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 sai

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