[en] A cloverleaf magnetic trap is loaded from a magneto-optical trap containing 2 x 10⁹ helium atoms in the metastable 2³S₁ state. With optical molasses and a spin polarization pulse up to 1.5 x 10⁹ atoms are magnetically trapped. The vacuum limited trap lifetime is ∼12 s. Compression in 0.5 s yields a density increase to 8 x 10⁹ cm^-3. With rf-forced evaporation using an exponentially shaped frequency sweep with a 5 s time constant the phase space density is increased from 1 x 10^-7 to 4 x 10^-3. The central density increases to 3 x 10¹¹ cm^-3, while an increase in elastic collision rate from 40 to 220 s^-1 indicates runaway evaporation