Kenmore Air Norduyn Norseman on the Leduc Glacier . Right , Kenmore Beaver 66Z on the Blue Glacier .
request to fly equipment and supplies to a glacier . This time it was closer , the little South Cascade Glacier in the mountains a mere seventy miles northeast of Kenmore Air ’ s home dock .
The person on the phone was Wendell Tangborn , who ’ d recently been put in charge of a research station where scientists were studying the glacier ’ s structural zones and their behavior and how its recession might affect the region . Tangborn needed a fast and reliable way to get supplies in and data and study samples out .
Initially , the idea was to make the flights to the lake at the foot of the glacier . Using maps provided by Tangborn and the performance data for the airplanes they ’ d be using , Munro determined that landing and taking off from the tiny , kidney-shaped lake was possible . He also determined that once he started a takeoff he was committed to it . The lake was too small to cut the power and stop once the plane was into its takeoff run .
The two Thunderchickens had been sold off years earlier . Two years before Tangborn ’ s phone call , Kenmore had purchased its first de Havilland Beaver . Like the Norseman , the Beaver had been designed specifically for the Canadian bush . But instead of the Norseman ’ s heavy tube-and-fabric construction and truck-like handling , the Beaver utilizes lightweight , all-metal construction and it flies like a dream .
The Beaver quickly came to define Kenmore Air . The company began acquiring more of them , many as Army surplus hulks . But Kenmore ’ s wizard mechanics turned the hulks into planes that were better than even de Havilland could have imagined . Under the guidance of service manager Jerry Rader , they increased the cabin capacity ,
created more comfortable seats and installed bigger windows to give passengers an even better view of the amazing geography they were flying over . The end result was what operators around the world began referring to as a Kenmore Beaver .
Munro ’ s first flight to the tiny lake was a success and for the rest of the summer Kenmore made at least one flight a week in support of the station . Then in October the lake froze over . The surface of the South Cascade was too uneven to land on in the summer but once the snow began to fall it was a different story . Drawing on everything he ’ d learned during the Leduc airlift , Munro took his favorite Beaver , N9766Z , and went up and tried it . It worked and Tangborn ’ s research projects could now carry on through the winter .
As dramatic as the glacier flights were , they made up just a fraction of the company ’ s income . The charter business had grown to include daily flights to the resorts scattered through the maze of islands that make up the lower British Columbia coast . Stops included April Point , Farewell Harbor , and Big Bay , where guides took guests out to fish the edges of the huge whirlpools that form in the narrow passes between the islands . The violent water churns up food which attracts schools of herring which in turn launche trophy-sized salmon into a feeding frenzy .
Kenmore ’ s growing fleet of immaculate Beavers might have been the public ’ s image of the company but there was a lot more to it than that . The maintenance and repair side of the business had evolved right along with the company ’ s airplanes . In the beginning , while Jack Mines was out giving lessons , Collins and Munro would be hard at it in the garage rebuilding engines or fixing components of customers ’ planes .
In 1961 the original house , garage and chicken-coop office were knocked down and a pile driver began hammering in the supports for a combination office and hangar building . Designed and largely built single-handedly by Kenmore ’ s genius facilities manager , Bill Peters , the building still stands today as the company ’ s headquarters .
Word spreads fast in the northwest aviation community and it wasn ’ t long before Kenmore ’ s Beaver-rebuild mechanics found themselves putting together planes for operators in Alaska , Canada and even overseas . Winters began seeing planes in the hangar with names like Alaska Island Air , Taquan Air Service and Pacific Wings on their sides , flown south for an off-season overhaul .
In the spring of 1970 one of Seattle ’ s newspapers ran an article about Kenmore Air ’ s South Cascade Glacier operations . That same afternoon Munro got a call inquiring if he ’ d be willing to do the same thing for University of Washington ’ s research station on the Blue Glacier . Spilling off the summit of Mt . Olympus on the Olympic Peninsula far from Seattle ’ s automotive and industrial haze , the Blue was an ideal place to study weather , air chemistry , and cloud physics as well as the glacier itself . The station was perched on a ridge beside the rounded upper level of the glacier . Nicknamed the Snow Dome , it was flat enough to land on .
Munro pored over the maps and photos the university had provided . The Snow Dome was definitely long enough to land on . But was it long enough to
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