Any Other Compulsive Rock Stackers?

I understand compulsive rock stacking, completely.
Any room in this thread for obsessive rock stackers?

I'm an obsessive rock stacker.
This is all dry stack "stacking" (no mortar). This was all done around my townhouse condo where I used to live up until january 2012.
I now have a new-to-us house on an acre, and consider it a blank slate. I spent the last two days hauling in 3 tons of crushed 3/4" gravel, finishing out the cover-over of a newly installed drainage system. Soon, I'll start gathering rocks to begin my new stacking.

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You're obviously a very sick puppy, but I LOVE that TT. :thmbsp: :beerchug: :thmbsp: And Redboy, don't come crying to us, if those rocks fall on ya, LOL. :D ;)


thanks!


Nate,
Is this a spot that you frequent regularly?
I'd be curious to know of their fate; how long it lasts. I really like stacked rocks, and cairns. Great stuff.
 
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Hey Mike, I figured it wouldn't take long for you to show up in this thread! :)

Nah, that's a spot I've only been to a couple of times. I like stacking rocks in creeks and rivers, though. It's a fairly benign way to leave your mark, temporary as it may be, on a wild place. If the next guy is offended by it, he can knock it over and erase all trace.

This particular stack wasn't very artistic. It was rushed because it came at the end of the hike, and there were hungry hikers hoping I'd hurry it up, already!
 
Nate, it's an interesting coincidence that you resurrected this old thread since I just returned from my first trip down to the river where most of my rock stacking takes place. While your recent effort certainly trumps mine, most of my work remains under water and will only be visible once the river returns to summer levels. With the river running this high there is really no need to repair the washed out section of the dam to create the swimming hole . . . and, of course, the water is still much to cold for most people to even consider a dip . . . but such is my obsession.

Groping for rocks at arm's length under two feet of quite chilly water limited my efforts somewhat. The swiftly moving surface of the river made me dizzy if I stared at it too long and the frequent face-fulls of ice cold water eventually gave me an ice cream headache. I was able to flip the bigger rocks end-over-end under water in the eddies. When I hit the current, the river did its best to rip them out of my hands and deposit them on my toes.

Anchoring my feeble rock pile against the large boulder on the right I slowly narrowed the breach. However, as the flow was confined it became much more powerful. When attempting to place one somewhat large rock that I wrestled to the top into the tongue of water falling over the dam, I was briefly engulfed in spray as the rock was taken from me somewhere downstream with a series of diminishing muffled clunks. That's when I called it quits and clambered up the bank to sit by the fire and drip dry.

BEFORE:

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AFTER:

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GRATUITOUS WIDE ANGLE, LONG EXPOSURE USING NEUTRAL DENSITY & POLARIZED FILTERS

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Really nice pics there, TR1. :thmbsp: Yeah, you have to be careful about brain-freeze, it can kill ya, if you're not careful. :sigh:
 
I grew up in the Victorian alps {Mt Beauty ,Australia}
As kids we used to build rock walls in the river to channel the flow.
These were great to ride down on tubes.
Some of the structures we built were fairly substantial
We used to ride truck tubes down the Kiewa river to the Tawonga caravan park about 4 miles down stream
This passtime has now turned into a tourist thing to do as the local kids don't do stuff that we did in our day. Nor do they go to places that we frequented up in the hills.

I have been known to stack rocks but no where near the structures in this post.
Very impressive.:thmbsp:
Gives me an ambition next opportunity I get
 
I found this old photo from 1994 which must be one of my first significant rock stacks. That's me and my brother posing in the rain alongside the island we built in the middle of the Black River in Missouri. We spent the better part of a summer's afternoon moving rocks underwater to build a pyramid tall enough to break the surface. The water was about 5 feet deep.

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Stacked rocks have been used for centuries as trail markers. Different ways of stacking and laying out rocks next to the stacks have different meanings. They mark trails that others can follow, if they know how to"read" the stacks. Some American Indian tribes did this, and many soldiers and early trappers/outdoorsmen have done this, over the past 200 years and more. Rock stacks were also used as trail markers in the Boer Wars, in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the days of the British Empire. A simple system of rock markers was included in the earlier editions of the Boy Scout Handbooks, and taught to Scouts pre-WWII. (I'm not sure when it was dropped.)

I'm a little leary about people randomly stacking rocks; you could screw things up for anyone still following a trail marked that way. Also, it is/was considered EXTREMELY BAD, back when such trail markers were in common use, to topple or mess with someone else's stack/markers, as it could mean that someone couldn't follow the trail they were part of, could get lost, and perhaps could even die... But of course, if it was wartime and you thought, or knew, that the trail was an enemy's, you could re-arrange the rocks a bit to deliberately send them off in the wrong direction... which was done, sometimes.

There was also some "artistry" employed sometimes in some of the war-time markers. They'd deliberately make them more subtle and harder to spot, or alter them in pre-agreed fashions, to throw off potential enemy pursuers. It's almost impossible to disguise a "laid" rock from a good tracker, yet still have it spot-able by the person seeking to follow the trail, but it's not hard to confuse an outsider by altering the traditionally-accepted marker patterns a little.

Years ago, when I taught survival skills, I taught people to use such trail markers. It's useful if you are going to head off in some direction, in case would-be rescuers find the place you left. A marked trail can be followed, to "catch up" to you. Once we finished using them, I'd usually go back over the trails and eliminate the markers, in case they might confuse someone else who might set similar marked trails in the area. Confusion is rare, if the markers are set well, even with multiple trails in the same area, but it can happen. Following a stone-marked trail (there are other types of trail markers, too, such as using branches or twigs -- and they can be combined in one trail) can be easy or difficult, depending on who sets the trail, how well they set it, and how good the follower is.

I doubt very many people still know about, let alone use, traditional trail markers, but still, I couldn't bring myself to leave random stacks of rocks, if there was any chance that they'd be mistaken for them.


Anyway, please, folks, if you are going to "stack rocks" as a hobby, make sure the stacks are either extreme (several feet tall or in the middle of rivers, like those pictured) or weirdly silly or something, so they can't be mistaken for legitimate, traditional trail markers. Otherwise, it could be really bad "Karma"!


Of course, stacks of rocks or "cairns" have been used for a few millennia, to mark grave sites. The original purpose was mainly to keep animals like wolves from digging up the carcasses. Again, these cairns are so much bigger that no one could ever confuse them for trail markers. These kinds of cairns probably evolved over time into tombstones, but that is speculative.
 
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Very interesting and in-depth post, as usual, Arkay. Your point about toppling or altering existing trail markers is a good one. You don't encounter many purpose-built cairns used for trail marking along the Blue Ridge but there are some along the AT - generally on bald mountaintops where the usual blaze markers would be hard to spot in a dense fog. I consider all rock stacks sacrosanct but those especially so.

Your mentioning wartime trail markers reminded me of a story I heard from some of the old-timers down at the river. The far side of the river where I stack rocks is the northern edge of the recently designated 6,000 acre Priest Wilderness in the George Washington National Forest. Having bushwacked up the ridge above the river a number of times, I was curious about the occasional cairns I have encountered on some of the steeper sections of the climb.

I had assumed they were the result of the labors of the hardscrabble mountain farmers who once survived off of these mountains - wrestling the rocks from their fields and depositing them in piles along the edges of their pastures and cultivated clearings. However, I have been told that many of the rock piles were built by the 36th Infantry Division (The Texas Division) during the winter of 1943 as they trained for the mountain warfare that they would see in Italy. The cairns apparently represented enemy pillboxes.
 
Very interesting and in-depth post, as usual, Arkay. Your point about toppling or altering existing trail markers is a good one. You don't encounter many purpose-built cairns used for trail marking along the Blue Ridge but there are some along the AT - generally on bald mountaintops where the usual blaze markers would be hard to spot in a dense fog. I consider all rock stacks sacrosanct but those especially so.

Your mentioning wartime trail markers reminded me of a story I heard from some of the old-timers down at the river. The far side of the river where I stack rocks is the northern edge of the recently designated 6,000 acre Priest Wilderness in the George Washington National Forest. Having bushwacked up the ridge above the river a number of times, I was curious about the occasional cairns I have encountered on some of the steeper sections of the climb. I had assumed they were the result of the labors of the hardscrabble mountain farmers who once survived off of these mountains - wrestling the rocks from their fields and depositing them in piles along the edges of their pastures and cultivated clearings. However, I have been told that many of the rock piles were built by the 36th Infantry Division (The Texas Division) during the winter of 1943 as they trained for the mountain warfare that they would see in Italy. The cairns apparently represented enemy pillboxes.

Very interesting story! :thmbsp:

I'll swap you one for it... :D

I used to live in a gated community nestled between (and partway up) some hills/mountains near Phoenix. There was a cave on one of the mountains --actually two small, almost adjacent caves-- one of whose mouth was mostly blocked by piled-up stones. Those rocks, the story went, were put there by a few Nazi prisoners-of-war who holed up there after escaping from an internment camp nearby. There was a manhunt for some days with people looking for them, and a brief gunfight once they were located. It was said that there had been some guns and things left lying there for a while, until someone finally stole them. Those, even if they had been left there :)dunno:) were gone before we ever moved there, but I did find a couple of old shell casings there. No way to accurately date those, though, so they might have been from plinkers or hunters, instead of from the Nazis.

Hey! I just searched and found reference to the incident online, with some pictures from the area, and even with pics of one of the POWs, and one cave, taken later!
Here's the link: http://azmemory.lib.az.us/cdm/searc.../fled/field/all/mode/any/conn/and/cosuppress/
 
Down at the river last weekend stacking rocks again. Spent most of the first day working on the dam since it has been somewhat dry and the water level in the swimmin' hole was low. Below are "after" shots showing a nominal recreational level suitable for wading, splashing, bathing, floating and even diving off that big rock. Mid 90s at the base of the mountain but up in the shady hollows of the Blue Ridge it was a good ten degrees cooler. Waist deep in that water all day had me scooting up close to the campfire in the evenings.

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I had this vision in my head of a rock stack rising dramatically from the depths of the swimmin' hole. Little did I know how difficult it would be just to stack enough rocks to break the surface. Though it is relatively easy to move large stones underwater, I did not realize that any movement I made would be very effectively transmitted to my teetering stack through the fluid medium in which I was standing. I had to move ever more conservatively and deliberately as the stack grew. Plus, finding rocks that aren't rounded smooth by the river and time is always difficult enough . . . not to mention the sediment that, when disturbed, would obscure my already distorted view of the bottom for minutes at a time.

It took me about 2 hours with at least 10 abject failures before I could start free-stacking in air. Talking later with some of my riverbank audience, I was told that there was an ongoing debate as to just what I was doing; bent over staring into waist-deep water for minutes at a time and then apparently wrestling with something under water; occasionally being dragged under. Only when I began stacking rocks above the water's surface did my intention become clear - they've seen my stacks before.

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At this point I was convinced that any further additions would bring the entire edifice splashing down. It was time to document this stack. After taking a few photos I thought I would try to push it a little further. Confident that each new stone would be a stone too many, I waded in - again and again, against all odds - amazed at each successful deposit. The last little stone was shaped like a cap and wobbled as I slowly backed away. But it stopped moving once I climbed out of the water.

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I must have taken a hundred exposures of this stack; this being just a tiny sample. It was a good opportunity to try out some of the unfamiliar functions of my new camera. The "Pro Focus" mode used below is supposed to be used when taking a portrait in order to blur the background. However, it seems to be center-weighted and I was composing my shots with the subject off-center. It seems to have done other odd things with the images as well:

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This camera, like most current cameras, has the ability to record rudimentary HD video. As the stack continued to stand, I even had time to set up a tripod and try out this feature. I chucked some small stones in its general direction to see how it would record the splashes. The video clip below shows the improbable effect of a single drop of water from one of those splashes hitting that wobbly cap stone. If you watch the splash carefully enough times, you should be able to see the culprit droplet begin its parabolic arc before it gets lost in the shrubbery. I think it intersects the cap stone from underneath while still ascending toward its zenith.

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Oh, and before anyone thinks to compliment me on my rock stacking ability, you should watch the videos of this guy doing it at the website below. While I have aspirations of achieving similar stacking abilities, it will take me many years of practice before I even get close. Interesting that there appears to be an international community of "rock stackers" (BAWI) who just had their first gathering in Italy this April!

http://gravityglue.com/About.html
 
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Very cool stack, there! Makes my recent build seem pretty tame...

This was a "quickie," as I had about five minutes to make it happen.


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That's pretty advanced for a quickie. Looks like you were running out of daylight. Actually, your photo makes me think that some after-dark, multiple-flash long exposures of a rock stack in water might look pretty cool - a la O. Winston Link.

This was a "quickie," as I had about five minutes to make it happen.

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