In all the different places I’ve lived, getting tied into the local mountain biking group is a surefire way to make friends. Show up to the weekly group ride every Wednesday evening, and you instantly have new buddies to ride with. Some of them might even become your real friends.

Rolling into summer this year, I decided I wanted to apply the same strategy to the BHA packout events I was going to host. I picked the first Tuesday of the month, mostly based on my families schedule, but also that it didn’t interfere with the trail building days our local mountain bike group hosts. I hoped this strategy would help with commitment issues I see so often with hosting a weekend event in the summer: people are over committed for precious weekend slots by the time the snow is barely off the ground. And maybe I’d get to make some new friends in the process.

The other reason I was interested in this format is there are a lot of public land “trashy spots”, as my son calls them, that could use a little helping hand. They don’t require dedicating a whole weekend day to cleaning up, but an hour or two can make a huge difference. Summer evenings are long in North Idaho, so picking up trash for an hour could be followed by a leisurely social hour.

The North Idaho Public Land Packout Pop-Up Series Presented by onX was born. Next up was to get the trashy spots sorted out. I wanted to spread these out a bit over north Idaho to include a wider range of folks, but I only half joke that all the events I host are within a 20 mile radius of our house. So obviously the first packout location was only seven miles down the road.

This also meant it was easy to recruit a couple of neighbors by word of mouth and through the local Facebook group. We had eight people show up for the first event, including two I’d never met before. New friends!

The group spent about an hour and a half picking up three pick-up truck beds full of trash, all while swatting hordes of mosquitoes. Fortunately, charcoal and citronella candles reduced the amount of blood loss while we roasted brats and chatted with friends afterwards.

Before the series started, I made up punch cards, with the intent that everyone would get a punch for every event they attended. Every punch got your name entered into a drawing at the end of the series for a prize. A quick search of the arts and crafts section at the thrift store yielded several punches that fit exactly with my vision.

One of the hardest things at the beginning was choosing spots, espe