Posted by Jon on October 15, 2008 at 16:01:21 user Jon.
In Reply to: Re: TARBOARD IS GOOD FOR YOUR BRAIN! posted by Ed Kiser on October 15, 2008 at 15:34:48:
Many of the summit cairns are (and IIRC, Tony notes some of them as) surveying points, either to facilitate re-occupation of the same point or to provide a single, easily observable, point to use in triangulating your location. Others (Mt. Katahdin, in Maine, for instance) have cairns built for arbitrary reasons (Katahdin, at 5267', has a 13' summit cairn to bring it up to a full mile elevation).