Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story [Paperback]

James Greiner (Author), James Arness (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1982

Don Sheldon has been called 'Alaska's bush pilot among bush pilots', but he was also just one man in a fragile airplane who, in the end, was solely responsible for each mission he flew, be it a high-risk landing to the rescue of others from certain death in the mountains of Alaska or the routine delivery of supplies to a lonely homesteader. Read this book to learn how a hero was born, and also how he made his courageous journey to the unknown skies of dealing with cancer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Don Sheldon is the unchallenged guardian angel of the mountain climber and downed aviator in distress...his story is a rare opportunity for those who place the quest for high adventure above all other worthy endeavors."--L.A. Herald Examiner

"We'll wager this is one book you won't be able to put down!"--Seattle Times

"It's full of hair-raising true stories. I have flown with Don Sheldon. He is one of our super airmen."--Lowell Thomas

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Wager With the Wind

A Step And A Half

The mountain, 60 miles northwest of where he stood on his dirt airstrip in Talkeetna, always gave him a clue to the approaching weather. On this Christmas day of 1958, he could see from the cloud layers building up around the mountain that a storm was brewing. More than any other man alive, Donald Edward Sheldon knows Mount McKinley--its soul-inspiring beauty and its basic savagery. He understands the lure of the mountain, called "Denali" by the Athabascan Indians, and respects the almost unparalleled mental and physical stamina needed to meet the challenge of this forbidding giant. Sheldon's love affair with this monolith of a forgotten Ice Age began with his first sight of North America's tallest mountain, rising 20,320 feet above Alaska's spruce-cloaked interior. She has been his mistress ever since.

The brisk wind tugged at his clothes and banged the sliding hangar doors. Snow blown off the roof swirled around him. Sheldon was glad he had hangared four of his planes before the blizzard could begin. As he stepped inside to check his schedule for the day, he heard the jangling of the phone barely rising above the noise of the wind. It was a dispatcher from Tenth Rescue Division at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

The news the dispatcher gave Sheldon was anything but good. A huge military C-54 transport was overdue. It had left Anchorage the day before en route for Shemya, in the Aleutian Islands, but it never got there. Radio contact had been lost after the big plane --carrying passengers, Christmas packages, and the payroll for thetroops at Shemya Air Force Base--called a position report 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. At the time of the last report, the plane had been flying in heavily overcast weather.

The Alaska Peninsula spawns a system of foul weather that has affected the entire history of Alaskan aviation. In the early forties, during the Second World War, both the Japanese and American war machines were hard pressed to cope with it, and Dutch Harbor became a word that most GIs and military tacticians would like to forget--permanently. The long string of tiny treeless islands, with names like Attu, Umnak, Atka, and the Rats, are strung out from the peninsula into the vastness of the North Pacific, where they are steeped continually in the heavy fog, wind, and zero-zero overcast for which such maritime environments are notorious. The weather does not get much better as it approaches the base of the peninsula near Port Moller and Cold Bay.

"Tenth Rescue didn't initiate a search because of the weather, and the guy asked me if I'd be interested, to which I said, 'You bet!' After I hung up, I looked at the weather south of town, and I knew that this wouldn't be any lark, 'cause she was stacked up like sour biscuit dough as far as I could see, which wasn't very far."

Into the Super Cub's boot, Sheldon loaded cans containing four extra hours of gasoline, a pair of snowshoes, and his survival gear, which as always was packed into a big red nylon bag that closely resembles a fat sausage. He had decided to begin his search somewhere in the north quadrant of Mount Iliamna, a 10,016-foot active (smoking) volcano, 180 miles south of Talkeetna. The peak is on a direct airway to Shemya and 1,200 miles to the northeast.

After topping off his wing tanks and slipping into his parka and felt-lined overshoes, he took off to the south and set a course that would take him over the braided and frozen Susitna River to Cook Inlet. Once there, he planned to follow the coastal flats to the vicinity of Tyonek and Trading Bay. This course would place him just a short hop from Iliamna.

"Tenth Rescue had told me that they had layered clouds in the vicinity of Iliamna, and man they weren't kiddin'. It looked like a milk shake, and the trip down had been like the old roller coaster. I had just recently installed a powerful HF radio in the airplane, and I figured that I could call New York City on 3411 if I had to. Right now, I was busy just lookin' for a place to start lookin'."

The tiny Super Cub, 7163 Delta, jumped like a scalded cat asSheldon closed with the base of Iliamna. Looking for a break in the low ceiling, he flew south to the vicinity of Iniskin Bay.

"I noticed right off when I got to Iniskin that the wind, which was blasting out of the south, was thinning the cloud deck on that side of the mountain, but the north side was a swirling mass of snow, pushed by a wind that I estimated to be blowing at about 30 to 40 knots."

Sheldon now had to play what cards he had or get out of the game. Once on the north side of Iliamna, there would be no room for even a carelessly drawn breath, because low-level flight along the slopes of any mountain is risky when there is high wind and little visibility.

"I got as low as I could after I ducked into the clouds, and like I figured, couldn't see a thing except occasional snow and rocks. I could smell the stinking sulfur fumes from the volcano rifts as I got downwind of 'em through the cracks in the Cub's door, and it was a bad scene. Each time I punched a hole in the low clouds, I hoped they weren't stuffed with rocks.

"In a deal like this one, all you can do is follow your hunches, and you'll last longer--unless, of course, they turn out to be wrong. The hunch I had told me first that they were on the north side of the mountain, and then it said to look higher. I had the growing feeling that if I could only get to 8,500 or 9,000 feet, I'd find something. At this point, the wind is rippin' and tearin', and I'd been in the overcast for about half an hour. I started to look for a hole to go up through."

During his entire career, Sheldon has been a firm believer in what he casually calls "good hunches," and he was willing to play his hunches here on the jagged slopes of a mountain that was, for the most part, unfamiliar to him. On McKinley, he has come to know the mountain so intimately that he can get but a momentary glimpse of rock and ice and know exactly where he is and in which direction he is traveling, but not here.

"I was headed north and climbing, and in the process of making a turn to the left. I had just about made up my mind for the 8th time that I'd never get to nine grand [9,000 feet] when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something that made my old ticker stand still. There she lay, and would you believe--the transport was scattered for half a mile."

Sheldon swung the Super Cub in a dangerously steep bank tonegate the chance of losing the site of the crash. On his first return pass, he thought he could see numbers, but he needed to get closer.

"The damned scud and sulfur fumes, which smelled like rotten eggs, were streaming across my line of vision, and the Cub was bouncing up and down in the turbulence. The numbers of the plane were on the tail fin, and because of their size, I ended up readin' 'em on my 7th pass at 50 feet of altitude."

Sheldon hastily jotted the registry of the plane on a scrap of brown paper as he climbed away from the grisly scene. During the course of the seven on-the-deck sweeps he had made over the broken plane, death had been but a single moderate downdraft away.

"I pulled out over the ocean on the south side and gave Elmendorf a holler on 3411, and they came in like the guy was sittin' next to me."

"Ah, Roger 63 Delta, go ahead," said a calm military voice.

"I say, 'Hey, are these numbers correct?' and then I read 'em off."

The military voice verified the plane's registry. Sheldon "hauled anchor" and landed on the beach in a wind-sheltered cove near Trading Bay only long enough to dump the red 80-octane gas he carried through the chamois-skin strainer and stretch his cramped legs. Then it was back to Talkeetna for a Christmas turkey and a game of poker at the Bucket of Blood Bar.

Sheldon received a special citation from the U.S. Air Force for his efforts in finding the lost plane.

An interesting incident closely related to his location of the C-54 would occur six years later. He was asked by an amateur treasure hunter from the Talkeetna area to take him to Mount Iliamna to look for "base metals."

"I hauled this guy, along with 2,000 pounds of gear, down there in the ski plane, and when I finally got him landed, I suddenly realized we were at 8,250 feet, just 2 miles west of the snow-buried site of the 1958 disaster. The military had, of course, put the place off limits and listed it as an unrecoverable disaster. This was six years later, and the off limits designation wouldn't be removed till the following year. My flesh crawled when it suddenly dawned on me what this dude had in mind. I walked up to the guy and said, 'If you plan to salvage the valuables from that C-54, mister, you're going to do it over my dead body, and you got just 20 more seconds to get your butt into this here Cub, or I'm headed for Elmendorf.'"

Sheldon knew that in addition to the personal effects that lay beneath the snow, the payroll for the military installation at Shemya was still there too.

"We almost had a knockdown battle right there on the side of old Iliamna before the guy thought better of it and hopped into the Cub. He sulked as I took him back to Talkeetna, and after back-hauling all that gear, I figured here was one trip I'd never collect for, but I was wrong. He paid off later, but since that day to this, I'm definitely not on his list of favorite speaking acquaintances."

 

From the flickering shadow of a tiny airplane on the rugged granite face of a remote mountain to the momentary darkness of spring clouds racing over an endless sea of bunchgrass prairie is an effortless shift in time for one who remembers well.

Donald Edward Sheldon was born in Mt. Morrison, Colorado, on November 21, 1921. In 1923, the family moved to Wyoming.

Sheldon's world then consisted of a small ranch--a few hundred acres ...

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (May 15, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312853378
• ISBN-13: 978-0312853372
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful adventure, May 7, 2000

By 

William E Jacobs - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story (Paperback)

The true story of Don Sheldon, one of Alaska's great bush pilots. You will fly with Don as he rescues people stranded in the bush, lands on glaciers on the flanks of Mount McKinley, lands on rapids in a float plane to rescue military personnel and yes the occasional crash landing. You also learn about some of the mountain climbing expeditions and geographic surveys which Don flew support for. The descriptions of the land, the people and wildlife of Alaska are fantastic. You will come away feeling you have been there. A great story not just about aviation but about how one man made his dream of living on a frontier come true

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read if you are a pilot or mountain climbing fan., August 23, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Adams Mills, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story (Paperback)

I must have stumbled into this book 20 years ago, and loved it, recommended it and gave it as gifts. I had a in-active pilots license then. I purchased a plane and started flying again, 10 years ago. I re-read it, loved it , recommended it and gave it as gifts. Because of this "bush" flying, I changed planes and started doing this type of "off-airport" flying. My wife ( flying is not her bag) read it this spring and suggested that we fly our little two seater to Talkeena from Ohio, and make a three week vacation there. We just got back, and I've ordered 6 more books for gifts. We got to meet Don's wife and grand daughter, and landed and camped beside his old Aeronca sedan that he used in the famous river canyon rescue. Read this book, it might change your life.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very compelling book if you enjoy Alaska aviation., December 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story (Paperback)

I have personally visited Talkeetna(the town of Don Sheldon's home) during my tenure on the US Army's High Altitude Rescue Team(79-82) as well as the places described in the book, including the landing sights on Mt. McKinley where Mr. Sheldon conducted his various climbing operations. The book is an insight to what a bush pilot had to endure in order to accomplish the flights in the harsh Alaskan environment. There are several examples of humorous incidents such as the rather large lady Mr. Sheldon rescued as well as the horrific crashes he miraculously survived. Mr. Sheldon help pave the way for other bush pilots through his common-sense approach to flying, while at the same time having an extremely high respect for the Alaskan wilderness. Mr. Grenier done an excellent job in exposing the aviation legend for which the skill of all bush pilots are measured. This book also looks inside Mr. Sheldon's personal life with his wife and children, as well as the personal relationships he had with his fellow pilots, the Alaskan climbing community, the US Government and his friends. His compassion for life and his commitment to his family elevated him to an icon status as a symbol of what Alaska was all about during his life. I have read this book more than a dozen times because it is an example of what a person should strive to accomplish in the short period of time that each of us have on this earth. I will again read this book with the same amazment I had the first time I opened the cover.