Trail Marking, Cairns & Safety

Thanks, Trail Crew!

The trail crews on Isle Royale, and at any US National Park, do their best to keep the visiting public safe, for the most part in highly subtle ways. They are engaged in a delicate balancing act between protecting the flora and fauna, the plants and animals, from the impact of public use. At the same time, they protect the visiting public from hiking blunders that can endanger themselves and the NPS staff that is dispatched to rescue them.

While the public enjoys the boardwalks that keep visitors from sloughing across swamps and beaver dams, the trail crew plans carefully so that the boardwalk minimizes human impact on these precious wetlands where birds and aquatic mammals live. Any observant hiker can immediately notice the gifts the trail crew provides to hikers and the environment that they are charged with protecting and preserving.

On the Minong Ridge, for instance, the trail skirts a few beaver dams and crosses others as it guides hikers through the backcountry. A specific example of the subtle support the crew provides is the corduroy (cut log pieces) that traverse wet areas on the trail. At one point, the wet trail is shared equally by human and moose foot traffic, which sometimes confuses the hiker when it comes to knowing which trail to take. The one with the mossy logs placed crosswise across the trail is the one to take. When you see stones protruding above the mud of the trail at intervals that facilitate long strides, you can be relatively sure that these are there to guide you and to protect the wetland. They didn’t get there by themselves.

The trail from North Lake Desor campground to Washington Creek crosses near or on a series of beaver dams. Sometimes, the path is lower than the water level of the dam, but the industrious beavers maintain the dam, and the path behind benefits from their efforts. Approaching the first dam heading toward Washington Creek, you will notice that the trail comes to a Tee. Sometimes (if some hiker has not removed it), there is a pink ribbon that marks the juncture. Many people go right, which is not the correct way. Many go that way, trampling the brush that the trail crew places across that trail which meanders into the heart of the beaver pond where people wander around lost. This beaver pond is crossed by going left at the Tee on logs lying parallel to and behind the beaver-made structure.

The final beaver dam on this route is about three and a half miles from Windigo. It is crossed on mossy, slippery logs placed behind the dam by the trail crew at some time in the past. Some are shorter, lying corduroy-like, perpendicular to the dam, and others are long and parallel to it. While a somewhat precarious means to cross, the logs are not lying there naturally, and the beavers maintain the dam, but not the rustic trail behind the dam. The trail crew has done their best to protect the soft wall of the dam by providing a sturdier alternative for human foot traffic with minimal impact on the appearance of the natural terrain. I am sure the beavers are pleased for the crew’s forethought.

The trail crew works to protect novice hikers, too, especially the groups of children or young teens led by new group leaders who may or may not have experience on the island. Trail markers are placed to guide new hikers in places where losing the trail happens often, causing search and rescues that take valuable manpower from other operations, such trail, campground, and visitor areas maintenance.

While many parks use blue, white, or other color blazes on trees to mark trails, the terrain of Isle Royale does not support tree growth adequate for trail marking in all areas. Also, the blazes seem a lot more intrusive than the method the National Park Service has chosen for Isle Royale. The Rock Harbor Trail, sections of the Greenstone Ridge Trail, the Feldtmann Loop, the Ishpeming Trail, and the Minong Ridge Trail are marked by cairns and other subtle barriers placed by the trail crew. All trails are marked in some manner.

These cairns are simply stacks of rocks placed strategically by the trail crew to guide hikers across the exposed rock ridges and escarpment where the marks of walking do not leave many traces to indicate where the trail lies. There are many debates about cairns in national parks and many hikers focus so minutely on their own experience that they forget the function of the cairns—to mark trails in ways that don’t involve painting glaring blazes across the island.

When I saw a group of Boy Scouts flailing in the bushes near—but not on—the Rock Harbor Trail, I helped them back to the trail and pointed out that they should look for cairns placed by the trail crew (or kicked over, dead cairns).

The same happened to a group of Scouts on the Minong Ridge Trail where their mishap was much more of a cause for concern, for the 13 miles from Windigo into North Lake Desor campground is long for 12-year-olds. Sending them into the bushes by knocking down the cairns shows a callous disregard for their safety—and for the precious time the trail crew devotes to setting them up and the concerted efforts search and rescues take.

If you have ever seen the coordination and rallying of the groups of park employees setting out on search and rescue operations, you will realize the impact on the human resources of the park. Every available member of the staff appears to be mobilized, including trail crews, rangers, and law enforcement, and even qualified maintenance workers are dispatched when needed. They bring emergency gear, gurneys, water, whatever is required, often running over miles of trails to assist the distressed hikers. This cost in effort and manpower underscores how important the cairns are in keeping novice hikers out of danger.

It is not optional just to let people wander into danger by not marking the trails. To believe otherwise is, at the very least, naive. The Park Service must act to keep hikers safe in the backcountry, so the choice ends up being how–not whether–to mark the trails.

People think of that Leave No Trace Principles support the erasure of cairns, but some holistic and critical thought dispels the notion. To leave no trace is not to disrupt the environment. The use of cairns, bridges, stepping stones, and any trail reinforcement is to leave no trace. After all the trail markers are to keep people on the trail and to minimize the human impact on the environment. If you try to use LNT to justify dispersing cairns, then you must also need to pluck each stepping stone out of the mud and return it to whence it came.

A bridge is not only there to transport foot traffic over a stream. It protects the aquatic biome from being trampled by 10,000 sets of feet crossing it each year. Think of spawning trout beds. The stepping stones, logs, and boardwalks keep the trail narrow across wetlands, protecting these precious resources from being trampled into muddy freeways. Think frogs, salamanders, beavers, otters, fox, birds, wolves. The lichens start the painstakingly slow process of soil making that will support grass and shrubs and eventually forests in the most precarious of island environments.

Personally, I’d rather have the minor eyesore of the cairns than I would have glaring blue, white, or yellow blazes painted on the trees and rocks to mark the trails.

That said, I hope the cairn killers think before they endanger kids and inexperienced backpackers or cause a solution that is far uglier than strategically placed cairns erected by the trail crews. At the same time, I am not interested in seeing “helpful” cairns set up by hikers. Added cairns are not helpful and end up confusing those whom the trail crews are seeking to assist.

Hey, hikers! Leave those cairns alone!