Please do not flag routes. It is litter. And cairns also take away from the wildness of the country. I remove most flagging I encounter (if I have time) and knock over most cairns.
The only time flags or cairns are acceptable to me is if they mark a way across a sensitive meadow if the trail is hard to follow across it. Even then they should be used sparingly.
"...Between Thursday and Sunday I saw many cairns go up and get knocked over. The trail is generally obvious, but with a lot of snow in some key spots people were creating more impact than necessary because they couldn't see a subtle curve which would have been obvious had a cairn been left alone. I know I did, several times.
Also, there are those slab sections where there are multiple ways to go and it's not clear where you cross over. On Thursday there was an obvious cairn that took you right across the slabs and directly onto the most worn path, but by Sunday it was gone. Because of the conditions, I could see very clearly the increased wear on the fragile ground from people not hitting it the same way over just those few days.
So my thinking over the last couple of years has really come to believing that I'm not so much there for some wilderness experience on a heavily-impacted approach trail, and that I'd much rather have the very minor eyesore of a cairn than have the big eyesore of trail braiding. If I want a truly remote experience there are vast areas I can go cross country and never see another person or a cairn."
Klenke - Sep 8, 2011 3:26 pm - Hasn't voted
Please do not flag and cairn routesPlease do not flag routes. It is litter. And cairns also take away from the wildness of the country. I remove most flagging I encounter (if I have time) and knock over most cairns.
The only time flags or cairns are acceptable to me is if they mark a way across a sensitive meadow if the trail is hard to follow across it. Even then they should be used sparingly.
Synchman - Sep 9, 2011 6:30 pm - Hasn't voted
More info?Can you point me to any information that supports your position on flaggin/cairns?
Synchman - Sep 11, 2011 8:34 pm - Hasn't voted
Cairnshttp://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=615758&tn=0
"...Between Thursday and Sunday I saw many cairns go up and get knocked over. The trail is generally obvious, but with a lot of snow in some key spots people were creating more impact than necessary because they couldn't see a subtle curve which would have been obvious had a cairn been left alone. I know I did, several times.
Also, there are those slab sections where there are multiple ways to go and it's not clear where you cross over. On Thursday there was an obvious cairn that took you right across the slabs and directly onto the most worn path, but by Sunday it was gone. Because of the conditions, I could see very clearly the increased wear on the fragile ground from people not hitting it the same way over just those few days.
So my thinking over the last couple of years has really come to believing that I'm not so much there for some wilderness experience on a heavily-impacted approach trail, and that I'd much rather have the very minor eyesore of a cairn than have the big eyesore of trail braiding. If I want a truly remote experience there are vast areas I can go cross country and never see another person or a cairn."