Brent and I have done a lot of hiking as of late, which some of you may know. Whilst climbing Castle Mountain, a route that involved a fair amount of route-finding--often times in the rock there was no trail to follow. Consequently we had to watch out for the rock cairns that dotted the way and directed us to the best and hopefully easiest trail.
When I was growing up, one of the games my family played when traveling long distance in our Astro van was something we liked to call "my horses". The way the game worked was that everyone watched out the windows for horses (this worked especially well in the dusty ranch country of Kamloops area) and when you saw some, you called out "my horses!" and counted how many there were (some artistic estimating license was permissible). Provided you were the first to see them and the first to yell out, these became "your" horses. The same worked with tractors...although we never collected as many tractors as we did horses. When we came across a cemetery, the first person to yell out "graveyard" caused everyone else to lose all their horses and tractors and start from scratch again. It certainly kept us entertained for a while. :)
What is the connection you ask? I will tell you. For a while I was leading on the hike down from the summit of Castle mountain. We hadn't really payed attention to the cairns on the way up because mostly we just looked at the summit and took the shortest route to get there. On the way down, however, we figured we should follow the allotted path...with the aid of the cairns. So, it became a contest between the two of us to see who could spot the next cairn first (also it was a distraction from our aching muscles). Ergo, the game "my cairn".
The End.
--Female 1/2
1st Picture is summit cairn on Castle Mountain.
2nd is a neat diagonal cairn on the way up Indian Ridge.
3rd is on ridge of Wilcox Peak.
Brent and I have done a lot of hiking as of late, which some of you may know. Whilst climbing Castle Mountain, a route that involved a fair amount of route-finding--often times in the rock there was no trail to follow. Consequently we had to watch out for the rock cairns that dotted the way and directed us to the best and hopefully easiest trail.
When I was growing up, one of the games my family played when traveling long distance in our Astro van was something we liked to call "my horses". The way the game worked was that everyone watched out the windows for horses (this worked especially well in the dusty ranch country of Kamloops area) and when you saw some, you called out "my horses!" and counted how many there were (some artistic estimating license was permissible). Provided you were the first to see them and the first to yell out, these became "your" horses. The same worked with tractors...although we never collected as many tractors as we did horses. When we came across a cemetery, the first person to yell out "graveyard" caused everyone else to lose all their horses and tractors and start from scratch again. It certainly kept us entertained for a while. :)
What is the connection you ask? I will tell you. For a while I was leading on the hike down from the summit of Castle mountain. We hadn't really payed attention to the cairns on the way up because mostly we just looked at the summit and took the shortest route to get there. On the way down, however, we figured we should follow the allotted path...with the aid of the cairns. So, it became a contest between the two of us to see who could spot the next cairn first (also it was a distraction from our aching muscles). Ergo, the game "my cairn". 
The End.
--Female 1/2
1st Picture is summit cairn on Castle Mountain.
2nd is a neat diagonal cairn on the way up Indian Ridge.
3rd is on ridge of Wilcox Peak.
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