

it doesn't matter if they are on the summit or on the path along the way, they should be discouraged.

In reply to Wainers44:

Of course its not a wind up. I hear they graze from the spaghetti trees....

In reply to higherclimbingwales: why should they be discouraged

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

Why? Look at a summit like Foel Goch? Foel Gron? A few more stones is hardly an issue...

What is an issue is the huge amount of erosion climbing foel goch..

In reply to IainRUK:

"Cairns and memorials
The BMC does not support the use of waymarks,
cairns or other intrusive features, other than those
traditionally established on summits and path
junctions.
Some cairns are important landmarks but most are an
unnecessary intrusion and detract from the character
of a wild and remote setting. Building cairns
exacerbates erosion and is the mountain equivalent
of graffiti, so don’t do it"

http://www.theuiaa.org/upload_area/files/1/Green-guide_UK_Uplands-BMC.pdf

In reply to count:

some ay ma mates carry a wee rock and get a wee stone at the cairn, naw.

In reply to IainRUK:

What is unacceptable is the cairns between Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr, stones have been taken from the surrounding area and piled every 5mtrs or so, there is no purpose for this all it`s done is to create erosion especially on this scale !

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

Really? Did the BMC state that about the Ben Cairns? I don't know.. it would be good to know they have such a consistent stance.. tbh I'm not sure such a broad brush approach is good..

Mills.. agree.. but do think proper cairns should have been built for that reason... as they would get built there regardless..

In reply to mr mills:

But worse (better?) by far is the line of cairns off the top of Cairngorm heading to the railway. They are so close together their bases almost seem to touch (thats a wall then isnt it??)

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

A walk up Nine Standards Rigg would keep you busy, then.
Alternatively you could google the whereabouts of some of the piles of stone thrown up by that fellow Goldsworthy and have at them.

In reply to count:

Instead of cairns, why not paint arrows all the way up the mountain like the French do?

*runs for cover*

In reply to Wainers44:

Priceless Sisyphean analogy of western capitalism, people carrying stones up and down hill for eternity, each one thinking they're doing something worthwhile by either (a) clearing the hill or (b) leaving a memento. I prefer to just have a sandwich and move on, both literally and as a general metaphor for life!

In reply to Sharp: ah but you forget just how many carparks I have resurfaced with my efforts....

In reply to Rigid Raider:

Welsh farmers already seem to do that to make sure you dont put a footstep off paths crossing their fields!

In reply to Caralynh:

Spaghetti Trees? In Scotland? Don't be daft, it's Black Pudding Trees that they graze from.

I remove a stone from each cairn. Occasionally though I accidently kick a full cairn down.

In reply to count: I can't be bothered counting up, but the number of people saying they remove stones and those saying they add them seem about equal. That should ensure no change to the current situation.

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

This is very different from "they should be discouraged everywhere", though...

In reply to higherclimbingwales:


Another good reason to have nothing to do with the BMC!

Cairns have been used since neolithic times, and probably before, and still will be when the BMC is not even a distant memory.

In reply to Bruce Hooker:

Bear in mind that highclimber's comment bears no relation to what the BMC actually, say though.

AFAICT what they're against is arbitrarily building new cairns left right and centre to compensate for people being unable to read a map or follow a path. They've got no problem with "traditional" summit cairns and markers...

In reply to Rigid Raider:

It's much more fun to have a selection of stones handy to kick at passing cyclists

In reply to count: Summit cairns and cairns to mark path junctions seem all good to me, its the pointless confusing ones that need kicked over. My mate an i were contemplating knocking a few down one time but i felt a bit shady at the thought of being caught, must be quite satisfying though

In reply to count: I also like when people have built wee shelter type bogins to hide from the winds often found on the tops, great for a wee brew and rest on the top ish out the wind.

In reply to count:

I pick up a rock and give it to my girlfriend, then once she's accepted it I say "oh but it'll miss all of its friends, have these ones too", and in accepting them, they too will miss their friends and so it continues exponentially until a good part of her rucksac is full of pebbles. Great fun.
She's 33 by the way and so am I

In reply to Southern Man:
Perhaps not as quirky as you think. There was a brilliant cartoon in a climbing mag years ago where a dastardly hold chipper got his come uppance from two slivers of rock which had been bonded together lovingly for the past few thousand millennia. When he struck the rock, one sliver said goodbye to his erstwhile lover and flew straight into the vandal's eyeball.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Not really, we shouldn't be encouraging people to add to any cairn in my opinion. I am not talking about the systematic removal of all cairns as some do have significance
Just because there's a summit does not warrant a cairn nor does every path confluence require a cairn. Learn to read a map and leave the stones where they are!

In reply to higherclimbingwales: I think certain areas.. cairns are better than paths..

But some summit marker is OK..

Where I am opposed is on crib goch.. those which signify the lower path.. or there are also some on the miners which lead you off route...

In reply to count:

What's the point of summit cairns anyway?

In reply to IainRUK:

Paths are put in place to help prevent erosion - cairns exacerbate it. In an ideal world there should be neither but unfortunately this isn't so.

In reply to Dave Perry: So you can get just lttle bit higher?

In reply to higherclimbingwales: well in certain areas.. glyders a prime example.. we can use cairns where a path would be more intrusive and constrain the impacts of people.. but as Mills pointed out.. making those cairns from surrounding rocks totally contradicts that point..


The Ben is similar..

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Haha, good one! Well there's nothing new under the Sun as they say.

In reply to count:

Mountain climbing is such fun
I think I’ll do it at a run.
It’s a pity I ever have to stop
But you can’t climb past the top.
I thought I’d commemorate the day I got up here
With a song and a pint of beer
And take a stone from down below
And put it on the top of everywhere I go.

It seemed to me such a good idea
But now there’s consequences I fear.
For every hill I climb is now thinner round the middle
The reason’s plain to see, this is no riddle.
For on the top, balanced precarious,
Are rocks and stones, origins, various.
The mountains are higher now, it’s fine,
I’ve another thousand feet to climb.
It’s a long way to the summit of each cairn
They are like the mountain’s little bairn.
Perhaps I should leave the stones where they are
Instead of scattering them near and far,
Because, at least it seems to me,
That’s just where they’re meant to be.

John Burns

Blog: Mountains, Middle age and Much, Much more
http://johndburns.wordpress.com

In reply to John Burns: Ithought of taking a small stone fron Stanage and leaving it at my high point on Everest. I forgot about in the packing, but there is a rockery in a garden in Morden,Surrey with a rock from Everest in it. For awhile there was also an Aqaurium with a rock in the from same spot, it's much easier bringing a stone down from 27,000ft than taking one up anyhow

In reply to count:

I used to take a rock off a Munro and collect it in my garden. After awhile I realised my Munro dry stance dyke wasn't going anywhere so went for bigger rocks.
One day hungover I struggled up a peak to put my well won rock in to find the last one still there. Lesson learned and packed that stupidity in.