Don Sheldon and the Art of Landing on Ice
Near Talkeetna, Alaska
Before climbers could fly onto Denali, someone had to figure out how to land a plane on a glacier without dying. In Talkeetna, that someone was Don Sheldon. Born in Colorado in nineteen twenty one, Sheldon came north as a young man and flew combat missions over Europe during the Second World War.
Back in Alaska, he built Talkeetna Air Service and pioneered the technique of landing ski planes on the high glaciers of the Alaska Range through the nineteen fifties and sixties. He teamed with the mapmaker and mountaineer Bradford Washburn, flying him over the peaks for years while Washburn charted the range and Sheldon perfected the glacier landing. Sheldon is credited with early commercial flights to the Kahiltna Glacier.
He became famous for daring rescues, plucking stranded and injured climbers off the mountain in conditions that grounded everyone else. The United States Air Force honored him for his role in those rescues, and his exploits reached the pages of Life magazine. Remarkably, he is said never to have lost a client, though he wrecked a few planes.
Don Sheldon died of cancer in nineteen seventy five, at age fifty three, but the air taxi industry he helped invent still fills Talkeetna's skies.
