Who is Responsible for Placing These On Grand Junction Trails?

Have you encountered one of these amazing balancing acts when walking Grand Junction area trails? Who's responsible for this?

I spotted this early Sunday morning when walking the Audubon Trail in Grand Junction. Stacking rocks along a trail is nothing new in this part of the world. This amazing feat of acrobatics, though, is extraordinary. I can't help but wonder who pulled it off.

This weekend I changed the fluorescent lights in my garage. It was all I could do to balance on a three-rung step ladder. I fell off six times. With that being said, it's hard to imagine how anyone could pull off a balancing act like this.

You've probably seen several similar examples, sans pole, all over Colorado. Typically, there is a very legitimate reason behind it.

Those little stacks of rocks are called "cairns." According to Wikipedia:

A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones. The word cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn[ˈkʰaːrˠn̪ˠ] (plural càirn[ˈkʰaːrˠɲ]). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes, from prehistoric times to the present.

Cairns do serve a purpose. You'll frequently see them in places where trails converge. Another benefit comes from cairns indicating places where a trail may be hard to follow.

This was not a singular work of art. Other similar examples were found in the area, but not with the gravity-defying qualities of the cairn pictured above.

In this case, it's likely someone was simply looking for something to do. No trails converge at this point. For that matter, it's a paved trail, and easy to follow.

Kudos to the person capable of making this happen. It would have taken me all day and a tube of Superglue to achieve this.