Wager with the Wind by James Greiner is the story of Don Sheldon, a famous Alaskan bush pilot who basically invented glacier flying in Alaska. The book is a quick read and is filled with stories that make your jaw drop. I cannot believe how dangerous that flying was and the fact that Sheldon got taken out by cancer vs an airplane is surprising.
My favorite story involved landing on a river and back taxiing through a rapid to pick up stranded boaters. The impressive part was that he had to do the run multiple times to pick everyone up!
Sheldon started the Talkeetna Flying service and spent a considerable amount of time flying climbers onto the flanks of Denali. I never realized how many shuttle runs it took to get a group established at base camp and the book has some great climbing stories woven into the climbing tales.
My highlights:
“The standard practice those days was to get a head start on the mining season, which begins in June, by moving freight and spare parts to the mines before they were really workable. For the cross-country haul of 50 to 55 miles, Caterpillar tractors, horse-drawn wagons, dogsleds, and packboards were used, and the caravans made noisy and colorful progress as they left town for Cache Creek and the Fairview.”
On August 30, at 6:00 P.M., he shouldered a 70-pound pack and departed the Jenkins Mine in a heavy downpour of late summer. It took two round trips, some ten miles over the soggy, rough trail through the spruces, to get all of his belongings to the rendezvous point, a place called the Elwell Location. At two in the morning, shortly after Sheldon’s last trip, Dease materialized out of the darkness.
Unknown to Sheldon, old man Jenkins, along with his wife and Joey Burtel, were past the making of plans for an optimistic future, for they had been bludgeoned to death at the mine near Cottonwood Creek.
“They looked to me like they came from Mars, and all I could ever think was how much better that kind of travel in this area of no roads was than beating yourself to death on a pair of snowshoes.”
That the great slough-pocked Minto Flats was the epicenter of the granddaddy of all muskrat populations is still proven each spring when the entire Athabascan community sallies forth on a rat hunt that knows no equal.
they soon adopted the Indian method of using a .22 caliber rifle. A carefully placed head shot was mandatory for a salable pelt
“About 13 feet of the fabric let go at the cap strip on the right wing. The stuff trailed aft and eventually fouled and jammed my right aileron. I had an interesting time getting her down and eventually landed in a hayfield on a dude ranch near the settlement of DuNoir, Wyoming. There was nothing for it but to temporarily recover the wing section that was damaged, so I got some burlap bags, rib-stitched ’em into place, and began to think about more permanent repairs.”
During later years when he had to fly all-day schedules, Sheldon formed the somewhat unique habit of letting whoever was his right-seat passenger “steer” the plane while he caught ten winks.
Sheldon remembers his 50-mile cross-country “stroll” in minute detail. “I traveled lightly, with a knife, wool shirt, raincoat, and some moose jerky. As dusk approached, a light rain began to fall. I found Portage Creek in high water, bank to bank, and as I swam across the mouth, the current carried me 70 yards down the Susitna River before I got back to the rock wall. Finally, I made a detour up steep rock, which was tundra covered with devil’s club and thick alders. Then I smelled bear.” Ahead of him, and almost beneath his feet, a sleeping grizzly exploded from the brush and crashed through the undergrowth. Cursing under his breath about close calls, the pilot continued fighting his way through the brush.
Needless to say, I could’ve used some sleep, but I’d learned from past experience that I could go for several days and nights without it.”
“Needless to say, we corrected the problem of making the flares light and burn more reliably. I took off and made the final three landings, which continued through the night in light snow and rain, without incident.”
Due primarily to Sheldon’s growing ability to handle such landings with the almost casual finesse that would become a hallmark of his later mountain operations, all of the landings on the 18-percent grade below the precipitous icefall were made without incident.
It was a labor of love for the aviator, who shuttled most of the lumber and materials to the location in his Cessna 180. Some 16-foot-long pieces of lumber were brought to the site tied to the Super Cub. A newly appointed inspector for the CAA reprimanded Sheldon for these flights: “If I ever see you hauling even a set of moose horns on the outside of your Cub, I’ll revoke your ticket.”
Sheldon’s own definition of his prowess was and is considerably more prosaic: “Anybody can fly an airplane. You just jump in, crank her up, and get with it.”
Luck is a factor that most people prefer to minimize in the interests of image, whether they fly an airplane or not. Sheldon believes that most good luck is the natural product of advanced planning and careful recognition of contingent factors, two of which take absolute precedence—mechanical condition of the airplanes and
I now planned to cross the range at Kahiltna Pass, and when I arrived there, I was shocked to find that I was flying backward, with the airspeed redlined at 192 miles per hour.
Englehorn rested on his crutches and looked past Sheldon as he remembered. “I guess you probably think it was the pain,” he grinned, “and sure as hell, I’ll never forget it, what with my bones crushed clean to my hips. But the worst part was what that damned cook did to me. They no more’n got the Cat off when he comes a-runnin’ with a fifth of cheap Scotch, which he forced me to drink, and there ain’t nothing that I hate worse’n Scotch.”
