The Darrington Cleanup story is now posted on the Trash No Land Blog.

https://www.trashnoland.org/general/darrington-wa-shooting-pits-get-cleaned-6-5-2021/

WOW. Awesome. Send me a link to get the $ to you!!!

We'll need to have Pat, DoveRelease, respond to that. I suppose we could send it to Trash No Land and I can mail him a check, but he may have something already in place. Hold tight till we hear from him.

Thanks again! You're great!

Great writeup, Bill! Thank you!

And based on the photos, I can see that my earlier prediction was correct . . . Mason did most of the work.

Fantastic job everybody!

That kid is also at home in a boat and knows how to fish.

Kudos to the admins here and Pablo for your generosity, you guys ROCK!!!

I want to personally thank everyone who stepped up to the plate and mad this clean up a huge success.
It went way above my expectations.

Last July 18th I put together a clean up party at the 435th pit and we had about eight people show up and got the lower pit all picked up.
I was expecting the same this time around and it went spiral.
I can not thank all of you enough.

My original goal was to do a 100% clean up at the 435th pit the Scuffy from the HuntWa Forum said the Suiattle River Road pits were a disaster should be cleaned.
I meet up with him l (he lives in Darrington) and we went to check out the Suiattle River Road pits and then the focus completely changed from the 435th pit to the Suiattle River Road pits.
.

The weather did not cooperate, it rained all day.
Several of us camped along the Stillaguamish River just below the 435th pit of Friday night. Caveman Jim & wife stayed at the motel in Darrington.
I borrowed a 6' X 10' dump trailer from a HuntWa Forum member who wishes to remain anomunus.
Scuffy offered his Kubota tractor with a front end loader, and his time & truck for the clean up.
He borrowed a 7' X 14' dump trailer from one of his coworkers at the Boeing Corporation.
We went over Friday afternoon and got the small pit 95% cleaned up and loaded.
Scuffy called the transfer station in Rockport and asked if we could dump the dump trailers there and they said yes.
The Rockport transfer station is only about a 20 minute drive one way.
Unfortunately the dump trailer that I was pulling has a major tire blow out. I had a jack but no fourway lug wrench. I pulled it to the large Suiattle River Road pit and we got the tire swapped out.

I could not believe how many people showed up in the rain to help out with the clean up. I can not thank these people enough. These great people were truly dedicated to the clean up.
I have bought food, coke, Sprite and water for the BBQ.
Our short run to the dump ended up being well over three hours.
At the Rockport transfer station they had a high concrete curb where you dump the trash, the dump trailers we had were to low to dump over the curb so we had to go to the main transfer station over fifty miles away to dump the trash.
A big THANK YOU to Caveman Jim and wife for stepping up and going to the grocery store to pick up the necessary items for the BBQ. Everything I had bought was in the back of my truck.

So here is the break down of the actual cost.
I collected $500 for the clean up.
I bought five more of the magnetic pick up tools, an aluminum scoop shovel and a pin for holding the trailer hitch in the 2 inch reciever from Harbor Freight. $98

I took a load of trash to the Arlington transfer station the weekend before the large clean up. Scuffly helped me load a cut up fiberglass boat into the back of my pickup when I met him the previous weekend to go look at the pits. .43 ton $47

The load in Scuffys trailer weighted 12,120 pounds, just over six tons.
$634

The trailer I pulled had 6,880 pounds. Almost 3 & a half tons.
$359

We went back over to the big pit early Sunday morning to load up the remaining trash. There was a large group of people there already set up for a day of shooting. The gave us a hand loading up the 1.8 tons of trash. $201.

I spent some were between $125 to $150 for the BBQ stuff and the I bought two thirty packs of buds for after the event.
Which we did not get to use because of the complications with the dump run.
After we loaded the two trailers and seen how much trash there was we knew we didn't have enough money to pay the tipping fee. Cogs asked the group if they would be willing to help out with donations for the dump.


After paying everything with what we had the amount owed to Scuffy is just under $600 for the dump fee.


I will be putting together another pit clean up at the Hamilton shooting pit by the Cowboy Camp next month. And will try be better prepared for this next clean up.

I haven't been to the Cowboy Camp pit in probably two years so I have no idea how bad it is trashed.
I will go check it out and see what is what over there.


You guys are a great bunch of guys. This would all not be possible if it wasn't for all of your support.
Pat

That's a heckuva' an awesome job. Kudos to everyone that participated and helped fund the effort. I'm still trying to figure out where these locations even are, but I hope to make it out to one of these to help in some capacity.

Gman, you'll find the GPS and Google Maps link on the Past Event page on Trash No Land. The link is to the large pit. The small pit is the first one you come to on Suaittle Rv Rd and it's on the right (no gate). The large one has a gate and a DNR sign about target shooting rules.

Link: https://www.trashnoland.org/past-events/cleanup-darrington-pit-darrinton-wa/

Enjoy!
Bill

Pat I PMd you.

Here's what the DNR District Manager said about our cleanup...

Wow!

That is amazing write up about some amazing work. It is great to see what a few motivated individuals can pull together and make great things happen. I can’t thank you and Pat enough for this work. It is a blessing that has been needed for a while to keep these areas open and usable for the target shooting community. In the past I have had other smaller clean up events, but nothing that compares to this well-organized and well-executed clean up event. Thank you again, for not only this work, but your continued efforts across Washington and Oregon to help keep our lands clean and target shooting opportunities available. Have a great week!

Mark

Mark Arneson

Clear Lake District Manager
Northwest Region
Washington Department of Natural Resources

This is why we work with forest management agencies. So they know there are people who care about our places to shoot and are willing to put forth some effort to help keep them open.

Pat now has a contact he can work with and continue to keep shooting places open (because Pat is always cleaning up other peoples shooting trash!).

Hope you feel good about what you did, Pat! I'm sure we all appreciate it! I certainly do!

Great work, guys!

Bill, is it possible for this District Manager to get dump fees waived, or covered by them?

Not sure about that. I did call a couple nearby transfer station and asked about a discount for a nonprofit cleaning up the forest, but no discounts available. Perhaps the Agency would have more 'Clout'. We'll check for the next cleanup.

Good idea! Thanks!

IIRC, down at the Yacult burn didn’t the DNR supply a dumpster for us to throw the trash in?

Yeah, Jim, they did. That was pre-COVID days when we included them in an 'Official ' partnership cleanup. Since covid started last year, I haven't wanted to do any of those official kinds because of they're group rules.

It seems like some DNR managers are more relaxed about it than others. But now the Burn mngrs require following their guidelines if they are to be involved. So, they're not involved!