First landing on the Leduc Glacier in British Columbia in February , 1953 . Right , one of Kenmore Air ’ s Norduyn Norsemen and the company ’ s Republic Seabee on during the Leduc Glacier airlift . mechanic . He agreed to fly Bradner and a photographer to Nahmint Lake deep in the mountains that run the length of Vancouver Island .
He used the company ’ s Republic Seabee , a rugged , four-place flying boat . Republic only made the amphibious Seabee for two years but they proved remarkably popular , particularly in the Pacific Northwest , and by the late 1940s there were as many as thirty-six of them parked on the property .
After a day of fishing Bradner had confirmed two things . The rumors were true , and the Nahmint steelhead weren ’ t just big , they were monstrous . His described his experience in his next column and the phone in Kenmore ’ s little office began ringing off the hook with requests for charter fishing flights .
In early February , 1953 , it rang with a charter request from Ketchikan , Alaska , that would lead to some of the most unique flights ever undertaken by any seaplane operator on the planet . The customer was a Canadian prospector named Tom McQuillan , and what he wanted was to be flown onto the surface of the Leduc Glacier in the Coast Range some eighty miles northeast of Ketchikan . He was convinced the mountains beside the glacier held massive deposits of copper and he was desperate to stake a claim before anyone else could get there . The air services in Ketchikan turned him down but someone suggested he call Bob Munro at Kenmore Air .
“ He ’ s a hell of a pilot ,” the man said . “ He ’ s also not the kind of guy who ’ ll panic if something unexpected happens .”
Munro agreed to give it a shot . Two days after his arrival in the Seabee he and company pilot Paul Garner loaded
up McQuillan , his assistant and their equipment and took off for the glacier . Kenmore operated their Seabee without its external retractable landing gear , so the hull touched down smoothly on the snow-covered surface and slid to a stop . After unloading , the four men wrestled the plane around to point downhill , stomped out a short runway in front of it and Munro and Garner climbed in and took off . The flight had been a dramatic proof-of-concept that was to serve Kenmore Air well for the next two and a half decades .
With his claim staked , McQuillan ’ s next challenge was to establish an exploratory mine to determine if the mountains did indeed hold a treasure-trove of copper . Doing this would require a permanent camp . Wall tents , support platforms , stoves , air compressors , pneumatic drills , stacks of fuel drums , even a washing machine had to be set up on the slope above the glacier . Packing all this in would take ages so it was back on the phone to Kenmore to see if they could fly it directly onto the surface of the glacier . Munro saw no reason why not although it would take a much larger plane than the Seabee to do it .
Fortunately , Kenmore Air had two of them . The big Norduyn Norseman , nicknamed the Thunderchicken , was Canada ’ s first , purpose-built bush plane . Kenmore had acquired theirs in poor condition but the company ’ s mechanics soon had them in first-class shape .
At the beginning of March McQuillan put together a floating camp and moored it in Burroughs Bay , sixty-miles northeast of Ketchikan . From there it was a thirty-mile , continuously-climbing flight to the surface of the glacier . Using the Norsemen and the Seabee , Munro and pilots Paul Garner and Bill Fisk began flying in the tons of supplies and equipment McQuillan was having barged in from Canada . Every load was a challenge . Bundles of lumber were lashed to the float struts . A tractor had to be taken apart and the pieces flown in separately . The air tank for the compressors was too big to fit inside a Norseman , so it was torched in half with each half loaded to stick out the doors on either side .
When the weather cooperated and with the miners McQuillan had hired doing the unloading , each plane could make several flights a day . The record was thirteen , with Munro flying six and Garner five while Fisk flew two loads of food in the Seabee . The surface of the glacier took on the appearance of a ski slope from the tracks of the arriving and departing seaplanes .
The final flight was on April 29 , and the planes headed south the next day . By midsummer McQuillan ’ s exploratory mine was in full swing . Backed by a mine development company in Vancouver , it proved the mountains held copper in amounts surpassing McQuillan ’ s wildest expectations . The success of the famous Granduc mine , which pulled copper out of the mountains until 1984 , was the direct result of Bob Munro ’ s willingness to take on a challenge no one else wanted to tackle .
Kenmore Air may have thought they were done with glaciers but the glaciers weren ’ t done with them . In the summer of 1968 the phone rang with another
36 explore : NW | The Official Magazine for kenmore air