Well, we went on another hike – Greyrock. It’s close to Fort Collins, and a nice hike. About 7 miles round trip in a loop; loop to the mountain is a little over 3, loop back is just at 4. Not very tall – only 2000 feet elevation gain or something like that.
The last half mile before the summit is all rocky, and the trail is not easy to find. Parks & rec has signs at the trailhead warning everyone to be careful – 8 search & rescues on the mountain in 2003, and along the approach trail there’s a marker for a hiker lost and never found. So you need to be paying attention.
But even so, in that last half mile, the trail goes through sections where it just vanishes. So, in hiker fashion, the last half mile is dotted with little balanced rock cairns. I thought of Chris. You can sight your way from one rock pile to the next … some are pretty massive, some are just 4 rocks. I added a few rocks to some of them.
Aweome that the rock formations stay put. Done with rocks that are really stable stacked?
Also a neat way of marking a path in a way that wouldn’t natrually occur using things already in the environment. Better than painted X’s on trees or something like that.
Most of them are piles – I did see a few stacks (though does it count as stacking when you have 4 roughly rectangular rocks stacked on top of each other?) Not all of them stable .. but all the hiker maintenance helps, there.
It’s a pretty common trail marking technique for rocky trails. Colored X’s on trees when you’re walking through trees; trail signs and blazes when you have money for trail signs – and piles of rocks when there is nothing around but rocks.
Piles of rocks in a forest trail wouldn’t help much … too much other stuff going on, you’d never see them….
But this set of rock piles, rock stacks, and general rock arrangements was particularly numerous. And it felt more inviting – like everyone who hiked the trail was welcome to pile rocks if they so choose.