Two historians recently compiled a list of the top 100 bush pilots from Alaska's past at least 25 had been killed in air crashes.īush pilots like Don Sheldon, naturally are better off than their predecessors. In a retrospective book about bush pilots, Harmon Helmericks, himself a part-time Alaskan bush pilot, writes that "none of the pilots ever got rich, most of them went broke eventually, a very few made it all the way through and were able to retire modestly, some drifted into other fields - but most of them died trying." Any exaggeration is slight. They face the constant danger that each landing may be their last. Bush pilots will land almost anywhere - on sand bars, glaciers, ice floes, beaches, lakes, pastures, graveyards or ball fields. Hence, it's up to the pilots to service homesteaders, miners, trappers, hunters, fishermen, mountain climbers and others with essentials and luxuries, ranging from dogsleds and dynamite to tobacco and tomatoes. Since the early 1920's, Alaska's bush pilots-they number about 700 now-have tenuously linked together this far-flung land mass where 300,000 people are scattered over 586,000 square miles.Įven today, roads and trails in Alaska total a mere 6,800 square miles. Lithe and wiry, 49-year-old Don Sheldon belongs to a brash breed who challenge, in flimsy flying machines, some of the world's most volatile weather and desolate terrain. To land again, the ministers had to hang out the door in human-chain fashion in order that one of them could hold the damaged ski in place. Or the time Don hit a stump and broke a ski on a takeoff with three ministers as passengers. Eventually, though the detail were clarified, and mother and child did fine. A radio operator was relaying advice from a physician, but at times the transmissions were so garbled so Don didn't always get the directions straight. The problems were more mechanical than physical. Or the time he helped deliver a baby on a flight to Anchorage, one of the few births ever recorded in a single-engine plane. But I didn't realize I was so high." He tumbled 40 feet to the ground and walked away. "I was upside down, drowning in gas", Don recalls. The impact, though, destroyed the craft, knocking off the engine and folding the other wing. The plane spun groundward and crashed-fortunately, in a clump of trees. "They don't fly well with one wing," he explains. It has been a routine run-not like the time the left wing of his plane folded back at 1,500 feet. He taxis the plane to the door of a yellow and brown house located smack in the middle of "Beautiful Down-town Talkeetna," as a nearby sign informs.ĭonald Edward Sheldon, one of Alaska's most celebrated bush pilots is home. "We missed the big ones," the pilot advises, referring to potholes rather than moose, who have kept their distance. The plane's skis gently touch down on what turns out to be another snowy runway amid a cluster of cabins. He veers away from the inviting lights and noses the small plane down in a dark void. "We'll take the other runway-for convenience sake, "casually comments the pilot, Don Sheldon.
Nearly 40 minutes and 90 miles of wilderness away from Anchorage, the runway lights of an airstrip clearly emerge in the blackness.
With a raucous whine, the single-engine ski-equipped plane pierces the moonless night. Alaska, don sheldon, talkeetna, plane crash, history, ,ĪN ALASKA BUSH PILOT RISKS LIFE AND LIMB TO HELP RESCUE OTHERS
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