By Will Dabbs, MD
Back in the 1990s, I spent two years in charge of the U.S. Army’s High Altitude Rescue Team in Alaska. Our mission was to fly CH47D helicopters to the top of Mount McKinley, the highest point in North America, at the behest of the National Park Service to rescue injured mountaineers. This was hands-down the edgiest flying I have ever attempted.
We had everything in our favor, and it was still dicey every single time we went up on that rock. We flew massive twin-engine Chinook heavy-lift helicopters that each sported two engines, three redundant hydraulic systems, and highly-trained crews specifically prepared for this unforgiving environment. We also always flew in pairs. That way, if something went truly pear-shaped, there was always a second aircraft handy to pull a stranded crew clear of danger.
The HART mission involved flying to the top of that 20,310-foot mountain, fighting wicked mountain curl and unpredictable weather, and landing on broad, dangerous glacial fields striated with hidden crevasses. Our immensely powerful aircraft were stripped down to nothing more than crew and extra fuel, and they still maneuvered like big fat pigs at the top of the mountain. Being helicopters, these machines could at least theoretically hover if the snow and ice fell away underneath them. Now hold that thought…
The Origins of Mountain Flying
All amazing things start someplace. Nowadays, an airplane trip across the Atlantic Ocean involves little more than settling into your seat, fretting about the dearth of legroom, and trying to get some sleep. However, back in 1927 when Charles Lindberg did that for the first time solo, that guy had to stay awake managing his tiny little airplane alone for more than 33 hours straight. All the while, he was praying that he didn’t suffer some catastrophic mechanical failure or run out of fuel. Lindberg was the first. We are all beneficiaries of his indomitable, fearless pioneering spirit.
Similarly, flying airplanes on frozen glaciers at ridiculously high altitudes was pioneered by a single guy. Donald Edward Sheldon was born in November of 1921. Back in the 1950s, Sheldon took a tiny little two-seat Piper Super Cub up onto the side of Mount McKinley and landed there—repeatedly. With the benefit of hindsight, he had to use a two-seat airplane just to make space for his enormous testicles. That guy was a freaking legend.
The Terrain
Not meaning to seem overly simplistic, but airplanes need runways. Unlike the helicopters that I flew, airplanes demand a little space to accelerate on takeoff and decelerate upon landing. Most normal folks would look at a rocky crag like Mount McKinley and deduce that this was simply not an airplane-friendly sort of space. By contrast, Don Sheldon looked at the same thing and saw opportunity.
Glaciers are enormous, slow-moving bodies of ice. In some ways, they behave like conventional rivers. In others, they seem like something solid and more substantial. The physical attributes of these formations are what make landing on them in airplanes so profoundly dangerous.
Glaciers fill ravines and valleys and can be hundreds of feet thick. As they course around corners, the near edge compresses, while the far edge extends. That causes these glaciers to split along their depth, leaving gaping school bus-sized cracks often extending all the way to the rocky substrate underneath. Let a little snow blow across these things, and the surface can look deceptively smooth and substantial. However, drop yourself or your machine into one of them, and you are well and truly screwed. This was the very place Don Sheldon chose to take his pathetic little airplanes.
The Guy
Don Sheldon came into this world in Colorado but was raised in the wilds of Wyoming. At age 17, he made his way to Alaska and took a job working 16-hour shifts in the Step-and-a-Half Dairy seven days a week for $40 a month. He then joined up with a buddy, pooled the last $12 the two men had to their names, and scored a pair of one-way train tickets to Talkeetna in the Alaskan interior. That’s when World War 2 interrupted their plans.
Sheldon logged 26 missions as a B-17 tail gunner in Europe and learned to fly via the government’s Civilian Pilot Training Program. After the war, he bought a military-surplus airplane and headed back up to Talkeetna to make his fortune. Along with business partner Stub Morrison, Sheldon established Talkeetna Air Service out of the backwater Alaskan village of the same name.
Talkeetna Air Service
Sheldon crashed a plane or three and lost friends along the way. However, over time, he developed a reputation as the go-to guy for the jobs that nobody else could do. Flying insect-sized aircraft, Sheldon perfected the fine art of glacier landings and reading the utterly unpredictable and merciless Alaskan weather. While he kept Talkeetna Air Service afloat with charter and contract work, his greatest contribution was in saving people’s lives.
On February 4, 1950, a USAF C-47 cargo plane encountered heavy icing and severe turbulence en route between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The violence of the storm actually tore the tail off of the airplane at 12,000 feet. Of the 16 passengers and crew, six reached the ground alive via parachute. With no one else willing to fly in such vile weather, Don Sheldon launched in his Super Cub to help out.
The weather forced him down onto sandbars twice. You recall it was bad enough to tear the tail off of a C-47 Skytrain. When eventually Don spotted survivors, he placed a note in a brown paper sack, weighted it down with stones he carried for that purpose, and dropped it to direct the downed aviators to a small clearing nearby. He later returned with survival gear, food, and an Air Force flight surgeon, thereby saving the men’s lives.
After one crash into a lake, Sheldon pulled an injured friend out of their sinking plane, swam with him to a nearby island, and arranged the man in a sleeping bag before walking out for help. In 14 hours, he covered some 50 miles, staring down three grizzly bears and swimming the Susitna River along the way. His injured friend, Frank Moennikes, later understatedly described Sheldon as “a good man.”
The Rest of the Story
Sheldon strapped frozen corpses to the outside of his plane when they wouldn’t fit in the cabin. He landed in microscopic spaces when that’s what it took to get the mission accomplished. Sheldon ferried enough building materials up the Ruth Glacier to construct a hexagonal 14-foot survival shelter that is available for rent even today. Access is naturally by ski-equipped airplane.
Don Sheldon succumbed to colon cancer in 1975 at the age of 53. That guy packed more raw, unfiltered living into his short half century on this planet than most normal men could do in 10 times that. In the annals of aviation, there are those of us who flew in Alaska, and then there are true Alaskan bush pilots. Don Sheldon was the archetype.
