See Stacked Rocks In Utah? Take Them Down ASAP

Utah has several beautiful trails and plenty of hikers that want to use them, but this one trend may make it unsafe and mess with the local ecosystem.  

Rock stacking has become popular on Tik Tok but has been around for hundreds of years for different reasons. Some cultures used it as a burial marker while others used it to mark food caches. Stacked rocks or cairns are also used to mark trails for hikers.  

However, recently people have been stacking rocks for a different reason, art. Inherently that's not bad but you really shouldn’t do that. In fact, if you see one and it's not an official trail marker, take it down.  

Lonely Planet said that the trend started in 2015 in places that visitors were asked to “leave no trace”. Sounds like a good alternative on the surface for those who want to leave their mark, right? WRONG. 

If the cairns being placed by someone isn’t for trail or direction marking, then those cairns will confuse avid hikers and possibly lead them down a wrong path resulting in the hiker getting lost.  

The other issue with making cairns is that it can disturb the ecosystem. Depending on the location, if they topple over it can lead to a small rockslide or fall on unsuspecting hikers.  

So, the lesson here is to check with the park or wildlife area you’re going to for official cairns. If you see any that are just randomly made unstack them and help out the ecosystem.