Reviews for Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story

The average rating for Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-10 00:00:00 Shaun Hutchinson Don Sheldon's skill as an Alaskan bush pilot is the stuff of legends. His stories left me gaping with amazement that he survived such harrowing adventures! Try landing on crevasse-ridden high-altitude tiny spots of glacier with swirling winds, or landing on a river and floating backwards though the rapids to reach the stranded Army scouts - three times! The interactions with the Denali mountain climbers is fascinating as well. They came from all over the globe and faced incredible adversity and weather - just as Sheldon did when he initially dropped them off on the mountain, picked them up after an ascent, or had to rescue them! Don Sheldon is a pilot's pilot and a hero. Read the book!

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-18 00:00:00 Andrea Adams Before he started flying lessons, my dad bagged Don Sheldon's groceries when he came into Anchorage. He always tipped despite Safeway's policy against it. That is my tenuous third-person connection to the romance and daring of Alaska's wilder frontier days. This book was obviously written by a big fanboy. There is not the tiniest breath of criticism. I'm not an airplane person, but there are stories in here like, damn, even *I* can tell this was a completely unnecessary risk to take. Enough so, it made me wonder if having lost his parents as a child and flown a bunch of combat missions in WW2'maybe Don gave less weight to the importance of staying alive. Author says more than once that Don Sheldon prided himself on never having lost a passenger (loads of wrecks though!) and also, that seems like a low standard?? Then again, flying was pretty nuts back then. Fun read for all the Alaska history. Amazing how much flying he did on Denali with climbers, and how much death he saw because of it. Lots of folks "assaulting" and "attacking" the mountain from new angles, in new seasons, and then falling into crevasses or freezing to death in a storm etc., etc. What a weird nihilistic hobby.