Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story

Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story

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 James Greiner's Wager with the Wind to learn how a hero was born, and also how he made his courageous journey to the unknown skies of dealing with cancer. “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 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. James Greiner is an author of children's books. Published credits of James Greiner include Rebelde Con Causa/Taking Charge and  Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story . Wager with the Wind The Don Sheldon Story By James Greiner St. Martin's Griffin Copyright © 1982 James Greiner All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312853372 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 sou