Two young men set off this May on an unthinkable task: pick up, haul out, and dispose of every single piece of trash they saw on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. It鈥檚 a Herculean job when you consider that people leave everything from used toilet paper and diapers to spent batteries and box springs听on trails across the country, and that much of the PCT wends through wilderness and large stretches are inaccessible to roads and motorized vehicles.

The final weight of junk the two men pulled off the trail: 720 pounds. Among the highlights: a mattress, a 35-pound metal-and-broken-glass television stand, children's toys, and 26 Mylar balloons.

鈥淚t still blows me away鈥攖he non-hiking-related items we find along these scenic trails,鈥� said Seth Orme, one of the trail cleaners, shortly after finishing the trail with his friend, Paul Twedt, in late September.

Watch:听Meet Two Thru Hikers Who Pack Out Trash from Our Most Famous Trails

This isn鈥檛 the first time Orme (trail name: Cap), a 26-year-old YMCA healthy living coach in Asheville, North Carolina, and Twedt (trail name: Spice), a 30-year-old field marketer for Clif Bar in Lakeville, Minnesota, have embarked on such an altruistic journey. Last year they completed a similar feat of trash removal on the 2,181-mile Appalachian Trail and ended up with almost 1,100 pounds of detritus. (There are far more thru-hikers on the AT, and the trail鈥檚 relative proximity to feeder trails allows more day hikers access.) They call their effort the initiative, and they鈥檝e garnered sponsors, including Altra, Sierra Designs, Clif Bar, and Granite Gear.

Any useful gear the two men found on the PCT they donated at gear boxes along the trail鈥攅xcept a functional Steripen, which Orme kept for his own use.

Orme and Twedt started at the trail鈥檚 southern terminus, in the Mojave Desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, in May and worked their way north. On the first day, hiking in triple-digit heat, with few fresh water sources around, they accumulated 40 pounds of trash and discarded gear. 鈥淵ou gotta face it, you鈥檒l be thirsty out there,鈥� Orme said.

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A photo posted by Packing It Out (@packingitout) on May 31, 2016 at 11:44pm PDT

The spot on the trail with the most garbage? Mile 444, outside of Los Angeles. They pair said they collected 126 pounds in the area in just two hours鈥攖he TV stand and a plastic tricycle, among other junk. At other times, the men faced long stretches between food caches, which they mailed to themselves at post offices along the way. Orme recounted one particularly rough leg, where he and his partner hiked 110 miles over 70 hours in Washington carrying and depositing who-knows-how-much trash along the way.

At times, the two carried upwards of 30 pounds of garbage each, in addition to their own food and gear. They avoided any food item with fewer than 130 calories per ounce, and subsisted mainly on nut butters, energy听bars, and nutritional powders like Standard Process.

They鈥檝e already inspired others to chip in. Orme said hundreds of fellow thru-hikers helped along the way, and Sierra Designs, one of their sponsors, organized a cleanup this summer on local trails in Nederland, Colorado, where participants hauled out 680 pounds of trash.

Next up for the duo: organized national-park cleanups.

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