I was reading the other post about the crash and started this thread because of the "italics".

This story I copied and pasted from North Shore Community Radio news WTIP. LINK WTIP

Two Sawbill crew members, Tyler Campbell and Luke Opel, took a day off to visit the airplane wreck that is on Zenith Lake, deep in the wilderness. I learned about the wreck back in the sixties when two young canoeists came in the store and asked me what its story was. I had no idea, but by good luck, Orton Tofte, Senior, happened to be paying a rare visit to Sawbill that day. Of course, Orton knew the story. In 1946 a young man appeared in Tofte with a brand new Piper Cub airplane with the idea to make his living as a bush pilot. He was quickly recruited by local trappers and in that capacity flew into Zenith Lake on Christmas Eve to check out the beaver house there. He parked the plane on thin ice and it fell through, with it’s wings resting on the ice. The pilot walked from Zenith Lake to Tofte, where he was living at Tofte’s boarding house. It took him 24 hours to hike the nearly 50 miles in knee deep snow. A gang of men, including the young Orton Tofte, got organized and went back up to Zenith, lifted the plane back up on the ice and started melting the ice off of it using a barrel stove and large sheets of canvas. They were almost done with the process when the whole thing caught fire. They shoveled snow on the engine to salvage that and pitched the frame and wing back in the woods where it remains today. The young pilot soon left the area and his identity is lost to history.

Thanks for posting this!
I visited Zenith several years ago before I had heard about the plane. Good to know the whole story!

That is one heck of a hike! Wonder if that guy was coming off learning to fly in WW2...

Interesting story. Thanks for sharing.

I've seen the plane wreckage and heard parts of the story but not the whole thing. Thanks for sharing!