He hated his nickname of “Mutt," but Swan Valley, Idaho’s, Helmet (H.L.) Wiese’s dogged pursuit to engineer and perfect his own snowplanes led to a trailblazing life.
Wiese claimed to be the first to take the 75-110 mph machines into Yellowstone National Park in the early 1940s with no one else around.
Granddaughter Lori Nawyn of Logan, Utah, said Wiese was a self-taught mechanic, welder, and designer who overcame early hardships in life to follow a dream involving airplanes, except he kept his on the snow and ice.
It all began when, as a poor farm kid, he and a friend bought a bundle of magazines with the covers torn off.
“He remembered an early Popular Mechanics, and he found a photograph of an ice plane, and it had airplane-like skis and was powered by an aircraft engine,” Nawyn said. “That really started him thinking that he really wanted to do something with propellers and aircraft engines and he became so obsessed with it that he begged his dad to let him attend a flight school in Lincoln, Nebraska.
"But they were so poor and he was the oldest son, that was simply out of the question.”
Born on Oct. 10, 1911, in Minnesota, Nawyn said her grandfather’s parents had immigrated from Germany. They moved to Idaho when he was 5 or 6 years old and his father worked at a dairy farm for $3 a month.
By the time he was in seventh grade, the family had bought an 80-acre farm, and Wiese helped teach shop class in his school.
When eighth grade began, he could only attend the first day because his dad was diagnosed with cancer. Farm chores and helping care for his younger siblings fell on his young shoulders.
H.L. Wiese poses with an open cockpit snowplane. (Courtesy Wiese Family) 
H.L. Wiese poses with horses during the Great Depression. He grew up poor and only finished the seventh grade. (Courtesy Wiese Family) 
An Alaska Native trapper bought H.L. Wiese’s snowplanes. (Courtesy Lori Nawyn) 
H.L. Wiese steers a snowplane at an event. (Courtesy Wiese Family)
Beginnings
As a young man in Poplar, Idaho, he rode horseback to check out Swan Valley, took a ferry across the Snake River and ran a trap line. His early years consisted of working from dawn to dusk in potato fields, hay fields, milking cows and caring for pigs.
Married in 1932, Nawyn said Wiese found work on a ranch and dreamed of moving to Swan Valley.
By the early 1940s with a young growing family, he was there. He had rented land to farm, and he started to put into action the dream that began with a Popular Mechanics photo and article he saw as a kid.
“It was in early 1942 that he first began experimenting with his first snowplane,” Nawyn said. “His first one was an airplane that was turned backwards and was steered by a tail wheel attached to a front ski. But it was really heavy and it would tip over.”
Wiese learned about a man in Jackson Hole named Fred Abercrombie who built snowplanes made of wood. He learned from others that the planes disintegrated on impact.
So, he decided to try and make a better snowplane on his own.
Nawyn said he found an old airplane fuselage and taught himself to weld. He initially found someone at an Idaho Falls wood shop to make skis for him, but they were not to his satisfaction.
Wiese then decided to craft those on his own as well.
Skis An ‘Obsession’
“Skis became his obsession throughout his life to make them durable for all conditions,” Nawyn said. “He had a couple of different of kinds, some for the colder crisp snow, and some for the stickier spring snow.”
Wiese covered his first snowplane with linen and made a wooden bow for the front. Though he initially toyed with a wooden frame, he moved to aircraft tubing because it was lighter and more pliable, Nawyn said.
Later snowplanes would be covered in ceconite, a fabric that could be precisely shrunk by heat and used on airplanes.
A self-taught mechanic as well, Wiese looked for free or cheap airplane parts and powered his craft with four-cylinder Lycoming aircraft engines. Sometimes he would also use Continental engines.
His first models all had open cockpits and required a dangerous hand-crank of an aircraft propeller. His later models were more sophisticated and featured an electric start. The snowplanes would do 75 mph to 110 mph on a frozen Jackson Lake, Nawyn said.
“My dad remembers riding across the frozen waters of Jackson Lake and seeing the ice cracking behind them but that never worried my grandpa,” she said. “Dad said he could get them going so fast that they literally flew over and never had time to sink.”
By the mid-1940s, The Wiese Snowplane business was in place, and he started making winter pilgrimages into Yellowstone National Park.
Nawyn said it is well-documented that Walt Stewart of West Yellowstone flew his snowplanes in the park in 1949, but her grandfather said he made trips into the park as early as 1947 and 1948. She said a park historian agreed that he likely was among the first three to use the devices in the park.
“He was an unknown, and in that day and time you didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission, so he just went,” she said. “He made six trips total into Yellowstone both from the south entrance and the west entrance.”
Despite his open cockpit and high speeds, Nawyn said her grandfather just wore regular glasses, woolen pants, coat, hat and in his boots a piece of lamb’s wool.
“They would find a hot pot and soak their feet in the hot pot to warm them up and keep frostbite off and keep going,” she said.
Boost On The Pass
Treks into Yellowstone typically went through Driggs, Idaho, and Teton Pass into Jackson.
He pulled the snowplanes on a trailer behind his truck. Nawyn said if the passes were challenging with ice and snow, he might fire up the snowplane to provide “extra thrust” to make it over the pass “if you can believe it.”
“Lots of adventure,” she said.
The Idaho Falls Post Register on March 28, 1946, had a front-page photo of Wiese and one of his snowplanes that he was using in a Red Cross drive to raise money across Bonneville County.
“Snow drifts and stormy weather couldn’t keep H.L. Wiese of the Swan Valley district from completing his Red Cross canvass in record time, this year and last,” the newspaper reported.
During a devastating winter in the late 1940s, she said her grandfather used the snowplanes to go to Ashton, Idaho and bring needed medicine back into Swan Valley. In another severe winter in 1964, he used his machines to help on mercy missions delivering hay to horses.
He developed a trailer for the snowplanes that he could pull behind and designed both open and closed cockpit versions and a larger model that could seat four people.
An Eskimo trapper on Nunivak Island in Alaska learned about Wiese’s machines and Nawyn said he wanted to replace his sled dog teams with the machines.
“So, grandpa would take them up three at a time to Seattle, and ship them to Alaska,” she said.
In an interview with the Salt Lake City Deseret News on March 18, 1970, Wiese told the reporter that the Alaska buyer had a long line of traps, and he bought two of his planes. The trapper’s wife sent Wiese a sealskin, wolverine and beaver coat “that was just beautiful.”
Wiese worked to develop different skis for different types of snow and his machines could handles various conditions. One thing they did not have, was brakes.
H.L. Wiese and his sons with a snowplane that had an enclosed cockpit. (Courtesy Lori Nawyn) 
H.L. Wiese poses with one of his snowplanes in Swan Valley when he was 87 years old. (Courtesy Wiese Family) 
H.L. Wiese and his wife Eshter in their later years. (Courtesy Wiese Family) 
H.L. Wiese was using a snowplane in 1946 to raise funds for the Red Cross. (Courtesy Wiese Family) 
The Salt Lake City Deseret News profiled H. L. Wiese in March 1970 and his love of snowplanes. (Courtesy Newspapers.com)
No Brakes
After trying a foot peg that would drag in the snow, Nawyn said he discarded it because it added to much extra weight to the machine. So as a girl, riding with her grandfather on the machines, Nawyn learned to use a chain or drive belt to “lasso” a ski, preferably the front one to create drag and stop the machine.
Otherwise, stopping was just cutting the engine and coasting to a stop.
“It could be a little hairy,” Nawyn said.
She said riding in the open cockpit machines that her grandfather preferred was extremely loud and hand signals were used to communicate. Her grandfather enjoyed taking two or three grandkids with him on the plane for an adventure.
“He would just grin from ear to ear,” she said. “It was an awesome experience.”
Wiese continued to build and sell snowplanes into the 1970s, and from the 1940s through that decade built 110 of them. But he realized that snowmobiles were going to eventually put him out of business. He became a Skidoo dealer as well.
In an interview published in the South Idaho Press on June 17, 1984, Wiese, then 72, said he had transitioned to building airboats to navigate over snow, ice and water. He fired up his creation and took the reporter for a spin doing circles over ice on Palisade Reservoir.
“I get more kicks out of this than a snowmobile,” he said. “When the ice is more firm, I can get this boat up to 75 mph. I would have made a good jet pilot because I sure love the speed.”
The article said he had built four airboats and sold three to sportsmen and the Idaho Fish and Game Department.
‘A Legend’
Wise continued to be active and work on his beloved snowplanes into his 80s and 90s. A family photo shows him at 87 on Feb. 20, 1998, posing with two of his machines in Swan Valley.
“He was amazing to have as a grandfather, just a legend in his own time,” Nawyn said. “The last of those who really innovated with what they had, and no education, and no money. He was really a self-made man.”
Nawyn said in his later years, Wiese would talk with high schoolers encouraging them to pursue their dreams and overcome the challenges that life brings.
“Grandpa always told people there is no such thing as can’t,” she said. “And that if you have a dream and a vision, you can do whatever you set your mind to. And he was proof of that.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
