Skiing holidays are all very well, but what if there are no ski lifts - not even roads into the mountains? So it was in Mount Cook National Park in the early Fifties, when Harry Wigley had the idea of strapping skis to an aeroplane. It was a pre-war British crate, an Auster, but Harry coated his skis with a newfangled plastic called Teflon. In September 1955 he landed on the Tasman Glacier at 5,000ft. In 2000, Mount Cook Skiplanes carried 25,000 passengers, including sight-seers, hikers and heavy-duty mountaineers.
The first powdery snows of winter fell in New Zealand last week, but the highest peak gleams white all year round, and the ski plane pilots make more than 6,000 flights a year. Nowadays they fly the Pilatus Porter, a long-snouted aerial Jeep that takes off in twice its own length and lands on a postage stamp - qualities which in mountain flying are highly desirable. The Porter, piloted by Ross Anderson, climbed quickly, so close to the eastern valley wall that - like the five Japanese tourists behind me - I held my breath and counted blades of grass.
Finally, at 6,500ft, we reached Climber's Col, the near-horizontal névé or snow field where we were to land, circling over a vista of blinding white where it was hard to tell if the surface was 200 or 2,000ft beneath us. I spotted two toy aircraft beneath us: the other Porters. A deep banking turn brought us down, across a network of crevasses, then Ross eased the plane on to the ice, an uphill landing so smooth it seemed a continuation of flight. We slid forward and slewed right. 'Turning the plane works as a brake, and sets us up for the take-off,' he told me. He stopped the engine, and we all tumbled out on to the ice. The three planes' cargo was 21 gleeful Japanese, cavorting and snowball-throwing as self-effacingly as possible. The snow was pristine, the silence imposing; the peaks rose like some Tolkienian palace.
When we left I formed an appreciation for the Porter's short take-off abilities. We skied downhill, straight at the network of crevasses. The Porter lifted off and flew low over the gashed ice, heading directly for the vertical valleyside ahead. At last, with the blue ice wall hanging before us like some gigantic cinema screen, the Porter came steeply around.
I hung around Mt Cook for three days, bumming rides. We took a helicopter up one day 'to check the wind', and I climbed out on the glacier to take some pictures. 'Don't fall over the bloody edge,' said pilot Richard Desborough, 'we're not insured for kamikaze journalists.' I promised not to. 'Well, I'm sending Tony with you anyway.' As the copter hovered, I skipped around, peering through my viewfinder for a good shot. 'This is what he was worried about,' said co-pilot Tony Delaney. I looked around. He was standing between me and a vertical drop of 2,000ft to the Tasman Glacier.
Website: www.skiplanes.co.nz
• Observer readers can email Martin at mbwingingit@hotmail.com
