Heavy lifting pulls junkers from canyon

Car Crash Canyon is going to need a new name.

After decades as an illicit dumping ground, the ravine near the Colorado River is clogged with cars no more.

In a matter of hours on Monday, a salvage crew plucked more than two dozen wrecks out of the federal wilderness area southeast of Boulder City.

Pilot Clint Burke did most of the heavy lifting.

It looked a little like that coin-operated crane game often found at arcades and bowling alleys, only with a twin-prop helicopter, 120 feet of cable, and giant pair of hydraulic claws.

Snatching 5,000 pounds at a bite, Burke hauled out 17 wrecks in 80 minutes before his first fuel stop.

On one trip, he grabbed two cars at once. "A bonus," he said.

Monday's cleanup was sponsored by the National Park Service, which manages the area as part of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

The job was a change of pace for Burke, who spends most of his flight time dropping water on forest fires and hauling timber for logging companies.

"This is a little harder. You have to be a little more exact," he said.

As he settled over each target, Burke would stick his head out the window and look down to guide the claw into position -- all without losing track of the cliff walls that seemed to loom perilously close.

"You get so you're more comfortable (leaning out)," he said. "It actually feels weird sitting up straight and landing."

The older cars trailed clouds of rust and small chunks of debris as Burke lifted them from the canyon and flew them to a pair of giant trash bins attached to tractor trailer rigs.

Each trip from the canyon to the trucks and back took little more than five minutes for the single-seat K-MAX helicopter, a tall and slender machine that looked a bit like a flying angelfish.

"They refer to it as an aerial pickup truck. It'll out-lift its own weight," said Burke, who flies for Utah-based Mountain West Helicopters.

Silver Dollar Recycling supplied the trucks and hauled away the wrecks in exchange for their scrap metal value.

The company's manager, Brandon Smith, said he doesn't expect to make any money on the deal. "It's a wash."

Smith said the vehicles would be fed into Silver Dollar's "auto shredder" in North Las Vegas. "Think of a paper shredder, only we put cars through it," he said.

Monday's cleanup has been in the works since last May and was paid for with a $220,000 grant from the sale of public lands in Southern Nevada.

A small group of reporters, photographers and Park Service employees watched the operation from an outcropping beyond the range of falling debris.

"Fantastic," said Chief Ranger Mary Hinson as the helicopter carted another wreck from the canyon.

"It looks better already," said Deputy Chief Ranger David Horne. "This is going to be a gorgeous vista by this afternoon."

The area is a short drive down a rocky dirt road from Boulder City and offers a sweeping view of Black Canyon and the distant ribbon of U.S. Highway 93 on the Arizona side of the river.

Vehicle dumping there has tapered off since 2004, when the Park Service built a barrier in front of the easiest-to-reach cliff with boulders blasted loose during the construction of the Hoover Dam bypass bridge.

But a lot of trash has still found its way into the canyon.

"The cars are the least of our worries," said Michelle Zuro-Kreimer, disturbance manager for Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

During preparation work for the salvage operation, Zuro-Kreimer and her restoration crew found tires that had been rolled off the cliffs within the past few months. They also stumbled over water heaters, washing machines, driers, carpets, batteries, refrigerator parts, VCRs and videotapes.

"You name it," Hinson said.

They even found a few golf balls.

"Man, that really ticked me off," Zuro-Kreimer said.

Most of the trash was concentrated at the bottom of one main cliff, an area that until Monday contained about 25 junked cars. Five more wrecks were hauled out of two side canyons nearby, bringing the grand total for the day to 30 vehicles.

The oldest model dated back to 1962. The newest was an Infinity sedan that was brand new when it stolen and deposited in the canyon a few years back.

No vehicles have been dumped in the last year or two, but rangers still patrol the cliffs a couple of times a month, looking for fresh additions to the trash heap. Whenever a new wreck is spotted, someone has to hike down, search it, and recover its vehicle identification number so it can be checked against stolen car databases.

"We have found no bodies or anything like that," said District Ranger Eric Lisnik.

Only about a half dozen of the vehicles have been confirmed stolen. Lisnik thinks the rest were junked on purpose by owners with nothing better to do with their time.

"Instead of getting a few hundred dollars for it, they's rather see it fly down into a ravine," he said. "Just kids being kids and not thinking I guess."

Zuro-Kreimer will never understand that mentality.

"I wish people respected the desert," she said. "It's really frustrating. It's really sad."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.