NORTH BEND – When a helicopter landed in the parking lot of the Mount Si Trailhead last week, Wade Holden could barely contain his excitement. He had watched the sky eagerly for the aircraft to arrive from Darrington and worried briefly about some pending bad weather that might keep it away.

As the hum of the chopper’s blades became audible, his spirits lifted. The small helicopter roared into view and set down easily in a gravel parking lot where Holden was waiting with an orange flag.

“Oh man, I want one of those,” he said.

A helicopter could do Holden a lot of good. As the president of the nonprofit group Friends of the Trail, he has spent many hours hauling loads of litter out of the wilderness of the Valley. While many hands may make light work, a helicopter makes the job even faster.

Last week, Holden was using the helicopter to haul nine loads of garbage off the side of Mount Si. The trash was what remained from two decrepit cabins that had been abandoned and vandalized.

The state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which owns the landon which the cabins were located, had long wanted to clear the site because of the liability it posed. Clearing it out by hand, however, was almost impossible. The cabins were accessible only by a narrow bridge that had collapsed years ago. In 2001, DNR decided to let Eastside Fire and Rescue use the cabins as kindling to practice a fire drill. Once the drill was completed and the cabins a sufficient pile of embers, Holden and his volunteers packed whatever was left behind into net bundles to be hauled out later.

Clearing the woods is hard, unforgiving and seemingly endless work. That’s why many find it surprising that Holden looks for the hardest jobs. He formed Friends of the Trail in 1996 after getting sick of all the garbage he saw in the wilderness. When he realized that government agencies didn’t have the resources to maintain a lot of the public land he held so dear; Holden picked up a bag and a shovel.

Since then, Holden has been a vigilant guardian of the woods. He has worked with municipal and environmental groups for support and in 1998, made Friends of the Trail a full-time job and full-time guardian of the area’s wild spaces.

“We do the things no one else can do,” he said. “We do the things that fall through the cracks.”

While most of the work is done with his truck and a group of volunteers, Holden has enlisted additional help for the bigger jobs. He contacted the US Army and asked if they wanted to help him haul loads of garbage out of the woods with the help of their Chinook helicopters. Persuaded that it could double as a training mission, the Army agreed and has brought out helicopters to the region several times to assist Holden. Now that the Army’s helicopters have been called to missions overseas, Holden has hired out private help the last couple of times.

Hi Line Helicopters out of Darrington have been happy to help. While the helicopter sent down was considerably smaller than a Chinook, its mobility fit the job just right. Pilot Jerry Gray was able to maneuver the small craft speedily back and forth to the site to pick up the pre-assembled bundles of garbage. At the site, a crew on the ground attached the bundles to a 200-ft. cord that can handle up to 1,000 pounds. Gray lifted the bundles out and lined them up in a neat row at the Mount Si Trailhead parking lot.

It looked flawless, but the work was not without its difficulties. Communication among Holden, Gray and the crew at the site is a challenge. With no radio, the crew used flags, flares and cell phones to make the project happen.

As the bundles came down, Holden took a second look at all the junk that was left behind. Rotting wood, empty iron drums, steel bed frames – anything that the fire couldn’t destroy was taken away. Getting the helicopter to bring all the bundles down was the fun part. After that was over, Holden was set to load up his truck with all the garbage and take it to the dump. There was plenty of work ahead.

He wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.

Ben Cape can be reached at (425) 888-2311 or by e-mail at ben.cape@valleyrecord.com.