Clarifying the trail at the peak

[AlanK]

I don't see the need for cairns at the San J summit. If you make it to the hut, just go up. Not much to it.

In general, I look at cairns as harmless. Nature will deal with them in the long run. In the meantime, one does not have to use them. Ignoring them is always an option. Knocking down something harmless that someone else set up for a purpose is not something I need to do.

However, if one is into purity and knocking things down, I can suggest other activities, like destroying water caches and stashed food. They are not part of the trail either. Hell, maybe tear down the hut. And trail signs, which have been known to be wrong. Even trails themselves are sometimes misleading.

It's not hiking, it's Demolition Derby!

[halhiker]

I don't see cairns as benign. They are detrimental. People rely on them rather than learning to read a map, a trail, their environment.

If there is a trail, follow it. If there is no trail, keep it that way. Why would anyone need a cairn?

I am no purist. I have no problem with trails, structures, caches or signage. I just don't approve of self-appointed direction gurus presupposing their way is the best way.

[AlanK]

Well, since I won't be making or using cairns, I also won't prolong the discussion of them!

[FIGHT ON]

Except to mark a summit I can think of NO use for a cairn whatsoever.

You need a cairn to find the top of a mountain??
Try using a map and compass
psst. (ever think that maybe those summit cairns are like all those other cairns, there because someone is telling you,"THIS IS THE TOP","OVER HERE WHAT ARE YOU BLIND? ") I don't know what you think they are for but I clearly get a personal message that I couldn't find the top with out it. Ya. I'd take em personally too if I was you! I'm surprised you hadn't already! GET RID IF EM! AND FAST I SAY!:lol:
Think of it, all the mountains in the world that have cairns on their summits are there, telling you "where the top is". It ain't right I tell ya, Just ain't right I say!! AND Messin up the natural landscape like that. Nobody's gonna tell me where the top is. I can find it all by my self dammit! I didn't walk all the way up here to see a stupid summit cairn! I wouldn't take that crap from anybody. let alone a rock!

[lipbiter]

hey, fight on, i thought you were going to stay away from the caffeine

[Hikin_Jim]

Jim - good to see someone else use the word duck. Two weeks ago on Baldy, I asked some West San Gabriel S&R guys about a duck I saw going to Harwood; and they looked at me like I was crazy. Then I asked about the cairn and they knew what I was talking about.

If it's any help, a duck is small pile of rocks, generally three, piled directly atop of one another in a vertical stack.

A cairn is a large pile of rocks, built into (generally) a pillar or column like structure. The base of a cairn might have 10+ rocks in it instead of just one as in a duck.

This is a bit of a gray area, but generally a small stack of rocks with more or less distinct levels (typically three levels) is a duck whereas a large stack of rocks is a cairn.

Hard to believe that some SAR guys wouldn't know what a duck is. Maybe it was the context? Maybe it isn't so much that they were familiar with cairn and not with duck but rather they may have been thinking "waterfowl." I would probably look at you weird too if you started talking about the (quack, quack) "ducks" on Harwood.

I have never ever given this one single thought until now and I have been to the top of San Jacinto a hundred times or more.

I just figured from the hut you head west to the peak and from the peak you head east to the hut. They are not that far apart.

Ducks are a bad idea. If there were any there, I would knock them down.

The rule of thumb that I've heard in the Sierra Club is that one generally shouldn't make ducks when truly off trail whereas marking a trail is OK.

I think the idea is that people going XC want a wilderness experience. If there are ducks all over heck and back, it detracts from the wildnerness experience. On my recent Cornell, Jean, and Marion peak bagging tour, there was a confusing welter of ducks leading every which way. I found them to be something of an eyesore and completely unhelpful. Who knows where that person was heading that day and whether or not their route was a good one?

Now on a trail, one expects to be able to follow the trail; a well marked trail is generally a good thing. There have been people who have gone the wrong direction off of the summit which resulted in an RMRU call out such as Prashant who RMRU had to go out and find earlier this week. If we can prevent a few RMRU call outs and more importantly prevent SAR situations, marking a route on the final approach to the summit is a small price to pay.

I can't imagine that the people on this forum would need such markings; most of us are pretty familiar with map and compass. I'm more concerned about the tourists.

[Rumpled]

Jim - good to see someone else use the word duck. Two weeks ago on Baldy, I asked some West San Gabriel S&R guys about a duck I saw going to Harwood; and they looked at me like I was crazy. Then I asked about the cairn and they knew what I was talking about.

If it's any help, a duck is small pile of rocks, generally three, piled directly atop of one another in a vertical stack.

A cairn is a large pile of rocks, built into (generally) a pillar or column like structure. The base of a cairn might have 10+ rocks in it instead of just one as in a duck.

This is a bit of a gray area, but generally a small stack of rocks with more or less distinct levels (typically three levels) is a duck whereas a large stack of rocks is a cairn.

Hard to believe that some SAR guys wouldn't know what a duck is. Maybe it was the context? Maybe it isn't so much that they were familiar with cairn and not with duck but rather they may have been thinking "waterfowl." I would probably look at you weird too if you started talking about the (quack, quack) "ducks" on Harwood.

After asking yesterday, I worked the google/wikipedia fu and decided that what I'm talking about are ducks, just a couple of stacked rocks. Cairns seem to be more like monuments.

So, I'm sticking with ducks and people can look at me funny.

As far as asking the S&R guys, I pretty much said "I saw that duck leading up to a ridge trail up Harwood.." Maybe I wasn't precise enough and they thought waterfowl.

As far as getting up SJ - it was really obvious that I needed to go up and generally northwest. I just thought there would be more semblance of a trail.

I find ducks to be generally benign tips that that's where the trail is as it can't normally be easily seen. They must be taken with a grain of salt for the accuracy or intentions of the person placing one.

[halhiker]

Except to mark a summit I can think of NO use for a cairn whatsoever.

You need a cairn to find the top of a mountain??
Try using a map and compass
psst. (ever think that maybe those summit cairns are like all those other cairns, there because someone is telling you,"THIS IS THE TOP","OVER HERE WHAT ARE YOU BLIND? ") I don't know what you think they are for but I clearly get a personal message that I couldn't find the top with out it. Ya. I'd take em personally too if I was you! I'm surprised you hadn't already! GET RID IF EM! AND FAST I SAY!:lol:
Think of it, all the mountains in the world that have cairns on their summits are there, telling you "where the top is". It ain't right I tell ya, Just ain't right I say!! AND Messin up the natural landscape like that. Nobody's gonna tell me where the top is. I can find it all by my self dammit! I didn't walk all the way up here to see a stupid summit cairn! I wouldn't take that crap from anybody. let alone a rock!

I don't need a cairn to mark the top of mountain but as more of a memorial of being at the top I find it acceptable. I've had first timers add a rock to a summit cairn and it makes getting to the top more memorable for them. It's a simple, low impact way of "planting your flag".

And thanks to HJ to pointing out the difference between a duck and cairn.

[Kevin]

A few comments re: cairns/ducks -

I've hiked extensively on both sides of the country, and on the East coast a stack of rocks, regardless of size, is referred to as a cairn, never a duck. If you use the term duck, people won't know what you're talking about. On the West coast, it seems that duck is used more commonly, but cairn is used occasionally.

In the East, cairns are typically used above treeline along trails that won't be visible in winter and/or poor weather conditions. In the West, they're used to mark seldom-used "use" trails. The term "use trail" is also a West coast term - in the East, the term "herd path" is used.

As for the "reliablity" of a ducked trail - am scratching my head re: some of the comments in this thread on that one. I've never followed a series of ducks and had it lead no where.

I think there's a place for ducked trails, as it limits the impact of foot traffic area. If the person who placed the ducks has trail-building skills, then the ducks will be placed in a manner to minimize erosion.

[zippetydude]

Interesting about the regional differences in language use. I had always used cairn to mean a pile - however small it might be - of rocks, whereas I used ducks to mean a series of single stones, which would indicate a curve in the trail, or indicate the line of the trail over broad stony areas. You see that a lot in the high country of Yosemite, where there is no dirt to create a path. Does it qualify to be a duck if it's not stacked, or is there some separate term?

z