Bits & Pieces — a place to biff my photos into

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Following Warbirds over Wanaka 2004, I was driving up to Christchurch on Easter Monday and the weather looked so good over the Southern Alps that I made a spur of the moment decision to head along Highway 80 to Mount Cook Village and see if I could grab a seat on a skiplane flight. I was in luck because there was a flight heading up the Tasman Glacier not long after I arrived at Mount Cook Airport and there was a spare seat.

Here are some photographs taken after we had landed on the névé towards the head of the glacier. That's me in the first photo.






The Cessna wasn't on a revenue flight but was being used as transport for a group of Mount Cook Ski Planes employees who were trying to dig their snow-grooming machine out of a crevasse.




Now we get to the “don't try this in a Boeing (or a Cessna) unless you want to leave a huge hole in the runway and a pile of smouldering wreckage” part of the story.

Flying past Mount Cook Village in straight & level flight....




Followed a few seconds later by the approach to the runway at Mount Cook Airport....








The skiplane back on the tarmac at Mount Cook Airport....




Anyway, there's an interesting story to that approach. In addition to myself, all the other passengers on the flight were Queenslanders who had likwise been at Warbirds over Wanaka with the exception of a young Japanese couple who were on their honeymoon. While we were on the snow on the upper glacier, we asked the pilot if he would carry out a steep approach like that. He said that as we were all obviously aviation enthusiasts, he would do it provided we got the agreement of the young Japanese couple. We (myself and the Queenslanders) attempted to talk to them and tell them what was planned, but their English wasn't the best and they merely nodded politely. As we were reboarding the aircraft, the pilot asked them if they understood what was going to happen with the approach to the airport and if they were happy with it. They both nodded again, so the pilot left it at that. However, when the steep descent suddenly began, they looked like they were just about crapping themselves, until they noticed all the rest of us were yahooing, then they relaxed just a little bit. I'm sure they didn't really know what was coming. They would have certainly gone home to Japan with a tale about mad Kiwis and Aussies!

[Dave Homewood]

Really neat photos! That is a great aerial shot of Mt Cook village.

[planeimages]

Ah so, now we know what you look like Dave.

I had a similar experience in 1998. Gaye and I went for the flight out of Lake Tekapo in a C.206.

Gaye sat in front, as she doesn't handle light aircraft too well. I should have known better, streaming mare's tails off Mt.Cook suggested strong westerly winds.

A Japanese couple, Mr.Fujii and his wife, boarded with us and a young local lass sat in the back with Mama San. It's a long way back in a 206.

Mt.Fujii spoke English well and we swapped business cards. I jokingly asked him if he owned that mountain in Japan and he thought it was very funny.

Airborne over the green lakes Mr.Fuji ran out of film for his camera, it was beginning to get bumpy and I thought "This will be good all the way up to 10,000 +".

I offered him a roll of Fuji Pro 400 but he declined. I said I would take the shots and send him some prints. I clicked away and then a big bump hit us and we dropped very suddenly. Even I, reasonably used to jigging around, felt slightly uneasy.

Mr. Fujii leaned across conspiratorially and asked "Is this safe." I nearly said to him "If that strut out there holds we'll be OK" but I couldn't be so unkind.

We survived to the summit of Mt.Cook and the rewards were worth it.

I sent Mr.Fujii copies of the images and a little later he thanked us by posting back two beautiful framed watercolor paintings he had done using my photos as reference. Lovely.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Here are some more skiplane pix. I used to use Mount Cook's skiplanes quite a lot several years ago when I was doing a lot of climbing. As a result, I got to know a few of the pilots, including the then owner of the West Coast operation (Alex Miller) who had purchased that side of the company, but pooled his aeroplanes with the main Mount Cook Airport-based fleet. Since then, he teamed up with a business partner and purchased the remainder of the company, including Mount Cook Airport and the hangar/workshops & terminal complex at that airport.

I was at Franz Josef Glacier in April 2006 when I ran into Alex. He had a French tourist who wanted to take a skiplane flight around the mountains on both sides of the divide, so I did a deal with him and joined the flight. We boarded ZK-MCR and took-off from Alex's private airstrip at Docherty Creek on the edge of the Waiho Flats near Franz Josef and flew over to Mount Cook Airport where Alex had a bit of company business to carry out.


I took the following photograph at Mount Cook Airport showing three of their four Cessna 185 skiplanes on the tarmac....





Once Alex was finished with his business, we took off again and headed up the Tasman Valley for a landing on the upper glacier. Already on the surface was ZK-CBS. Note the hut (Tasman Saddle Hut) at the top of the rock bluff in the upper right-hand corner of the first picture.









From there we flew back across the main divide, over the Franz Josef Glacier, then right out over the Tasman Sea before turning around and heading back inland over the Waiho Flats to Docherty Creek. The following photographs show the approach to the one-way airstrip (with a 33kv power feeder line crossing above the runway two-thirds of the way along it towards the other end — you can clearly see the power poles in the photos), then a photo of ZK-MCR back on the airstrip after we had landed. That's Alex's house you can see in the photographs just to the right of the runway.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

In March this year, following the Warbirds over Wanaka airshow, I spent a couple of nights at Mount Cook Village with some friends. They were rather keen to take a scenic flight around the mountains, so I joined them to make up the numbers (we also talked some of the other guests at Aoraki Alpine Lodge where we were staying into joining us) and we headed off up the Tasman Valley in a Pilatus Porter (ZK-MCT), across the Main Divide, down the Franz Josef Glacier, then south to the Horace Walker Glacier where we landed. Another Porter skiplane (ZK-MCK) was already on the glacier when we arrived there.













Following the flight, we headed for the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre in an annex of The Hermitage where the Mount Cook & Southern Lakes Tourist Company's first Auster skiplane, ZK-BDX is on display, suspended from the ceiling.

[Dave Homewood]

Really great photos. I love those Pilatus Turbo Porters, very interesting aircraft.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

It is quite exhilarating flying across the Giekie Snowfield and down the Franz Josef Glacier in a Pilatus Porter with full flaps extended, while descending the névé and glacier icefalls, flying low above the surface of the ice with all those huge crevasses and seracs passing by just below you. I've actually walked all the way up that glacier from the terminal face down the bottom right up to the Graham Saddle at the top. It's two really tough days, especially getting up through the upper icefall (if it is passable, which it often isn't).

[b10m]

What great photo's, brings back a whole lot of memories of the days when I used to drive bus loads of tourist into the Hermitage for the night, then scab rides on the flights if there was enough room, (which was'nt often). We would also organise flights with the operation out of Tekapo, with their Nomads, I did quite a few flights with these guys, also with the helicopter operation at Franz Joesph, It was, if memory serves, owned at that time by a private operator, I think his name was Small.(Thats his name not the length of it.)

Wonderful days