STOP building rock towers for fun

Rock towers, aka cairns, have their purpose for navigation and cultural purposes, but not for your Instagram photo. If you do want to build one for fun, please tear it down afterwards. Cairns can lead hikers astray and destroy habitats. Not to mention, it's just a LNT principle: leave what you find. Learn more about Leave No Trace below.

Videos mentioned/recommended:

SHOP MY FAVES!

SHOP MY GEAR

DISCLAIMER: Links included may be affiliate links. If you purchase a product from a link, I may receive a small commission with no charge to you! Thank you for supporting my channel so that I can keep providing free content!

[AzazelGrimshadow]

The ONLY exception to this is if you are exploring unknown places and need a trail to go back. I do this in caves to mark where the entrance is if there is no map of the cave. I unstack them when I am leaving so that the next explorer can experience it the same way I did.

[bethn]

Holy cow. That is a ridiculous amount of rock towers! Also I have some friends that hike a lot, and they told once that that rock towers (cairns), used to be a reliable way to mark trails in the desert. Now it's a lot harder to tell, because of this trend. Dunno about how true this is or how correct my memory is, since I'm not a huge hiker, and this was like 8 years ago. 😂

[jamesspillmam]

Can I make one take a pic then destroy it before I leave

[thegrumchronicles]

Not to mention cairns are used by geologic surveyors as delineators and then of course there's the fact that it's illegal to create monuments in any national forest what happened to leave no Trace

[haunted]

i actually didn’t know this. thank you

[melissagLove]

Good point thanks for making this video

[jasonvanfleet]

I agree do that stuff on your own property on your own front yard backyard wherever you wanted to stay on your own stuff but leave nature alone as best as you can

[lornam]

Wow yes! Another couple of trends I've noticed in recent years are coins pressed into logs and dead trees (this actually gives me the heebie-jeebies) and shrines (unseasonal or non-native bought flowers often still in plastic) and recently what looked like a mini garden with plastic and metal bird feeders etc. People need to enjoy nature untainted by humans, it's so important for mental health. No person wants to be memorialized with plastic :(