Roll Call Alaska 2015

PA12DRVR wrote:
As a kid, one of the puddle-jumping trips (in the C-180) with the old man was from Los Anchorage - Talkeetna - Brushkana Creek - Paxson. . . . Then Dad took us back to the strip (it was a short walk then) where he chased down some guy named Don and, from a kid's perspective, argued about where to go/how to get there. We then flew over the Denali Highway and landed on the road at Brushkana where we spent another few days fishing.

We stayed at the Talkeetna Motel for a week that same summer we flew out of the Denali Highway fish camp. Back then, if I remember correctly, Don Sheldon's Talkeetna Air Service was the only air taxi equipped to land on the glaciers of Mt. McKinley. I also remember that he died only a couple of years after we worked there, but not in a plane crash like so many of the other pioneering bush pilots.

There was a wonderful photo exhibit at the Anchorage Museum in the summer of 2013 about the pioneering bush pilots in Alaska and their work for mining companies and various government survey teams from the '20s to the '50s. One of the most interesting parts of the exhibit was that, during WWII, the U.S. Army wanted no part of those pioneer bush pilots in the Air Corps, despite their experience in negotiating Alaska's weather and terrain. And that many more Air Corps pilots in Alaska lost their lives due to weather conditions than to combat. For bureaucratic ineptness, that ranks right up there with the Navy's refusal to implement the convoy system along the American East and Gulf Coasts for the first year of the war.

Incidentally, Don Sheldon was born about 5 miles from my current house and in the same year that my Dad was born. My Dad was also a pilot, but a WWII B-24 bomber pilot in the Pacific, not an Alaska bush pilot. Unfortunately, Dad never flew a plane again after 1946, unlike your father.

BTW, do either you or Joe B. remember a fishing guide on the Susitna in the early '70s with an airboat? Seems like I remember that the fish camp we stayed at on the Denali Highway had one that the owner brought in from the Everglades. I think he used it to get off the Big Su into some of those pothole lakes by crossing the muskeg in his boat. Or maybe I am just dreaming--40 years does funny things to "memories"!

When we were in Talkeetna in 2013, Talkeetna Air Service was still going strong. And it was still just a short walk to the airfield from our RV park!