Ice Runway

Ross Willmot is Executive Director of the Ontario Association for
Continuing Education.

Few engineers can write well, and probably fewer pilots. Most express themselves by action. This is unfortunate, for some of them have adventures and exploits that should be recorded in the first person as part of Canadian history.

One exception is Roy Mason, a retired professsional engineer, who here tells us about his adventures flying in B.C.’s mountain wilderness. Starting as a hobbyist mountain climber, he learned to fly airplanes maneuverable enough to take him up and through the slopes to base camp in summer on floats and in winter on skiis.

Mason well describes the joy of flying in such difficult terrain as well as the dangers. We are with him when he nearly collides with a snow wall, when he narrowly escapes from a watery grave when he lands on thin ice, when he upends his plane on a glacier.

As a former President of the B.C. Mountaineering Club and as a founding member of B.C.’s Mountain Rescue Group, Mason has contributed much to opening up British Columbia. Now he has made another contribution by ably putting into words the role of the pilot in the missions of such organizations.