UKH

Up on Sgurr a' Choire-bheithe yesterday we saw what appears to be a brand new or significantly 'enhanced' cairn. It's on the 913m summit as marked on OS 1:25,000 mapping, about 100m NE of the large pre-existing cairn that the OS also mark.

Someone has prized up multiple big rocks for it, and added chunks of turf and moss, leaving excavation holes all around the summit area. It's a right mess on the ground. The new cairn looks dreadful too.

Why do it?

Maybe there's uncertainty as to which of the two cairns marks the true summit, so person(s) unknown thought they'd do the world a service? (I thought it looked like the high point is at the older cairn, but the OS spot height suggests it's the point now graced with a new cairn).

Perhaps adding turf was someone's attempt to boost the apparent height of this top-end Corbett over the Munro threshold? 

Kids?

Mystery cairn enthusiasts?

Whatever the idea it must have taken hours, and it's still a really slapdash bit of work.

Vodafone?

Not enough concrete

The spot height is the true summit, rather than the existing cairn (see https://www.hill-bagging.co.uk/surveys/Survey%20S%20a'Choire-bheithe%20&... ) but that doesn't excuse digging up the turf like that. 

Oh wow, what a sight!  

I wonder if it's the same person that created a large complex of rock walls about 200m from the summit of Carn Dearg SW on Ben Nevis?  It took me a couple of hours to dismantle it and try to return the ground to its former condition.  They too had pulled up many metres of moss, built walls and prised out rocks, some of which were huge.  It must have taken them many hours.  That was in 2021 I think.  I was up there a few weeks ago and it's still noticeable where rocks and moss have been moved, but not the eyesore it was.  

Different people of different ages have very different ideas about being in the mountains.  I'll confess to shifting some rocks to create a windbreak for a bivi near Sgurr nan Clach Geala when I was in my twenties.  I wouldn't do it now.  

What did you do to the cairn/moss Dan?

One of worst of these encounters was many years ago on Beinn Fhada above Morvich.  Someone had prised out huge shattered slabs of rock, carried them to a blank grassy area, and laid them out to form a giant cross.  They hadn't been there long as the grass was still green underneath.  It took me a long time and I cut my fingers a bit, but I managed to find the rocks where the slabs had been removed, and tried to slot them all back in as best I could.

All I could think of, was that someone wanted to find their cross on Google Earth.

Sounds very similar Jamie.

I'm afraid we left it. Didn't even occur to me to try dismantling and restoring things; it'd have taken hours and we had a long walk/paddle home to get on with.

Maybe someone on a quest to annoy Robert Durran?

No mention on bagger central https://www.hill-bagging.co.uk/mountaindetails.php?qu=S&rf=742

There's a day out for somebody

They could put the restoration on TikTokagram where the original cairn building probably lurks.

Oh no, not another one.

Anyway, I have always been puzzled by cairns on grassy hills devoid of rocks.

Looks like a right mess. Thanks for posting, and for the photos 

I remember being told that the "true summit" wasn't where the old cairn was after we camped on the summit back in 2009.

Looks like someone's decided to put a cairn at the highest point.

They need to give their bobble-hatted obsessive head a vigorous wobble!

I’m wondering if there’s an urn in the middle of it.  Just missing some Tibetan prayer flags.

What the heck is the point of using the moss like that?