Kim Stanley Robison: The High Sierra, A love story

[wulfman]

Hey everyone,

I did spend a bit of time searching, but haven't found a thread yet. Stan Robinson's book recently came out, and I have gotten the Audible version to get me through (my personal) pre-hiking season. I'm loving the (audio) book so far, but probably should have gotten the paper copy to make it easier to map out his various routes. He touches on a whole bunch of topics, and halfway through the book I already have a range of inspirations for future trips. It's sort of funny how similar my own experiences were to his, but made an ocean and three decades apart, in a mountain range much colder and wetter than the High Sierra, even if similarly goldy-locks adjacent for walking.

Interestingly, HST is getting a shout-out in the book (Well hello there Mr. Robinson!). But my question is: why would he have such a hatred of trail ducks. Coming from the European Alps and especially the northern reaches of Sweden and Norway, they have always been a useful helper when being out and about. Are they considered more of a concern here with the 'leave no trace' ethos, or is it something else? Misleading hikers, leading to the formation of accidental trails?

And as a neo-NorCal native with fondness for Desolation Wilderness for its convenience for short trips, I had to shake my head a few times.

[Bradg]

Hi

And thanks for posting this. After seeing your post, I bought the book. I’m only a few chapters in, but enjoying it. Don’t know about the cairn business. They seem useful at times.

[wildhiker]

Many of us share a dislike of trail ducks (cairns) in the Sierra because they are rarely needed in our open cross-country terrain, are often badly placed by novices who don't actually know a good route, distract from the feeling of wilderness exploration, and proliferate like rabbits! They often confuse more than they illuminate. There are obvious exceptions of well-established, but not official trails, where ducks are useful on open granite to show the route.
-Phil

[erutan]

+1 to what wildhiker said. I'll add a bit more.

Most of the time they're placed by moderately experienced people, so in off-trail terrain they can often lead you in circles or up sub-par routes.

A lot of the times they're just obnoxious and pointless - in the pinnacles basins someone put in giant cairns along the outlets between lakes, or ones on a ridge between the two sides of Wallace canyon. There's zero utility in them and they're just eyesores.

There's a number of threads here on them:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19546

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15128

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15123

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13151

I'd highly recommend this interview with KSR about the book, I linked to it in a comment here a while back:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22038&start=20#p170531

[Shawn]

What wildhiker said said.

I've also seen them recommended on various "survival" TV shows which makes me wonder if that's why they are more prolific these days.

Although I have to admit, I once parked a rental car in a HUGE parking lot early one morning and upon my attempted return to said car had wished I put some cairns out to find it at the end of the day.

[wulfman]

Thanks for the explanations. So the usual concerns, but no specific historic reason. @Bradg, happy to have helped you find it!

[erutan]

Interesting side note, KSR wrote the intro for the print 3rd edition of Secor's The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes, Trails.

[moonburn]

I came here to start a thread about this book, happy to see you beat me to it @wulfman ! I'm about halfway through the Kindle version, and am really loving it. For a couple of years now I've been reading a lot about the SN, shifting between guidebooks, natural history, and Muir's writings. KSR's book brings it all together, and I dig how he shifts from anecdote to gear talk to human and natural history to discussion of the geology and what it means for backpackers. One chapter explains what massifs are and concludes that if you want a good week-long trip, you should climb up onto one and walk all over it (as opposed to traversing terrain that involves going down and up several canyons and passes). This is the kind of trip-planning knowledge I don't seem to find in trail guidebooks.

Anyway, the book seems like a winner, even though the author does push some very strong opinions on some topics.

Regarding cairns, did anyone read Richard Powers' "Bewilderment?" A key character has a strong dislike of cairns.

[erutan]

Having finished the book I agree the overall expression of appreciation for XC High Sierra really resonates with me and it was interesting learning a bit more about why the geology ends up in the Goldilocks zone. I'm not as hardcore UL, don't necessarily agree with his rankings etc, but that's all personal preference and just fine - he is self-aware about his extremeness in some of his opinions and will point out that his is one way of doing it at the end of a long chapter of said opinions.

Wulfman probably has a clearer understanding of the author's opinion of cairns by now (he is fine with them on old trails where it's rocky or vegetation has overgrown things etc), but I'll a sort of historical angle to it.

North America has a lot more "wilderness" than Europe does. I've talked with multiple Europeans in BC that were wowed by the size of the forests there, and that they hadn't been manicured or managed compared to the longer presence of western civilization over the pond. A friend of mine who was a caretaker of a ranch in Idaho was flabbergasted when talking to two Swiss guides in the Alps that mentioned they spend a month every year in Idaho just to have wilderness - he assumed they'd have no idea where he was from when he responded to their question of where he was from!

A climber that set routes in Amsterdam didn't have much of a concept of off-trail travel - everywhere a one can walk to of interest has a trail in the Alps. He could I'm sure climb circles around me in Class 4/5, and kicked my ass in Class 1. We hiked together on a 5 night trip, the first of the season for me and involving 1500m of gain - I was red-faced and puffing my way up enough he was concerned for my health - the next day we had a simple open rocky traverse, essentially off-trail and marked with occasional dots of paint. He was really uncomfortable and slow, where I felt re-energized by the terrain - it was an interesting reversal!

That "pyschohistorical" feeling of wilderness one gets in on this continent is different - the major reason that people don't like useless cairns in the wilderness is that they ruin the illusion that no one else has been where you are. That's obviously different than marking terrain where a trail isn't visible, and probably isn't something that comes up in areas where the wilderness can be wild in the sense of harsheness, but less wild feeling in the sense of being untouched.

[Obsidianpumice]

I'm enjoying the book. His stance on NEVER carrying water in the sierras comes across as absolutist, which is excessive. Much of the lower Eastern Sierra is steep and desert-like. Personally, I want water with me. An example I keep thinking of: the first few miles of Sawmill Pass Trail where you zig zag up shadeless terrain.

I doubt any harm will result in his advice, though, as the book is not intended for novices and anyone who buys a 530 page love letter to the range probably knows enough to use their own judgement.