Kelly Butte — Saturday, Sep. 13, 2025

First task was to clear the helispot. Lots of trees growing up that would prevent a helicopter from easily coming in to land, so the scouts used loppers, small saws, and even a crosscut saw to lower the trees and haul debris away from the lookout. They also painted and spruced up the helispot so that it looks very nice.

The other problem was to move all the debris from north of the lookout to the helispot. The starting point was to clean out the job box of a bunch of old, rusty junk. They had brought up plastic buckets to contain piles of old nails (they had been in cardboard, but that had long ago rotted away), old tools, and junk. They pulled a Ryobi Chop Saw out of the box that turned out to be in good shape. An old generator was there, but full of old gas and oil, so we de-gassed it. Finally, using 2x4s and cargo straps, the scouts moved all this really heavy stuff across the steep slope beneath the lookout to the helispot. Even with 6 scouts on the poles, this was really hard.

After a night of rest, the plan was for a helo to come up to pick up the debris, but sadly Sunday was very cloudy, so the flight was cancelled. Instead, the scouts added to their camping backpacks a bunch of the bags of junk, tools, and even the chop saw and hauled it down to the trailhead.  Helicopter will need to be rescheduled for another day. 

This was a great project we've wanted done for a long time!