You are here

Home » Helicopter “Heavy Lift” Project At Isle Royale National Park

Helicopter “Heavy Lift” Project At Isle Royale National Park

Share
By NPT Staff - June 27th, 2016

Crews unload materials to rebuild boardwalks in Isle Royale National Park's backcountry/NPS

Editor's note: The following is an unedited release from Isle Royale National Park.

What do you do when you have 64 tons of bridging planks and logs to move into remote trail locations in an isolated national park? In the case of Isle Royale, you convene interagency expertise and regional crews to support a helicopter operation: Project Heavy Lift.

On the scoreboard of human to machine, the 33 humans working on this project will move the 64 tons by hand to support the helicopter lift and then move the materials two to three more times building boardwalks and bridges so visitors can cross swamps, bogs, and beaver ponds while sensitive orchids and other plant life in these wetland areas are protected.

Helicopter picks up materials to take into the backcountry/NPS

Helicopters are rarely used in this remote island park as it is 99 percent federally-designated wilderness. The last helicopter mission was 12 years ago. Securing the helicopter as the minimal tool to get the job done quickly, safely, and efficiently was relatively easy. Deploying the work crews to remote drop zones required a complicated coordination of boats rides and miles of hiking. The Isle Royale National Park trail crew, who hail from Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, was aided by a volunteer conservation work crew from Wisconsin (WisCorps) and U.S. Forest Service helicopter crews from four national forests and three states. They are working in teams at 30 drop sites scattered across the park. By the end of the 10-day project, the crews on the ground will have doubled the tonnage of lifting by hand what one helicopter lift will do.

Due to constrained budgets through the National Park Service over the past decades, the trails maintenance backlog at Isle Royale stands at approximately $2.5 million. This amount includes the cost of addressing all the currently identified problems along the 165 miles of trails in the park. Project Heavy Lift will eliminate $300,000 of the backlog.

The action was delayed earlier this month a day-and-a-half due to weather and during the project, the helicopter had to operate intermittently between rain, fog, and high winds. By the end of last week, they hope to have accomplished moving all 64 tons of materials. Then the real work in the bogs and swamps of Isle Royale will begin.

Trail users and others interested in the project can track the progress on the Isle Royale National Park and the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation Facebook pages and NPLSF website. 


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.