This one may have been floating around the internet for a while and I'm just now finding it. I stumbled across it on rec.aviation.piloting. This guy makes a pretty short takeoff in a float equipped Cessna on a frozen lake. The guy shooting the video has some interesting commentary. Caution: expletives.

Not sure what to think. It looks like the lake(?) is frozen for the most part and just starting to freeze in others. Probably a good time to get the plane outta' there, although a couple of days prior may have been better. I would certainly be scared to death about falling back through the ice once on top although he may have known where the thicker ice was before taxi. It also sounds like he may have been cutting it close on climb out to an obstacle, judging by the expletives from the peanut gallery...

Not a big deal. This type of operation takes place more than you think. I used to ski (on floats) off of ice on the perimeter of a lake into open water near the center. Kenmore Air Harbor also made regular landings in snow up in the Olyimpic mountains in Washington re-supplying survey missions in the 70's and early 80's. They would leave lake Washington, fly to the specified glacier, land and keep the power up until the plane was pointed back down hill. Then after unloading would just power up and pull a "hail Mary" off the end. They did this with Beavers, Norseman, and believe it or not even a Seabee (flying boat).

On the Discovery Wings channel they used to have these little 1 minute long segueways between programs, and that bit about landing on the snowy glacier or mountain or whatever with the Beaver on floats was one of them. The pilots would just point it downhill off a cliff and nail it and launch out into space...it was cool footage.

Zane

That's right. That was them. I think Bob Munro actually did a lot of that flying himself.

Another pilot who did supply flights back in the 60's for the USGS glacier surveyers in the Olympics was William Fairchild, using (among other things) a 135-horse Champ. He was a local commercial pilot and the first airport supervisor at Clallam County Airport in Port Angeles. He was killed in a plane wreck in 1969, after which they renamed the airport after him.
There was a display in the pax terminal there at the airport a few years back about Fairchild and some of his glacier flights, very cool and informative. Unfortunately I think they no longer have thatb stuff on display.
I understand Bob Monro of KAH was quite the glacier pilot also, as G3 pointed out. I think maybe he did some of that up in Southeast AK also.

Eric