Talkeetna

I, um, I think the areas where there wasn't really stretches of trail and it was more just had a, uh, back country vibe where the kind of linear or visual GPX file I could have found wasn't necessarily the best way to go about doing it.

Those areas were the coolest and just the glaciated areas like the, uh, I guess the Chugach as well as the Talkeetnas, where there's just whole glaciers.

You know, seeing a glacier in the summer, being like, it's July, big-ass piece of ice.

Isn't that something?

The lowest point on the trail happened in the Talkeetnas, in the rain, beside a river that had become impassable.

What pulled him out of it was a sign on a mountaineering hut.

Take us to your lowest moment on the Alaska Long Trail.

But despite some discussions between the park and the Air Force and the Alaska Rescue Group, the Air Force just said, we're not going to fly in these conditions.

There was a well-known glacier pilot out of Talkeetna named Don Sheldon who flew when people didn't fly.

He rescued rescuers.

He was the man that you went to if you needed to get somewhere in an airplane.

I'm Josh Frederico.

This episode is a 1970s recording by Don Sheldon, a bush pilot who operated Talkeetna Air Service and flew hunters, climbers, photographers, and others to remote places and was especially known for developing a method for landing on glaciers.

In this recording, Don Sheldon records himself telling two stories, one involving a 1965 hunt with an alcoholic and somewhat eccentric millionaire, and another with a plane crash during a fishing trip a little ways from Talkeetna.

This recording is part of the Tanana Yukon Historical Society Collection, recording number 76-54-06 in the University of Alaska Oral History Program.

Here's Don Sheldon.

We proceeded into the deep heart of the Iron Mountains.

Mountain sheep were much in evidence.

The area is about 15 to 70 miles east to southeast of Talkeetna.

The only reason we know about it is because he never came back.

On May 27th, 2020, Nathan Campbell, a 41-year-old husband and dad from Wasilla, hires a charter plane out of Talkeetna to fly him to Cary Lake, just a little northwest of Denali, and drop him there for the summer.

During the flight, he tells the pilot he plans to spend the summer looking for the Dark Pyramid.

Pilot says it looked like Nathan had the right gear and enough food to last him for the summer, so he says goodbye and I'll pick you up on September 15th.

He found his way to Alaska in the early 1940s, the way a lot of young men found their way to wild places back then, by following the work and the restlessness that comes when a man hasn't yet found the thing he was built to do.

He found it in Talkeetna.

Talkeetna, Alaska, for those who haven't been there, sits at the junction of three rivers about 100 miles north of Anchorage, right at the edge of where the world decides to get serious.

The Alaska Range rises out of the flat to the north, and Denali, the Great One, anchors it all at 20,310 feet above sea level.

It is the highest peak in North America.

Don Sheldon looked at that and thought there had to be a better way.

He had learned to fly during the war.

He came back to Talkeetna and started flying for anyone who needed it.

And, but yeah, I mean, it, it plays in your mind.

And, you know, I was telling you that there's a cemetery in Talkeetna, which is the town that you kind of fly out of to get up into base camp where anybody that has died on Denali, if their families are okay with it, they bury them there in the cemetery.

So we went to go to that cemetery and just kind of bear respects and, Really humble ourselves and remind ourselves how dangerous the mountain is, how many folks' lives that it claims, and to really treat it with respect, which you need to do with every mountain.

But with something like Denali, it's super important.

one man the climbers trust with their lives on approach and evacuation.

His name is Don Sheldon, and he operates out of a gravel strip alongside the Susitna River in a town called Talkeetna.

Population, not many.

I'm Tail Dragger.

He was born in Dubois, Wyoming in 1921.

He came north as a young man, the way a lot of people came north in that era, looking for something bigger than what the lower 48 could offer.

He learned to fly during the war years, earned his certificate, and eventually settled in Talkeetna when Talkeetna was barely a dot on any map worth consulting.

The strip at Talkeetna back then was not paved.