Scout spruces up canoe trail

WASILLA — Saturday, on one of the first sunny weekends of the year, Karl Greathouse was a very busy young man.

Wearing chest-waders, Greathouse ran back and forth from Finger Lake to Cottonwood Lake, sometimes toting a tool or two.

“We’re hoping to be done today, but it may extend out into next Saturday,” he said.

“It” is Greathouse’s Eagle Scout project. The project is rehabilitating the only portage a person needs to canoe from Finger Lake all the way to Wasilla Lake, dubbed the 7-Mile Canoe Trail.

Ideal for a portage, it’s not a long walk. But it does entail going up and then back down a rather steep hill.

As for rehabilitation work, Greathouse and his crew of volunteers were busy spreading topsoil and re-seeding the sides of the trail. Also, there’s a dock on each lake at either end of the trail.

“We’ve got that end installed,” he said, pointing to the dock on Finger Lake.

Next up was Cottonwood Lake. Greathouse said the docks were already there, but the weeds had overtaken them. His project extended them further into the lake to make them more usable.

Greathouse is part of the Scouts’ Troop 339, which is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Knik-Goose Bay Road.

Eagle Scout is the highest possible rank in the Boy Scouts of America. To get there, a Scout has to earn numerous merit badges and pass a board of review. He must also plan, develop and lead a service project like the trail rehabilitation Greathouse was up to.

When it came time to start his project, Greathouse said he talked to the Mat-Su Borough’s Parks and Recreation department, which gave him a list of possibilities.

He settled on 7-Mile because, “I wanted a more challenging Eagle.”

The hardest part, he said, was the fundraising. He needed to raise lots of funds in the beginning to get the project off the ground.

Chuck Kaucic with the Wasilla Soil and Water Conservation District was one of the people he approached. The project had a special resonance for Kaucic.

“When I was the borough’s first Parks and Rec employee … it was my dream to have a crown jewel in the core area of the Mat-Su Borough and it came to fruition through the 7-Mile Canoe Trail,” he said.

The trail went in by virtue of some land and water conservation money and the labor of Kaucic’s Parks and Recreation crew.

Kaucic said he began a tradition that continues through today of embracing Eagle Scouts in the Parks and Recreation Department. He said a prior Eagle Scout project had put up signage along the trail.

“There are Eagle Scout projects all over the Valley,” he said. “They’re just everywhere and some of them are quite elaborate.”

But, as far as funding goes, Kaucic said he advertised the project through his conservation district and set Greathouse up with contacts he could meet with and ask for funding from.

“I said, ‘you’ve got to make the explanation or the sale,’” Kacuic said.

Saturday, the crew he organized eagerly awaited a new load of soil that an adult volunteer was shuttling in the cargo bed of his side-by-side four-wheeler. Once it arrived, the kids eagerly pulled the bed up to dump the soil and then set to work with shovels spreading and smoothing it out.

Greathouse said he’s used the 7-Mile trail before, paddling from Finger Lake to Wasilla Lake. He hopes that his project will make the trail even more well-known and popular.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to get more people to use it,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.