New York, 1974, 1st edition. 256 pp, illustrations. Exciting stories of Don Sheldon, famed Mt McKinley and Alaskan bush pilot. DJ, Near Fine.
Perhaps nowhere else on earth is there still a breed of daring, rugged individualists to match the bush pilots of Alaska. And Don Sheldon, one of the few pilots who make high-risk mountai flying a full-time job, is a legend among this special group.
Not even the most inventive adventure-fiction writer could improve on some of Sheldon's exploits. In the Devil's Canyon episode, to name just one, Sheldon lands his floatplaine in a river and allows the racing current to carry him backward through raging rapids to save the lives of a stranded team of army scouts. There was no reason to believe that it could be done --- that he and his plane could survive the attempt --- and yet he repeats the hair-raisingly risky feat three times. A grateful U.S. Army presented Sheldon with a citation, one of several , for doing it.
Sheldon was among the first pilots to perfect mountainside glacier landings --- uphill, in crosswinds, on tiny patches of snow and ice where yawning crevasses lurk just below the surface. Flying teams of mountain climbers and scientists onto Mount McKinley, he has also repeatedly been the one who pulls them out when disaster strikes --- and in the swirling winds and numbing cold of McKinley, disaster strikes often.
Sheldon has been flying in the vicious weather and wild terrain of Alaska for more than three decades. Ernest Hemingway once defined courage as 'grace under pressure.' That kind of courage has become a daily routine for Sheldon, and it has repeatedly saved his own life and the lives of many others.
Today, our heroes are most often the products of technology, trained teams backed up by scores of specialists and banks of computers. Sheldon is a throwback to an earlier era of the lone individaul staking his life on his own skill and daring.
WAGER WITH THE WIND is not only a thrilling tale of adventure, it is also a testimonial to the indomitability of the human spirit.
