Cabin Overlooks Spectacle of Icy Grandeur

Perched on the southern flank of the Mt. McKinley massif is a snug shelter of glass and wood, a place with a view of one of the world’s most astounding outdoor scenes.

People come to the Sheldon Mountain House to climb the staggering heights of gray rock that ring Ruth Glacier, to ski or just to look and listen. They gaze at the intricacies of McKinley, North America’s tallest peak, and its cousins, Mt. Dan Beard and the ragged Rooster Comb. They soak up the silence of the twilight, hear the wind and the sliding snow.

The tiny, hexagonal cabin is a simple place in an extraordinary setting. It is a solarium when the sun beats through the large windows on five of its six sides. At 5,810 feet, it also is a shelter from the fierce storms of the Alaska Range.

Set in an amphitheater of ice with a clear view of the 20,320-foot McKinley summit, the house is half an hour from Talkeetna by airplane. One flies over the confluence of three rivers, miles of scrubby black spruce and brown tundra, dozens of ponds that are brown at first and then brilliant blue as the glacial moraine appears below. Toothy pinnacles jut toward the sky as the plane drones through a gorge.

The late bush pilot Don Sheldon designed Mountain House and supervised its construction in 1966. He owned five acres in the Ruth Amphitheater before it became part of Denali National Park and Preserve.

The shelter was built for the use of mountaineers, photographers and sightseers.

“It’s been booked solid for the last five or six years,” says Roberta Sheldon, who was the radio operator when her husband landed ski-equipped airplanes on Ruth Glacier. “It’s been gradual, just like the growth of the tourist industry in Talkeetna.”

The house sits on a jagged outcropping about 100 feet above a snowfield that serves as an airstrip.

“The glaciers are moving and changing,” Sheldon says. “It was hard to find a stable place to build the house.”

Once built, however, the 196-square-foot structure stood up to 20 years of harsh weather and seasonal use.

A night’s lodging and wood for the stove cost $65; an outhouse stands 50 yards away.

The house is furnished with four cushioned benches that double as beds. Visitors are expected to bring sleeping bags and their own food, although previous occupants have left supplies--cereal, canned stew, four kinds of mustard, pancake mix and real maple syrup.

Packed along two walls of the single room are a wok and more kitchen equipment than many homes can claim.

There are things to read in this mountain studio, as well. Books and magazines line part of a shelf, along with Scrabble and other games. There is a chin-up bar fashioned from a stick of firewood. A mountaineer’s carbine and nylon webbing hang from the sloped ceiling.

Except for the tour planes coming and going below, this would be an isolated place. At the height of the summer season, light planes carrying sightseers to 10-minute stops on Ruth Glacier land here several times an hour.

Noise echoes from one ridge to another as the planes come and go. With the snow acting as a brake, pilots can land in one-fourth the space needed for takeoff.

Users of the Mountain House over the years have included organized mountaineering groups. Genet Expeditions of Anchorage rented the place during the month of May for several years, with the house serving as a base of operations and clients sleeping in tents nearby.

“It was nice to be able to dry out gear,” said Mike Howerton, Genet Expeditions general manager and a guide. “It just made for a more comfortable recuperation area.”

The house also has served as a base for mountain rescue teams.

Howerton warned that precautions adequate for many other cross-country ski areas aren’t enough here. He advises skiers to rope themselves together in case one falls into a crevasse while crossing the snow.

“It’s a hassle, but skiing roped is the only way to go up there,” Howerton says. “It’s a place where you have to be very careful.”