January 7, 2020 • 44 mins
Nearly three quarters of a century ago, an intrepid adventurer named Don Sheldon found an isolated glacier ten miles from the summit of Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, built a mountain house on it, and invited fellow mountaineers to come visit. Since then, the family has taken the once-in-a-lifetime Alaskan hotel experience to a whole new level — where guests experience meteor showers, ice blizzards, avalanches, and unfettered views of aurora borealis from a state-of-the-art chalet in the middle of nowhere.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It is the coolest thing watching guests get off of
that helicopter. They are stunned into silence, their gob smacked,
their eyes are bag their mouths are gaping in awe
of like what just happened? Where did I just fly?
What did I just see? And now I've just landed? Where?
And I feel like you know, I mean a James
Bond movie. Welcome to A Way to Go, a production
of I Heart Radio and Fathom. I'm Jaral and Gerba
(00:26):
and I'm Pavio Rosatti. For much of the nineteen fifties,
the mountaineer and surveyor Don Sheldon explored and matt parts
of the Unknown Alaska Range and what was then the
territory of Alaska. Under the Homestead Act, he secured a
nearly five acre parcel of isolated Rock Peak, ten miles
from the summit of Denali. He decided to build a
rustic shelter on it and invited fellow mountaineers and adventurers
(00:48):
to come visit. Today, on the show, Pavia and I
are joined by Rob and Martie Sheldon, who a generation
later opened a high end five bedroom lodge on the
glacial island, accessible only by helicopter. Or plane at the
Sheldon shellet, data, sell coverage, and internet do not exist.
Every single piece of lumber, every drawer pole, and every
(01:09):
Alaskan gig crab leg is flown into a tiny airstrip
established by the Elder Sheldon. If it sounds incredible and
slightly crazy and almost nearly impossible, it kind of is
just a little bit crazy. But welcome to the podcast.
Marnie and Rob, thank you, Jarlyn and I are really
happy to have you here. Um, can we just start
(01:31):
at the beginning and ask why you guys decided to
go through the trouble of you know, doing something so
big in such an utterly remote, hard to access, an
untouched place. Sure, so this is really honoring my father
and my mother's legacy first and foremost. But part of
that legacy also was to have a good platform at
(01:54):
which exploration could continue both above and below the glacier,
and hopefully we get into below the glacier during this conversation,
as well as a good place for folks to mobilize
for their own explorations just as individuals. Uh, it's through
that that we're drawn closer to our special places and
we learn to have value them. And so uh the
(02:15):
additional h luxury accommodations, accommodate families. Hopefully multigenerational families will
come and and bring their their children and and have
a better tie in with nature and understanding the value
of these places. Let's set the scene for our listeners here.
How many bedrooms are we talking about? How do people
get there? Like? Walk me just through the super quick
(02:36):
practicalities of how I get here, super quick practicalities. You're
gonna land in Anchorage, Alaska. We're gonna have the helly
meet you a Anchorage, or you're gonna take a beautiful
train ride to Tauquitna. We can pick you up there.
We'll take copter Halley for our train ride between Anchorage Tauquita.
It's a gorgeous ride. And I'm going north in just
straight north, straight and right north, and then the helicopter
(02:58):
will go from Tauquitna. You've just taken train. It's a
beautiful ride up. We meet you there. Now you hop
on the helicopter. Helicopters a half an hour ride in gorgeous, gorgeous,
breathtaking on spurring scenery. That's the only way in. You
can't dry, can't walk you can't walk. There is this
(03:19):
thing called the ruth ice Fall. So okay, it's a glacier. Right.
You get to the edge of the Dunale and there's
this massive glacier that like a highway, an ice highway,
all the way up. Well, as it bends and turns
around the mountains, it cracks open, and it's these caverns
that are hundreds or two hundreds feet across that you
cannot get through. I'm already seeing the movie version where
(03:44):
somebody tries to cross their right and yeah, right, so
you land right at this shelle. So literally you could
land in flip flops or tennis shoes or high heels
if you really wanted to be that kind of perfect.
So it sounds simple, just the fly a tradehad helicopter
landing into a place where no one can get you
incirect it's really a citadel of mountains, the Great Gorge,
(04:09):
which is as deep as a Grand canyon, which you
fly through just to get there. If the ice ever
melts out, by the way, it will be twice as
deep as a Grand canyon. Uh. That's the only simple
way and sort of speak, other than flying up and
over these gigantic mountains, rock faces over a mile tall.
It's just really gives perspective on life and our place
in it. And the chalet is the only thing that
(04:31):
you can see that humans can inhabit. So we're what
does it look like inside? Wow? It is very uh,
simple but refined decre because as we were designing it,
the whole idea was the view is out the windows.
It wasn't to be gaudy inside, it wasn't to be
overdone inside. So it's simple, elegant decor that allows that
(04:55):
all that to fade the background because what you're doing
is looking out the windows every second of the moment
that you're there. And the shape of the of the
lodge accommodates that. Yes, it's it's a hexagon, and four
of the six walls, which is a hexagon. Four the
six walls are effectively gigantic plate glass windows capable of withstanding,
(05:15):
by the way, hurricane cap five winds for an entire week.
And do you ever get hurricane capt five wings in Alaska?
So we're located at latitude sixty three degrees north, which
is very high up on the planet, and then we're
at elevation of about another six thousand feet and that
combination is unparalleled for lodging either in the Northern or
(05:38):
Southern hemisphere. And so there actually is a threat that
the jet stream could dip down and the jet stream
does move that quickly, and so it's a good thing
that we've designed the building uh for those sorts of
of of forces, because it could happen someday, but it's
highly unlikely and has not happened to date. Well, it
hasn't in our neck of the woods. Kind of like
staying at the Sheldon Shelley is like being in a
(06:00):
spaceship orbiting the planet. It's like you are you are alone.
You better have everything figured out ahead of time. I
love it. Well, you as a guests don't have to
have everything figured out ahead of time because it's all
taken care of for you. Chef concierge to mountain guides,
and the guides are there to explore the thirty five
square mile Don Sheldon Amphitheater, which is our playground, so
(06:21):
glacier trekking, sledding, cravas exploration, if you want to rock climb,
we have that available ice climbing in the summertime as well.
So there's all these adventures that most people, I probably
would venture guests, have never done before in their entire life.
And so you you get to be a mountaineer ish
while you're there, because you're on ropes and harnessed teams
(06:44):
as you're trekking out across the glacier for safety factors.
I mean, you know, you just it's it's a whole
new territory for so many people being what does it
feel like to be out on a glacier in silence? Well,
I imagine that even if even if you have done
these things before, I've dogs flitting, hiking, it still feels
completely different. Yeah, what we've been able to do with
(07:07):
Sheldon Chalet is what used to require you to be
an expert mountaineer willing to risk your life because we
have these wonderful accommodations, which by the way, reflect the
original design plans from nineteen sixty eight. We kind of
skipped over that, but we've built effectively what my father
and mother envisioned. But we we've we've taken that reduced
(07:30):
the risks of overnight ing and knowing that you're going
to be in a secure place. By the way, the Nunatalk,
the rock outcropping out of the glacier titanium iron oxide.
And because that's it's super strong and that's why it's
not been smashed by the glacier. Uh. And so you
sit a top about three vertical feet over the glacier
on the top of this Nuna talk. It drops off vertically,
(07:53):
very rapidly right below you. Just outside the doors. Of course,
we have all sorts of railings and those sorts of things.
But but but while you're there, you get the sense
that this is not your ordinary place. And that is
why one of the first things we get to do
is teach folks about mountaineering school and walk them through
(08:13):
those courses so they become more comfortable naturally, and and
then we begin the adventures out on the glaciers. So
so it's it's really in in that vein that we're
able to get folks primed. Okay, so I'm already packing
my bags. But um, Marty, you mentioned flip flops, but
this does not sound like a shorts and a T
shirt type of setting. Am I wearing layers? And I'm
(08:35):
am I is it? Mostly this is a snowscape that
I'm saying. So sad rock rock climbing, but you're also
talking a lot about ice. Correct, So it's it's even
in August. No, See, that's where it's so amazing because
in the summertime you can be out on deck. So
we have like the chalet, the deck and all of
that where you could literally hang out and flip flops,
(08:57):
t shirts, shorts. I've done it, We've done it, We've
been there. It's hot because you have this constant barrage
of sunlight during the day, temperatures rise, you're baking in
the sun. If people want to cover, it's because you're
trying to protect yourself from this. It's like too much sun.
So that's where you so But when you're out on
glacier the minute we leave the property, that's when you're
(09:19):
fully you know, layered up because you're on snow. There's
never a time where you're not on snow out. I
don't ever see grass from the deck. I'm looking at snow. Well, yes,
we do have little well all right, tops of grass,
but it's not like I'm laying out of picnic correct. Correct.
How have we talked about how many rooms you have,
because this is we have not but there's only five
(09:42):
bedrooms so very small intimate experience, and you typically rent
it out for do you rent the whole place out
or can I take one room and then just get
to know the couples who happened the two different right,
we do it two ways. You can do a shared
experience where you would come and rent one room and
then you may be you know, another person from an
other place in the States or around the world, could
so you share that experience with other people in those
(10:04):
five bedrooms. Or you can have it all to yourself privately.
So we run two different ways of those trips because
not everybody wants it all by themselves, and and probably
not everybody can afford this, because I'm guessing this is
not this is not a youth hostel that we're staying in. No,
it's not a youth hostel by any stretch of the imagination.
You know, I'm fond of saying. In Alaska, at the
moment that you step onto an aircraft for any kind
(10:27):
of excursion, you no longer entry level market. And so
even just to stay at the historic mountain House, which
my father built in nineteen sixty six and is still available,
that's a do it yourself if you don't have glacial experience.
Were required that people hire a guide even in that situation,
which is incrementally costly, but that's very reasonable. That's about
a d five dollars a night per person for for
(10:51):
up to four people. But that's the Historic Mountain House.
Do it yourself, Um, a guide will cost somewhere around
five hundred dollars a day. What we provide at Sheldon
Chalet are too professional, guy. It's a cocierge and a
(11:13):
personal chef to take care of your every need. And
for that, yes, the price point is quite a bit
higher than the Historic Mountain House. It's a new kind
of luxury though it's such a unique experience that you're
not getting anywhere else. It is so unique, Gerlyn, thank
you because Alaska number one has never seen anything like this.
And I'll be as bold as like really the world
(11:35):
if I can, because you can be on glaziers, you
can be elsewhere, but nowhere has this setting that we're
offering in the Don Sheldon Amphitheater. And it goes all
the way back to his dad in the fifties mapping
the Alaska Range with Bradford Washburn seeing this little rock
outcropping they kind of use it as their control point.
And you know all that you said, why this place,
(11:56):
why here? Why? Now? Well, we can't even really take
the credit for that is it was his dad who
had the vision way before we did, had plans drawn up,
plans dated nineteen sixty eight for this current what we're
now calling Sheldon Shellet. We found them buried in the
family archives. We found audio tapes of his dad describing
(12:20):
what he wants to do with the property, further developing
it with another structure. His dad was such a visionary
before his time, but unfortunately he passed away of cancer
really early in life and never got to see it
come through. So we pick it up in their honor.
So we're not we're not the wild crazy visionaries his
dad is. But I don't just say it came through
(12:41):
and you guys made it. So that's a whole other thing. Sorry, curiously, sorry,
just before we get off this topic. So he drew
up these plans in the nineteen sixties. This is like
jetson era, right, So so was the technology that he
was envisioning, like robots and things. And you know, nobody
would have thought about cell phones back they are but
I'm curious if he thought the tech what he thought there.
(13:03):
So if we would have built it back then as
a family, we would have replaced it already. So here's
here's why I know that. For a fact, in two
thousand and fifteen, very warm summer, guess what starts to
melt out of the ice on our property, insulated flow
floorboards and floor Joyce. My father had already started moving
(13:23):
the materials up there to build the original plans. We
did some stress testing calculations on the materials that were
up there. We would have replaced the whole whole shebang
by now, So instead I took the steel approach. I
want this to be multigenerational, for as many people to
enjoy this on a sustainable basis, uh as possible, And
(13:47):
that's why they do it yourself. Historic Mountain House really
sleeps for comfortable you can fit six and if you
really need to, but Sheldon shall I only only sleeps
ten people. Maximum is to do it on a sustainable
basis as possible, and the same goes for we only
want to build this once. We don't want to put
any additional emissions or anything else in the air, uh
(14:10):
more than needed and that's also why we believe we're
net carbon neutral. We have a two thousand year old
finish uh masonry heater in there at the two thousand
year old technology uh and that together in our yeah yeah,
well it's eight thousand pounds, so it's pretty impressive. Those
two things together offset or heating field consumption and and
(14:32):
so it's on a sustainable basis as possible. Because we
don't want to disrupt our neighbor, which is a national park.
They came to surround us in nineteen eighty joining in
the party up there in the Don Chelle Naphitheater. Because
the parks existed since nineteen seventeen, but it didn't include
the Summit of Denali. So when Congress expanded Dnally National
Park in the eighties, here it comes and surrounds us.
(14:54):
So we were kind of out there by ourselves, and
now it's national park the minute you step off. Can
you talk a little bit about some of the obstacles.
Some of the major obstacles were that of logistics, figuring
out how do we mobilize materials in and outmost effectively.
The biggest cargo we could take at a time was
what's called to havel an otter. Uh that's a Canadian
(15:15):
made aircraft. They can hold twenty pounds of flight. Many
days we would hauld forty five thousand pounds of materials
up there. That's handloaded on the otter and unloaded, and
then we would use a helicopter to sling things up
onto the Nuna Talk. Because the ice field around the
(15:37):
top of the Nuna Talk, while it was leveled during
my dad's days, it is subsumed three hundred vertical feet
since then. We still believe we have a thousand or
three thousand vertical feet left, and we're going to figure
out this next March, probably with some scientific experiments to
see if that's accurate. We're gonna map the amphitheater. No
one's ever done the bottom of the glacier. We know
what the top looks like really well, it's really flat. Um.
(16:00):
But in any event, we had to sling everything up
via helicopter, and so we had to be really thoughtful
about that. So we built everything down mountain on the
ground to begin with, to make sure we had all
of the parts and pieces, what could be segmented in
into larger pieces, what had to be broken down, when
has to be broken down that heat. That eight thousand
pound heater had to be broken down into components and
(16:21):
shipped down. Yeah, they were broken. It was broken down
into about fifteen pound components. I like the idea of
the baggage check. You know when you go to the
airport and they're like, you're a half pound over, that'll
bet dollars, Mr. Rosatti. So those races that you get
charged at the airport for your excess baggage are nothing
in comparison to what we were charged for every flight
(16:43):
just to get basic materials up there and including food
for our workers. Which how much how much did it
cost you to build this a lot? Okay? And how
much time did it take? So two years just to
put in this excellent base foundation. I mentioned that the
Nina talk is tite an m iron oxide, and we
did we know that because we tested it. It ended
up being some of the hardest toughest rock uh known
(17:06):
to the drillers in Alaska. They had to get special
bits to put our rods down into it. But it
took two years to get the foundation, the base foundation
to a competency that we're comfortable with because not only
does the building have to be rated for a tuner
mile narrow winds for up to a week, but it
has to be able to hang into the the the foundation,
(17:28):
and so it's literally anchored into the rock. We designed
it uh for a certain level of pounds per square inch,
and we ended up getting a hundred fifty percent of
that actually maxing out the equipment because the rock was
so competent. We were very excited about that. Did your
father did he know these kinds of things when he
(17:49):
picked this piece of land? What he just had a
good nose? I mean, it is the chances that you
wouldn't have been able to build anything on this property.
I don't see. My father knew the idea of you
can't do this. He literally invented skis together with my
maternal grandfather. There's an original tail ski up there. They
(18:11):
were hammering these things out and experimenting with their own
lives on the line of what would work to land
in snow at different altitudes. He operated the highest airport
in the world at fourteen thousand, three hundred feet for
quite some time on Denally to assist the Institute of
Arctic Biology so all of us could be warmer. Now,
a lot of the technology that the folks at Patagonia
(18:34):
and other clothing clothier's uh make came out of base
research from back then in the Donshelle Namphithory as well
as at fourteen thousand, three hundred feet at this Institute
of Arctic Biology High Airport. He did not know the
meaning of No, Okay, your dad is the Arctic Indiana Jones, No,
(18:57):
I've not heard that. He totally right. Don't the mcgiver too, Yeah,
but no. He was an incredible mechanic. No, you're on
a something. He was an incredible mechanic. Most folks don't
know this. He was the only person in the northwestern
United States as well as the territory of Alaska because
back then it was the territory of Alaska. He was
the only person that was rated to actually create aircraft.
(19:21):
It wasn't just pieces and those are. He could sign
off an entire new aircraft being rated, and there were
very few of those in the United States and the fifties,
yet he had that rating. So you will not a
hotelier before you started this project. So what's that transition
been like to suddenly have guests who are like, my
coffee is slashing our our guest coffee has ever slashed,
(19:47):
except maybe when they're on a ridiculously long half miles
letting run down the side of one of our our
ore are snow faces. But so it's it's been an
interesting transition because I still have one foot in the
world that I operate in, which is facilitating financing and
economic development in the high latitudes. So I get to
(20:07):
go of really fun, far off places where none of
the investment bankers want to go because you want to know,
it takes three days of their week just to get
there and get back, and no investment banker wants half
of their productivity to go away. So it's more important
to build communities than look at your bank account. And
(20:29):
that's part of what my family has always felt. In
the high latitude is anything above latitude sixty degrees north,
which is where anchorages and where Marnie and I split time.
You have to be flexible, and you have to be
willing to accept the challenge of the day and be
involved in more than one vocation. And so a Hotelierre
(20:50):
has been very exciting. It's been actually quite symbiotic if
you think about it. One of the things that we're
trying to do and build community. Is see more year
round employment. And what we're doing is a year round
opportunity on Tonally. By the way, until we built Sheldon Chalet,
only people have ever been on Tonally at least recorded
between September and February of throughout history only. And yes,
(21:16):
so the folks that are coming to visit us are
true pioneers in themselves. Well, but that that year round
operation that we have up there, and now we're finishing
up our second year, it allows people to have a
year round jobs, not just try to work for four
months in the year and the whole salary like you
have in so many resort places, and that builds families
(21:38):
and helps our local community. So where does the where
does your staff live? They when guests are there, When
guests are there there at the shelley, we have staff
quarters that are built underneath the helipad, So the helipad
offers underneath it staff quarters. There's a sauna for our guests.
And then on top of all that, we call it
the observation deck, so we'll put out that around deck
(22:00):
chairs and a firepit, so it kind of has all
these roles. So that's where they are. There's four there's
a chef. Okay, so that the staff you were talking about,
and then they have partners and kids, and they have
kids and partners. So the way they work life is
again we're not your traditional, like you said, resort where
people are coming and staying for a six week stint
(22:20):
and eight weeks stint. They come on and off the
mountain in between every guest stay, and I should say
in between every guest day. For example, we're coming into
a season right now in September where it's like boom
to a boom, boom boom. So we've rotated like okay,
you're here for about ten days and then the next
wave of staff will come in for ten days, so
they go back to their anchorage or tal quita. And
(22:42):
so like we have two different chefs, they fip flop,
we have two different concierge as they flip flop. We
have six guides. They all rotate through. And Robert's point,
who who makes the beds? So the concierge's part housekeeper.
She's kind of, you know, everything extraordinary. She's kind of
the mopper. She's pouring your coffee, she's pouring the wine.
She's the mom, the manager that is everything running smoothly.
(23:04):
But to Robert's point about just creating community, creating jobs,
allowing people to stay in the state, one of our
chefs grew up in Alaska. They're both Alaska's, but one
grew up in Anchorage, and you know, fell in love
with his chef world and came to the Culinary Institute
of America, got trained up, went then out on the
road with all these super mega name brand artists, um
(23:25):
you know, music, musicians, singers, Jack Johnson, all you know.
So but what he found though, is that I'm away
from a family. I have a boy and I want
to raise him and I don't want to be absent
from his life. So to come back to Alaska to
be inspired, to have a job where he can do
all the creativity they wants to do with his food
(23:46):
was challenging for him. So like the confluence of us
starting and him needing a role to be different than
out on the road and being, you know, a transient chef,
we come together. So now he's able to be an
Anchorage to be at home with his son, and then
he's up for a couple of days and he's back
down and he's up. So it's just been a really
cool transition for him and for us all at the
(24:08):
same time. Do you find that other people who are
interested in building things in Alaska come to I mean,
what you're doing, I imagine cannot really be replicated, But
does it inspire other people to do things like this?
Kind of just now seeing there's the first people looked
just like you guys are crazy what we do, It's
(24:31):
totally crazy. So we have we have beautiful remote places.
For example, there is a hot spring, So I kid
you not as straight out a Lord of the Rings.
It's on a cliff overlooking this incredible river. It's just
it's mind boggling. Is this in the park? You know,
it's another hour north of us by by by flight,
(24:51):
and this is something that guests do, that the concierge
ranges and the guides take you on. Is this how
how you're spending your days? Well, that would be an
added adventure. You have to pay extra for that. And
then not very far from there are sand duns that
no one has even as far as I know, photographed.
I talk. Yes, we have sand we have sand dunes
in Alaska as well. But my point is is we
(25:13):
have these incredible remote places, of which, of course someone
controls that land. And we've had these folks approach us saying, wow,
you just pulled off what everyone thought was impossible. Would
you think about developing our lands? And of course my
response is yes, because here's why Alaska does entry level
tourism really well for four months a year. But as
(25:33):
I mentioned before, in the moment you get in an aircraft,
you're in solid mid market and up. And these places
all need that sort of mindset of mid market tourism
in order for folks to be able to enjoy them
because the aviation gas or the jet A that goes
in the helicopters, that alone costs an arm and a leg.
And so we've been approached by i'll say innumerable folks
(25:57):
with incredible pieces of property, and yes, we're well on
the path to building out a network and that will
further assist in Here's another thing that then there's there's
a lot of naysayers in Alaska and I don't understand
why we used to have this incredible pioneering, inventive spirit
and it seems to be gone now. Well guess what.
(26:19):
There's folks that said, well, you'll never get Alaskans to
be at the level of cheffing and to be at
the budget, which, by the way, many of our our
guests have said, these are the best meals they've ever had,
or the or concierge being able to live up to
the standards of table service as well as take care
of the beds and everything else. And we've had comments
(26:40):
of can we please hire these folks away? At least
at least some of them have been polite enough to ask.
Others just offer jobs. But and then our guys the
same same situation. They're not only skilled in in our
errors but other high mountain areas of the planet. But
we have competent people that are at the top of
their game in all of these skill sets in Alaska,
(27:01):
and there's lots of them, and most of them have
to leave the state after the regular entry level tourists
season and go elsewhere, which is not conducive to family living,
much less a local economy. And so I am all
game to help develop and see more of these types
of places. BUI, yes, as well as at the mid market, though,
(27:24):
because a healthy economy services all levels of the market,
it's just like yes, yes, that's travel doesn't have to
be only expensive to be awesome, that's right, But it
is expensive even just in the mid market in Alaska.
And I I just want to say that piece of airplanes.
It's all because of those darned blasted aircraft. Get anywhere
without an airplane. So this is once in a lifetime
(27:47):
experience for most people. Can you walk us through abridged
version of perfect itinerary for guests, whether let's say you're
going to go up there, you're taking people for the
very first time, okay, perfect itinerary. So we're gonna launch
in the helicopter to Tauquitina midday, beautiful sunny day, and
(28:08):
you're landing at the chalet. It's exclusive. How we get
our guests in and out. Then you land at the
chalet and you're greeted by staff and everybody's out on
the deck receiving the helicopter in. It is the coolest
thing watching guests get off of that helicopter. They are
stunned into silence, their gob smacked, Their eyes are big,
their mouths are gaping in awe of like what just happened?
(28:30):
Where did I just fly? What did I just see?
And now I've just landed where And I feel like
you know, I mean a James Bond movie. So they
come inside and we have this gorgeous seafood extravaganza we
call it, with all the fresh Alaska seafood available for everybody,
and they're getting their bearings and they're settling in. Guides
are bringing baggage up to the room. Then we do
as staff orientation, not guest orientation with the staff so
(28:53):
that everybody is just aware of where you are and
just some safety protocols things to keep in mind. Now
it's evening and you're talking with the guides, Okay, what
are the adventures that I can go do? And we
we have all these amazing adventures. But the one thing
that is so important when we have guests up there
is nothing is decided until you're there in real time,
(29:15):
taking into account the weather, the glacier conditions, your stamn,
and how you're feeling. We've seen guests all right, I'm
gonna go, I'm gonna do their adrenaline junkies, and they're
going to go, you know, do everything, and they get
there and they're just so in awe. They're like, I'll
just watch the northern lights from here pretty much pretty much,
which are blue and purple by the way, with the
naked eye, which is not normal most places on the planet.
(29:37):
So now we've just witnessed all those beautiful shooting stars
and Aurora on that night. So you go to bed,
and if it's the show is still going on, you
can lay in bed and watch the show. Because as
you were saying, so many of the walls are just
glass windows. I designed it so that you can sit
in the middle of the building. And there's a really
important gentleman by the name of Jean Dejarlais who as
our partner and engineering, and he helped me make sure
(30:01):
that every angle that I wanted to get so you
can sit in the middle of the building and see
the sum of the dunale, which is unusual to get
all of those angles and all that geometry right, but boy,
did Jean help help me nail that. And if it
wasn't for Gene on all of that engineering, and another
gentleman named Hank Swan on all the logistics, it probably
would not be standing today. It took a whole team.
(30:22):
But anyways, all of that work goes into this this
client client guest experience. So morning next day you're waking
up you know, chef's got breakfast prepared made to order.
Maybe it's waves francherios, maybe it's smoked salmon, eggs, benedict,
whatever it is of every meal is locally sourced to
(30:43):
even in the middle of the winter. But keep going, honey,
So you enjoy your breakfast. And now it's time to
go out on glacier. So the first thing you're going
to do with our guides is go through a glacier school.
So it's what is it to be on a rope
team harnessed up together. There's a call signs if you
want to stop, if you want to go, if you
need to take a picture, all these YadA YadA, And
(31:05):
so that's about an hour it takes for everybody to
get comfortable being on that. It sounds so simple, but
there's little nuances when you're all roped together. And then
that we go out for adventure. So guides packed up
a gorgeous gourmet picnic that the chef is prepared. We're
trekking across the Amphitheater two miles and we're gonna go
up to a place called Michio's Peak. And in Michios
(31:28):
there's a beautiful saddle on snow, and that's where the
guides are going to set up this picnic, which gives
this view back down into the other side of the
Great Gorge that you just flew in the morning before,
the afternoon before, and as you're flying in in the helicopter,
now you're getting this unparalleled view in person, and you
feel like about as big as a speck of dust.
(31:49):
It is an extraordinary You're sitting on the edge of
the Grand Canyon. Effectively, that's how deep the Great Gorge is.
So so I'm now we've done this glacier trek and
it really does take all day. And now you're you're
coming back to the shale, and it's early evening, mid afternoon,
depending on how fast the teams are going back to
the sale. Now you want to take a sauna because
(32:10):
you just have this extraordinary experience and you kind of
works works some muscles and so now you're gonna get
a sauna before dinner. Then around the dinner table again,
now the guides are talking about the day and you're
sharing experiences and what you saw and experienced. And then
a lot of our guides have summoned to Nale, so
now the stories of their own personal climbs come out
of what they know in the knowledge of the mountains.
(32:30):
So it does become this learning cultural mountaineering experience all
wrapped up into it. Dawn's story starts coming out and
they start talking about that. Then day two, so now
we've gone to bed again. And now day two or
day no, now we're in a day three. Oh my gosh, exactly.
It just feeds right along Day three again a similar itinerary,
(32:53):
but you're going to a completely different place on the glacier.
So we're gonna and you don't have a care in
the world because you have not checked your phone, because
it takes those first two days to detox and that
reflex action that all of us have. I've resisted it
here just sitting speaking with you ladies, of grabbing my
phone and and and seeing by now you're really relaxed.
(33:16):
And this is why we require a three night minimum.
It's for everyone's own good, right. So let's say the
next day you're going to go out back to the glacier,
but this time the guys are taking you through these
ice caverns, so the cracks will open up and they've
set a course with they've drilled in and they've made
it all secure. So on your rope team, you're gonna
walk kind of through the course of this ice cave
(33:37):
and get to explore the inside or the underneath of
the belly of the glacier and it just these again
phenomenal huge caverns forty fifty feet tall, and you're bathed
in this blue light that's indescribable. It's it's there's there's
a presence there and there's actually a magnetic feeling just
to be in the amphitheater itself. Again, it's the citadel
(33:58):
of mountains. There's rock faces that are over twice as
tall the Birge Khalifa within just a couple of miles
of the chalet. But if it weren't for the twenty
thousand foot peak right behind it, Dunally, you would say, well,
those are really big. But then you see this huge summit.
But if there's this magnetism to them, are there other
sorry Gerlin, are there other people who are coming to
these ice caverns and glaciers or you've got it to
(34:21):
yourself as a matter of fact, why just because it's
because it's historically because you own them, it's inaccessible. We
don't own them there. Those are out in the national Park.
But the reason national Park you can't go so here
when people think they're coming to Dunali National Park, like
if you were just to show up in Alaska, you're
gonna go drive past the summit to the north side
(34:44):
and then take a ninety mile road in, so you're
on the ground and you're gonna end up in a
valley that you don't even see c Denale. We're on
the south side of the summit on the six thousand
foot elevation, so we're on the Mountains National Park or
on the ground looking up, looking up on the back side,
and you don't even get the view, Like you don't
(35:06):
even get to see the Mountain of Denally until you're
literally halfway into that road on a bus. So when
you're with us, people are not staying overnight. You just
we're the only access point to stay overnight, be it
at the Historic Mountain House or at the New Chalet.
So when you're doing these adventures, you're the only people
out there doing these adventures. No one else can just
(35:27):
come in and do them for the day. You can
stay other places within the National Park, but it's all Lowlands.
It's not on the flanks of Denale, so it would
just be too hard to get to this place. It's
too hard to get to and the expenses of hiring
guides and everything else if you're trying to do it
all a cart we've made. We actually made our own
guiding company by the way, because we had to do
(35:48):
and and we also with some friends got a really
nice helicopter company going to because we had to yeah,
and and but it's all of these things. It's it's
cost prohibitive on the front end. And that's one of
the reasons why I'm fond of saying Dnaley National Park
is for everybody, but almost nobody can experience it. And
(36:08):
that's why it's so important to us as a family
to make it clear to everyone that the historic mountain
house is still available for the do it yourselfers. And
then Sheldon Chale has this extraordinary experience to to where
you get to see my favorite places and Marnie's favorite places,
and let's not forget Kate's favorite places. To my sister
who who together she and I did the first entire
(36:31):
year of construction before we joined together with the other gentleman.
Can you talk a little bit about the Historic Mountain House,
because my understanding is that your father really built a
lot of the tourism infrastructure in the state at that time,
and so the this is a rustic shelter at first
when he first found and secured this land, right. Yeah,
(36:54):
So the Histruic Mountain House is also hexagon six sided,
and it was a prototype for Sheldon chal a shell
and Chali. It just happens to be exactly five times
as large, so same shape, same roof pitch, a lot
of similar building techniques. Of of course we built with
steel though rather than would we don't want to do
it again, um, And so he uh claimed the land
(37:17):
in approximately nineteen fifty three. The federal government's records are
lost in this area. I believe it from our family
records that that's the the year. And it took them
all the way until the year I was born in
nineteen seventy one, before we even got the land patent.
But in nineteen sixty six he built the Historic Mountain House.
It was I'm guessing somewhere around fifty flights over just
(37:39):
three months. Contrast that with we had literally hundreds of
flights over three years to build something five times as big,
but it was very rudimentary and rustic, as you mentioned
originally that said, I am very impressed with the window
technology even back then in the sixties, be because we
(38:00):
still have several original windows in the historic Mountain House.
Isn't that amazing? Yeah? So in that in that era,
was your father personally flying people to absolutely yeah, he uh,
he was personally flying folks up there. He preferred the
mountain flying. So if you have eight specialty aircraft, you're
(38:20):
not going to let them sit there. So he actually
hired a bunch of pilots and other mechanics and other
folks to assist with a heavy load of having that
many aircraft, but he preferred mountain flying, and basically the
last five years of his life that's what he did exclusively.
And he was really proud of the following record. And
I'm gonna elaborate a little bit more than what he
(38:42):
just said. But so over his lifetime, he flew over
twenty five thousand hours of short hops. That's a lot
of short hops. He wore out forty eight aircraft. You
can guess what that means. But no one ever went
to the hospital. And that's remarkable. And that latter part
is what he was most proud of. He never put
(39:03):
in context. He just always would say, well, you know,
I've had a few crack ups, but no one ever
went to the hospital. No, it's unbelievable to have that
kind of a record in times when you're flying around
harsh environments, your pioneer techniques of how to fly, how
to land on glaciers together my maternal grandfather, and this
is before my dad met my mom um. They were
(39:25):
pioneering techniques, still trying to figure things out together with
a Swiss gentleman over and of course Switzerland. They were
writing letters back and forth and it was just it
was that kind of day and time. But in any event,
that's the little bit of cheer about that. Robin Martey,
I have a question about the future, and you are
(39:46):
on a glacier, and what most of the listeners who
are hearing this here about glaciers is that they are
incredibly at risk and that they're nothing. So you've just
built this incredible thing and you're talking about developing other things.
Is there a risk that in twenty years the glacier
will melt? Yes, And so that's one of the reasons
why we have a whole series of experience experiments going
(40:06):
on up there. Were part of a b study with
the University of California. By the way, it turns out,
we have this really unusual genome of bees, of which
some are on our property. We haven't figured out where
the hive is, but I've not looked really hard because
I don't want to disturb it. But we know they're
there because we take a sample and that each fall.
We also have plants up there that people don't know
(40:27):
what they are. The last time this noona talk was
probably exposed was sixteen thousand years ago, and just in
the last fifty years has it re emerged. Some of
the plants we have are unknown, you're probably and and
so the whole amphitheater, the ice on it has absumed
just three hundred feet in just fifty years, and it's
(40:49):
accelerating more than ten percent spen in the last twenty
four months. And we're going to map the ice on
how thick it is probably this next spring, if everything
works out according to plan. What's really neat my father
who mapped the entire Alaska Range with Brad Washburn. Brad
was trying to figure out the depth of the ice
up there, but the equipment was rudimentarian, didn't work, and
(41:11):
so we resorted to dynamite, in which the Park Service
did not like and neither do we. And so but
there's new technology now two of the guys working with
Bradford Washburn back in two he's long passed away, he'd
be over now um, but two of the guys are
actually on our project this next next spring, and so
we're going to figure things out because there's there is
(41:32):
a real danger to glaciers losing their critical mass and
that affects entire weather systems. There's a lot of science
going on onto Nale, some really neat stuff from folks
at Dartmouth, some really neat stuff from the folks at
University Alaska, Fairbanks as well as UH University of Arizona.
But we're going we're getting to know better what's going
(41:54):
on with our systems up there. But it is a
real problem. We're losing ice and an alarming rate up there. UH.
A lot of the tourism community doesn't want to talk
about this, but the reality is is this year, when
some folks would show up for their glacier UH expeditions
in in coastal areas. Guess what, they weren't there anymore.
(42:14):
Literally that that's a this year thing. It hadn't happened
before this year. But but so it is a real issue.
And so the best way that I like to say
is we're leveraging our Nina talk for better scientific knowledge
of our area, to give tools to the folks who
do make decisions down the road on on what what
does this mean. We've already had some good studies come.
(42:36):
Remember I mentioned that fourteen thout camp that my dad
established way back when. Well, guess what, there's a weather
station up there still, and it takes all sorts of
measurements together with with another one on a mountain very
close by called Mount Hunter, and between those they've already
had conclusive data that's predictive in scope of what it
means for the bounty of our oceans, whether or not
(42:57):
they're going to be very productive in coming years, and
those sorts of things. So this system of the glaciers
impacts other things. Um, we don't know if if it's
necessary correlation is causation, but in some instances we do.
But we're learning about that. Unfortunately, things are happening at
such a quick pace, it's going to be difficult to
to to to know if we're in time. Well, let's
(43:19):
hope we've got the politicians who are making these decisions
listening to this podcast and listening to you. Actually, our
listeners will be able to find out all about Sheldon
shell A on the show notes and um, your website
is Sheldon shell A dot com. Pretty simple and straightforward.
Marty and Rob, thank you so much for being here.
Keep up the good work. Thank you well, thank you.
(43:42):
We appreciate being here and we'll see you there soon. Yes,
and that's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like
what you heard, please subscribe and you know, leave us
a five store review. Oh Wait Ago is a production
of I Heart Radio and Fathom. You can find the
details we talked about in the show notes and on
our website fathom away dot com. Don't forget to sign
up for our newsletter when you're there. You can get
(44:03):
in touch with us anytime at podcast at fathom away
dot com and follow us on all social media at
at fathom Way to Go, Please teg your best travel
photos hashtag travel with Fathom if you want to really
go deep on the travel inspirations. Pick up a copy
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I'm Jarlyne Gerba, and I'm Pavio Rosatti, and we'd like
to thank our producer, editor and mixer Marcy to Pena
(44:26):
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It is the coolest thing watching guests get off of
that helicopter. They are stunned into silence, their gob smacked,
their eyes are bag their mouths are gaping in awe
of like what just happened? Where did I just fly?
What did I just see? And now I've just landed? Where?
And I feel like you know, I mean a James
Bond movie. Welcome to A Way to Go, a production
of I Heart Radio and Fathom. I'm Jaral and Gerba
(00:26):
and I'm Pavio Rosatti. For much of the nineteen fifties,
the mountaineer and surveyor Don Sheldon explored and matt parts
of the Unknown Alaska Range and what was then the
territory of Alaska. Under the Homestead Act, he secured a
nearly five acre parcel of isolated Rock Peak, ten miles
from the summit of Denali. He decided to build a
rustic shelter on it and invited fellow mountaineers and adventurers
(00:48):
to come visit. Today, on the show, Pavia and I
are joined by Rob and Martie Sheldon, who a generation
later opened a high end five bedroom lodge on the
glacial island, accessible only by helicopter. Or plane at the
Sheldon shellet, data, sell coverage, and internet do not exist.
Every single piece of lumber, every drawer pole, and every
(01:09):
Alaskan gig crab leg is flown into a tiny airstrip
established by the Elder Sheldon. If it sounds incredible and
slightly crazy and almost nearly impossible, it kind of is
just a little bit crazy. But welcome to the podcast.
Marnie and Rob, thank you, Jarlyn and I are really
happy to have you here. Um, can we just start
(01:31):
at the beginning and ask why you guys decided to
go through the trouble of you know, doing something so
big in such an utterly remote, hard to access, an
untouched place. Sure, so this is really honoring my father
and my mother's legacy first and foremost. But part of
that legacy also was to have a good platform at
(01:54):
which exploration could continue both above and below the glacier,
and hopefully we get into below the glacier during this conversation,
as well as a good place for folks to mobilize
for their own explorations just as individuals. Uh, it's through
that that we're drawn closer to our special places and
we learn to have value them. And so uh the
(02:15):
additional h luxury accommodations, accommodate families. Hopefully multigenerational families will
come and and bring their their children and and have
a better tie in with nature and understanding the value
of these places. Let's set the scene for our listeners here.
How many bedrooms are we talking about? How do people
get there? Like? Walk me just through the super quick
(02:36):
practicalities of how I get here, super quick practicalities. You're
gonna land in Anchorage, Alaska. We're gonna have the helly
meet you a Anchorage, or you're gonna take a beautiful
train ride to Tauquitna. We can pick you up there.
We'll take copter Halley for our train ride between Anchorage Tauquita.
It's a gorgeous ride. And I'm going north in just
straight north, straight and right north, and then the helicopter
(02:58):
will go from Tauquitna. You've just taken train. It's a
beautiful ride up. We meet you there. Now you hop
on the helicopter. Helicopters a half an hour ride in gorgeous, gorgeous,
breathtaking on spurring scenery. That's the only way in. You
can't dry, can't walk you can't walk. There is this
(03:19):
thing called the ruth ice Fall. So okay, it's a glacier. Right.
You get to the edge of the Dunale and there's
this massive glacier that like a highway, an ice highway,
all the way up. Well, as it bends and turns
around the mountains, it cracks open, and it's these caverns
that are hundreds or two hundreds feet across that you
cannot get through. I'm already seeing the movie version where
(03:44):
somebody tries to cross their right and yeah, right, so
you land right at this shelle. So literally you could
land in flip flops or tennis shoes or high heels
if you really wanted to be that kind of perfect.
So it sounds simple, just the fly a tradehad helicopter
landing into a place where no one can get you
incirect it's really a citadel of mountains, the Great Gorge,
(04:09):
which is as deep as a Grand canyon, which you
fly through just to get there. If the ice ever
melts out, by the way, it will be twice as
deep as a Grand canyon. Uh. That's the only simple
way and sort of speak, other than flying up and
over these gigantic mountains, rock faces over a mile tall.
It's just really gives perspective on life and our place
in it. And the chalet is the only thing that
(04:31):
you can see that humans can inhabit. So we're what
does it look like inside? Wow? It is very uh,
simple but refined decre because as we were designing it,
the whole idea was the view is out the windows.
It wasn't to be gaudy inside, it wasn't to be
overdone inside. So it's simple, elegant decor that allows that
(04:55):
all that to fade the background because what you're doing
is looking out the windows every second of the moment
that you're there. And the shape of the of the
lodge accommodates that. Yes, it's it's a hexagon, and four
of the six walls, which is a hexagon. Four the
six walls are effectively gigantic plate glass windows capable of withstanding,
(05:15):
by the way, hurricane cap five winds for an entire week.
And do you ever get hurricane capt five wings in Alaska?
So we're located at latitude sixty three degrees north, which
is very high up on the planet, and then we're
at elevation of about another six thousand feet and that
combination is unparalleled for lodging either in the Northern or
(05:38):
Southern hemisphere. And so there actually is a threat that
the jet stream could dip down and the jet stream
does move that quickly, and so it's a good thing
that we've designed the building uh for those sorts of
of of forces, because it could happen someday, but it's
highly unlikely and has not happened to date. Well, it
hasn't in our neck of the woods. Kind of like
staying at the Sheldon Shelley is like being in a
(06:00):
spaceship orbiting the planet. It's like you are you are alone.
You better have everything figured out ahead of time. I
love it. Well, you as a guests don't have to
have everything figured out ahead of time because it's all
taken care of for you. Chef concierge to mountain guides,
and the guides are there to explore the thirty five
square mile Don Sheldon Amphitheater, which is our playground, so
(06:21):
glacier trekking, sledding, cravas exploration, if you want to rock climb,
we have that available ice climbing in the summertime as well.
So there's all these adventures that most people, I probably
would venture guests, have never done before in their entire life.
And so you you get to be a mountaineer ish
while you're there, because you're on ropes and harnessed teams
(06:44):
as you're trekking out across the glacier for safety factors.
I mean, you know, you just it's it's a whole
new territory for so many people being what does it
feel like to be out on a glacier in silence? Well,
I imagine that even if even if you have done
these things before, I've dogs flitting, hiking, it still feels
completely different. Yeah, what we've been able to do with
(07:07):
Sheldon Chalet is what used to require you to be
an expert mountaineer willing to risk your life because we
have these wonderful accommodations, which by the way, reflect the
original design plans from nineteen sixty eight. We kind of
skipped over that, but we've built effectively what my father
and mother envisioned. But we we've we've taken that reduced
(07:30):
the risks of overnight ing and knowing that you're going
to be in a secure place. By the way, the Nunatalk,
the rock outcropping out of the glacier titanium iron oxide.
And because that's it's super strong and that's why it's
not been smashed by the glacier. Uh. And so you
sit a top about three vertical feet over the glacier
on the top of this Nuna talk. It drops off vertically,
(07:53):
very rapidly right below you. Just outside the doors. Of course,
we have all sorts of railings and those sorts of things.
But but but while you're there, you get the sense
that this is not your ordinary place. And that is
why one of the first things we get to do
is teach folks about mountaineering school and walk them through
(08:13):
those courses so they become more comfortable naturally, and and
then we begin the adventures out on the glaciers. So
so it's it's really in in that vein that we're
able to get folks primed. Okay, so I'm already packing
my bags. But um, Marty, you mentioned flip flops, but
this does not sound like a shorts and a T
shirt type of setting. Am I wearing layers? And I'm
(08:35):
am I is it? Mostly this is a snowscape that
I'm saying. So sad rock rock climbing, but you're also
talking a lot about ice. Correct, So it's it's even
in August. No, See, that's where it's so amazing because
in the summertime you can be out on deck. So
we have like the chalet, the deck and all of
that where you could literally hang out and flip flops,
(08:57):
t shirts, shorts. I've done it, We've done it, We've
been there. It's hot because you have this constant barrage
of sunlight during the day, temperatures rise, you're baking in
the sun. If people want to cover, it's because you're
trying to protect yourself from this. It's like too much sun.
So that's where you so But when you're out on
glacier the minute we leave the property, that's when you're
(09:19):
fully you know, layered up because you're on snow. There's
never a time where you're not on snow out. I
don't ever see grass from the deck. I'm looking at snow. Well, yes,
we do have little well all right, tops of grass,
but it's not like I'm laying out of picnic correct. Correct.
How have we talked about how many rooms you have,
because this is we have not but there's only five
(09:42):
bedrooms so very small intimate experience, and you typically rent
it out for do you rent the whole place out
or can I take one room and then just get
to know the couples who happened the two different right,
we do it two ways. You can do a shared
experience where you would come and rent one room and
then you may be you know, another person from an
other place in the States or around the world, could
so you share that experience with other people in those
(10:04):
five bedrooms. Or you can have it all to yourself privately.
So we run two different ways of those trips because
not everybody wants it all by themselves, and and probably
not everybody can afford this, because I'm guessing this is
not this is not a youth hostel that we're staying in. No,
it's not a youth hostel by any stretch of the imagination.
You know, I'm fond of saying. In Alaska, at the
moment that you step onto an aircraft for any kind
(10:27):
of excursion, you no longer entry level market. And so
even just to stay at the historic mountain House, which
my father built in nineteen sixty six and is still available,
that's a do it yourself if you don't have glacial experience.
Were required that people hire a guide even in that situation,
which is incrementally costly, but that's very reasonable. That's about
a d five dollars a night per person for for
(10:51):
up to four people. But that's the Historic Mountain House.
Do it yourself, Um, a guide will cost somewhere around
five hundred dollars a day. What we provide at Sheldon
Chalet are too professional, guy. It's a cocierge and a
(11:13):
personal chef to take care of your every need. And
for that, yes, the price point is quite a bit
higher than the Historic Mountain House. It's a new kind
of luxury though it's such a unique experience that you're
not getting anywhere else. It is so unique, Gerlyn, thank
you because Alaska number one has never seen anything like this.
And I'll be as bold as like really the world
(11:35):
if I can, because you can be on glaziers, you
can be elsewhere, but nowhere has this setting that we're
offering in the Don Sheldon Amphitheater. And it goes all
the way back to his dad in the fifties mapping
the Alaska Range with Bradford Washburn seeing this little rock
outcropping they kind of use it as their control point.
And you know all that you said, why this place,
(11:56):
why here? Why? Now? Well, we can't even really take
the credit for that is it was his dad who
had the vision way before we did, had plans drawn up,
plans dated nineteen sixty eight for this current what we're
now calling Sheldon Shellet. We found them buried in the
family archives. We found audio tapes of his dad describing
(12:20):
what he wants to do with the property, further developing
it with another structure. His dad was such a visionary
before his time, but unfortunately he passed away of cancer
really early in life and never got to see it
come through. So we pick it up in their honor.
So we're not we're not the wild crazy visionaries his
dad is. But I don't just say it came through
(12:41):
and you guys made it. So that's a whole other thing. Sorry, curiously, sorry,
just before we get off this topic. So he drew
up these plans in the nineteen sixties. This is like
jetson era, right, So so was the technology that he
was envisioning, like robots and things. And you know, nobody
would have thought about cell phones back they are but
I'm curious if he thought the tech what he thought there.
(13:03):
So if we would have built it back then as
a family, we would have replaced it already. So here's
here's why I know that. For a fact, in two
thousand and fifteen, very warm summer, guess what starts to
melt out of the ice on our property, insulated flow
floorboards and floor Joyce. My father had already started moving
(13:23):
the materials up there to build the original plans. We
did some stress testing calculations on the materials that were
up there. We would have replaced the whole whole shebang
by now, So instead I took the steel approach. I
want this to be multigenerational, for as many people to
enjoy this on a sustainable basis, uh as possible, And
(13:47):
that's why they do it yourself. Historic Mountain House really
sleeps for comfortable you can fit six and if you
really need to, but Sheldon shall I only only sleeps
ten people. Maximum is to do it on a sustainable
basis as possible, and the same goes for we only
want to build this once. We don't want to put
any additional emissions or anything else in the air, uh
(14:10):
more than needed and that's also why we believe we're
net carbon neutral. We have a two thousand year old
finish uh masonry heater in there at the two thousand
year old technology uh and that together in our yeah yeah,
well it's eight thousand pounds, so it's pretty impressive. Those
two things together offset or heating field consumption and and
(14:32):
so it's on a sustainable basis as possible. Because we
don't want to disrupt our neighbor, which is a national park.
They came to surround us in nineteen eighty joining in
the party up there in the Don Chelle Naphitheater. Because
the parks existed since nineteen seventeen, but it didn't include
the Summit of Denali. So when Congress expanded Dnally National
Park in the eighties, here it comes and surrounds us.
(14:54):
So we were kind of out there by ourselves, and
now it's national park the minute you step off. Can
you talk a little bit about some of the obstacles.
Some of the major obstacles were that of logistics, figuring
out how do we mobilize materials in and outmost effectively.
The biggest cargo we could take at a time was
what's called to havel an otter. Uh that's a Canadian
(15:15):
made aircraft. They can hold twenty pounds of flight. Many
days we would hauld forty five thousand pounds of materials
up there. That's handloaded on the otter and unloaded, and
then we would use a helicopter to sling things up
onto the Nuna Talk. Because the ice field around the
(15:37):
top of the Nuna Talk, while it was leveled during
my dad's days, it is subsumed three hundred vertical feet
since then. We still believe we have a thousand or
three thousand vertical feet left, and we're going to figure
out this next March, probably with some scientific experiments to
see if that's accurate. We're gonna map the amphitheater. No
one's ever done the bottom of the glacier. We know
what the top looks like really well, it's really flat. Um.
(16:00):
But in any event, we had to sling everything up
via helicopter, and so we had to be really thoughtful
about that. So we built everything down mountain on the
ground to begin with, to make sure we had all
of the parts and pieces, what could be segmented in
into larger pieces, what had to be broken down, when
has to be broken down that heat. That eight thousand
pound heater had to be broken down into components and
(16:21):
shipped down. Yeah, they were broken. It was broken down
into about fifteen pound components. I like the idea of
the baggage check. You know when you go to the
airport and they're like, you're a half pound over, that'll
bet dollars, Mr. Rosatti. So those races that you get
charged at the airport for your excess baggage are nothing
in comparison to what we were charged for every flight
(16:43):
just to get basic materials up there and including food
for our workers. Which how much how much did it
cost you to build this a lot? Okay? And how
much time did it take? So two years just to
put in this excellent base foundation. I mentioned that the
Nina talk is tite an m iron oxide, and we
did we know that because we tested it. It ended
up being some of the hardest toughest rock uh known
(17:06):
to the drillers in Alaska. They had to get special
bits to put our rods down into it. But it
took two years to get the foundation, the base foundation
to a competency that we're comfortable with because not only
does the building have to be rated for a tuner
mile narrow winds for up to a week, but it
has to be able to hang into the the the foundation,
(17:28):
and so it's literally anchored into the rock. We designed
it uh for a certain level of pounds per square inch,
and we ended up getting a hundred fifty percent of
that actually maxing out the equipment because the rock was
so competent. We were very excited about that. Did your
father did he know these kinds of things when he
(17:49):
picked this piece of land? What he just had a
good nose? I mean, it is the chances that you
wouldn't have been able to build anything on this property.
I don't see. My father knew the idea of you
can't do this. He literally invented skis together with my
maternal grandfather. There's an original tail ski up there. They
(18:11):
were hammering these things out and experimenting with their own
lives on the line of what would work to land
in snow at different altitudes. He operated the highest airport
in the world at fourteen thousand, three hundred feet for
quite some time on Denally to assist the Institute of
Arctic Biology so all of us could be warmer. Now,
a lot of the technology that the folks at Patagonia
(18:34):
and other clothing clothier's uh make came out of base
research from back then in the Donshelle Namphithory as well
as at fourteen thousand, three hundred feet at this Institute
of Arctic Biology High Airport. He did not know the
meaning of No, Okay, your dad is the Arctic Indiana Jones, No,
(18:57):
I've not heard that. He totally right. Don't the mcgiver too, Yeah,
but no. He was an incredible mechanic. No, you're on
a something. He was an incredible mechanic. Most folks don't
know this. He was the only person in the northwestern
United States as well as the territory of Alaska because
back then it was the territory of Alaska. He was
the only person that was rated to actually create aircraft.
(19:21):
It wasn't just pieces and those are. He could sign
off an entire new aircraft being rated, and there were
very few of those in the United States and the fifties,
yet he had that rating. So you will not a
hotelier before you started this project. So what's that transition
been like to suddenly have guests who are like, my
coffee is slashing our our guest coffee has ever slashed,
(19:47):
except maybe when they're on a ridiculously long half miles
letting run down the side of one of our our
ore are snow faces. But so it's it's been an
interesting transition because I still have one foot in the
world that I operate in, which is facilitating financing and
economic development in the high latitudes. So I get to
(20:07):
go of really fun, far off places where none of
the investment bankers want to go because you want to know,
it takes three days of their week just to get
there and get back, and no investment banker wants half
of their productivity to go away. So it's more important
to build communities than look at your bank account. And
(20:29):
that's part of what my family has always felt. In
the high latitude is anything above latitude sixty degrees north,
which is where anchorages and where Marnie and I split time.
You have to be flexible, and you have to be
willing to accept the challenge of the day and be
involved in more than one vocation. And so a Hotelierre
(20:50):
has been very exciting. It's been actually quite symbiotic if
you think about it. One of the things that we're
trying to do and build community. Is see more year
round employment. And what we're doing is a year round
opportunity on Tonally. By the way, until we built Sheldon Chalet,
only people have ever been on Tonally at least recorded
between September and February of throughout history only. And yes,
(21:16):
so the folks that are coming to visit us are
true pioneers in themselves. Well, but that that year round
operation that we have up there, and now we're finishing
up our second year, it allows people to have a
year round jobs, not just try to work for four
months in the year and the whole salary like you
have in so many resort places, and that builds families
(21:38):
and helps our local community. So where does the where
does your staff live? They when guests are there, When
guests are there there at the shelley, we have staff
quarters that are built underneath the helipad, So the helipad
offers underneath it staff quarters. There's a sauna for our guests.
And then on top of all that, we call it
the observation deck, so we'll put out that around deck
(22:00):
chairs and a firepit, so it kind of has all
these roles. So that's where they are. There's four there's
a chef. Okay, so that the staff you were talking about,
and then they have partners and kids, and they have
kids and partners. So the way they work life is
again we're not your traditional, like you said, resort where
people are coming and staying for a six week stint
(22:20):
and eight weeks stint. They come on and off the
mountain in between every guest stay, and I should say
in between every guest day. For example, we're coming into
a season right now in September where it's like boom
to a boom, boom boom. So we've rotated like okay,
you're here for about ten days and then the next
wave of staff will come in for ten days, so
they go back to their anchorage or tal quita. And
(22:42):
so like we have two different chefs, they fip flop,
we have two different concierge as they flip flop. We
have six guides. They all rotate through. And Robert's point,
who who makes the beds? So the concierge's part housekeeper.
She's kind of, you know, everything extraordinary. She's kind of
the mopper. She's pouring your coffee, she's pouring the wine.
She's the mom, the manager that is everything running smoothly.
(23:04):
But to Robert's point about just creating community, creating jobs,
allowing people to stay in the state, one of our
chefs grew up in Alaska. They're both Alaska's, but one
grew up in Anchorage, and you know, fell in love
with his chef world and came to the Culinary Institute
of America, got trained up, went then out on the
road with all these super mega name brand artists, um
(23:25):
you know, music, musicians, singers, Jack Johnson, all you know.
So but what he found though, is that I'm away
from a family. I have a boy and I want
to raise him and I don't want to be absent
from his life. So to come back to Alaska to
be inspired, to have a job where he can do
all the creativity they wants to do with his food
(23:46):
was challenging for him. So like the confluence of us
starting and him needing a role to be different than
out on the road and being, you know, a transient chef,
we come together. So now he's able to be an
Anchorage to be at home with his son, and then
he's up for a couple of days and he's back
down and he's up. So it's just been a really
cool transition for him and for us all at the
(24:08):
same time. Do you find that other people who are
interested in building things in Alaska come to I mean,
what you're doing, I imagine cannot really be replicated, But
does it inspire other people to do things like this?
Kind of just now seeing there's the first people looked
just like you guys are crazy what we do, It's
(24:31):
totally crazy. So we have we have beautiful remote places.
For example, there is a hot spring, So I kid
you not as straight out a Lord of the Rings.
It's on a cliff overlooking this incredible river. It's just
it's mind boggling. Is this in the park? You know,
it's another hour north of us by by by flight,
(24:51):
and this is something that guests do, that the concierge
ranges and the guides take you on. Is this how
how you're spending your days? Well, that would be an
added adventure. You have to pay extra for that. And
then not very far from there are sand duns that
no one has even as far as I know, photographed.
I talk. Yes, we have sand we have sand dunes
in Alaska as well. But my point is is we
(25:13):
have these incredible remote places, of which, of course someone
controls that land. And we've had these folks approach us saying, wow,
you just pulled off what everyone thought was impossible. Would
you think about developing our lands? And of course my
response is yes, because here's why Alaska does entry level
tourism really well for four months a year. But as
(25:33):
I mentioned before, in the moment you get in an aircraft,
you're in solid mid market and up. And these places
all need that sort of mindset of mid market tourism
in order for folks to be able to enjoy them
because the aviation gas or the jet A that goes
in the helicopters, that alone costs an arm and a leg.
And so we've been approached by i'll say innumerable folks
(25:57):
with incredible pieces of property, and yes, we're well on
the path to building out a network and that will
further assist in Here's another thing that then there's there's
a lot of naysayers in Alaska and I don't understand
why we used to have this incredible pioneering, inventive spirit
and it seems to be gone now. Well guess what.
(26:19):
There's folks that said, well, you'll never get Alaskans to
be at the level of cheffing and to be at
the budget, which, by the way, many of our our
guests have said, these are the best meals they've ever had,
or the or concierge being able to live up to
the standards of table service as well as take care
of the beds and everything else. And we've had comments
(26:40):
of can we please hire these folks away? At least
at least some of them have been polite enough to ask.
Others just offer jobs. But and then our guys the
same same situation. They're not only skilled in in our
errors but other high mountain areas of the planet. But
we have competent people that are at the top of
their game in all of these skill sets in Alaska,
(27:01):
and there's lots of them, and most of them have
to leave the state after the regular entry level tourists
season and go elsewhere, which is not conducive to family living,
much less a local economy. And so I am all
game to help develop and see more of these types
of places. BUI, yes, as well as at the mid market, though,
(27:24):
because a healthy economy services all levels of the market,
it's just like yes, yes, that's travel doesn't have to
be only expensive to be awesome, that's right, But it
is expensive even just in the mid market in Alaska.
And I I just want to say that piece of airplanes.
It's all because of those darned blasted aircraft. Get anywhere
without an airplane. So this is once in a lifetime
(27:47):
experience for most people. Can you walk us through abridged
version of perfect itinerary for guests, whether let's say you're
going to go up there, you're taking people for the
very first time, okay, perfect itinerary. So we're gonna launch
in the helicopter to Tauquitina midday, beautiful sunny day, and
(28:08):
you're landing at the chalet. It's exclusive. How we get
our guests in and out. Then you land at the
chalet and you're greeted by staff and everybody's out on
the deck receiving the helicopter in. It is the coolest
thing watching guests get off of that helicopter. They are
stunned into silence, their gob smacked, Their eyes are big,
their mouths are gaping in awe of like what just happened?
(28:30):
Where did I just fly? What did I just see?
And now I've just landed where And I feel like
you know, I mean a James Bond movie. So they
come inside and we have this gorgeous seafood extravaganza we
call it, with all the fresh Alaska seafood available for everybody,
and they're getting their bearings and they're settling in. Guides
are bringing baggage up to the room. Then we do
as staff orientation, not guest orientation with the staff so
(28:53):
that everybody is just aware of where you are and
just some safety protocols things to keep in mind. Now
it's evening and you're talking with the guides, Okay, what
are the adventures that I can go do? And we
we have all these amazing adventures. But the one thing
that is so important when we have guests up there
is nothing is decided until you're there in real time,
(29:15):
taking into account the weather, the glacier conditions, your stamn,
and how you're feeling. We've seen guests all right, I'm
gonna go, I'm gonna do their adrenaline junkies, and they're
going to go, you know, do everything, and they get
there and they're just so in awe. They're like, I'll
just watch the northern lights from here pretty much pretty much,
which are blue and purple by the way, with the
naked eye, which is not normal most places on the planet.
(29:37):
So now we've just witnessed all those beautiful shooting stars
and Aurora on that night. So you go to bed,
and if it's the show is still going on, you
can lay in bed and watch the show. Because as
you were saying, so many of the walls are just
glass windows. I designed it so that you can sit
in the middle of the building. And there's a really
important gentleman by the name of Jean Dejarlais who as
our partner and engineering, and he helped me make sure
(30:01):
that every angle that I wanted to get so you
can sit in the middle of the building and see
the sum of the dunale, which is unusual to get
all of those angles and all that geometry right, but boy,
did Jean help help me nail that. And if it
wasn't for Gene on all of that engineering, and another
gentleman named Hank Swan on all the logistics, it probably
would not be standing today. It took a whole team.
(30:22):
But anyways, all of that work goes into this this
client client guest experience. So morning next day you're waking
up you know, chef's got breakfast prepared made to order.
Maybe it's waves francherios, maybe it's smoked salmon, eggs, benedict,
whatever it is of every meal is locally sourced to
(30:43):
even in the middle of the winter. But keep going, honey,
So you enjoy your breakfast. And now it's time to
go out on glacier. So the first thing you're going
to do with our guides is go through a glacier school.
So it's what is it to be on a rope
team harnessed up together. There's a call signs if you
want to stop, if you want to go, if you
need to take a picture, all these YadA YadA, And
(31:05):
so that's about an hour it takes for everybody to
get comfortable being on that. It sounds so simple, but
there's little nuances when you're all roped together. And then
that we go out for adventure. So guides packed up
a gorgeous gourmet picnic that the chef is prepared. We're
trekking across the Amphitheater two miles and we're gonna go
up to a place called Michio's Peak. And in Michios
(31:28):
there's a beautiful saddle on snow, and that's where the
guides are going to set up this picnic, which gives
this view back down into the other side of the
Great Gorge that you just flew in the morning before,
the afternoon before, and as you're flying in in the helicopter,
now you're getting this unparalleled view in person, and you
feel like about as big as a speck of dust.
(31:49):
It is an extraordinary You're sitting on the edge of
the Grand Canyon. Effectively, that's how deep the Great Gorge is.
So so I'm now we've done this glacier trek and
it really does take all day. And now you're you're
coming back to the shale, and it's early evening, mid afternoon,
depending on how fast the teams are going back to
the sale. Now you want to take a sauna because
(32:10):
you just have this extraordinary experience and you kind of
works works some muscles and so now you're gonna get
a sauna before dinner. Then around the dinner table again,
now the guides are talking about the day and you're
sharing experiences and what you saw and experienced. And then
a lot of our guides have summoned to Nale, so
now the stories of their own personal climbs come out
of what they know in the knowledge of the mountains.
(32:30):
So it does become this learning cultural mountaineering experience all
wrapped up into it. Dawn's story starts coming out and
they start talking about that. Then day two, so now
we've gone to bed again. And now day two or
day no, now we're in a day three. Oh my gosh, exactly.
It just feeds right along Day three again a similar itinerary,
(32:53):
but you're going to a completely different place on the glacier.
So we're gonna and you don't have a care in
the world because you have not checked your phone, because
it takes those first two days to detox and that
reflex action that all of us have. I've resisted it
here just sitting speaking with you ladies, of grabbing my
phone and and and seeing by now you're really relaxed.
(33:16):
And this is why we require a three night minimum.
It's for everyone's own good, right. So let's say the
next day you're going to go out back to the glacier,
but this time the guys are taking you through these
ice caverns, so the cracks will open up and they've
set a course with they've drilled in and they've made
it all secure. So on your rope team, you're gonna
walk kind of through the course of this ice cave
(33:37):
and get to explore the inside or the underneath of
the belly of the glacier and it just these again
phenomenal huge caverns forty fifty feet tall, and you're bathed
in this blue light that's indescribable. It's it's there's there's
a presence there and there's actually a magnetic feeling just
to be in the amphitheater itself. Again, it's the citadel
(33:58):
of mountains. There's rock faces that are over twice as
tall the Birge Khalifa within just a couple of miles
of the chalet. But if it weren't for the twenty
thousand foot peak right behind it, Dunally, you would say, well,
those are really big. But then you see this huge summit.
But if there's this magnetism to them, are there other
sorry Gerlin, are there other people who are coming to
these ice caverns and glaciers or you've got it to
(34:21):
yourself as a matter of fact, why just because it's
because it's historically because you own them, it's inaccessible. We
don't own them there. Those are out in the national Park.
But the reason national Park you can't go so here
when people think they're coming to Dunali National Park, like
if you were just to show up in Alaska, you're
gonna go drive past the summit to the north side
(34:44):
and then take a ninety mile road in, so you're
on the ground and you're gonna end up in a
valley that you don't even see c Denale. We're on
the south side of the summit on the six thousand
foot elevation, so we're on the Mountains National Park or
on the ground looking up, looking up on the back side,
and you don't even get the view, Like you don't
(35:06):
even get to see the Mountain of Denally until you're
literally halfway into that road on a bus. So when
you're with us, people are not staying overnight. You just
we're the only access point to stay overnight, be it
at the Historic Mountain House or at the New Chalet.
So when you're doing these adventures, you're the only people
out there doing these adventures. No one else can just
(35:27):
come in and do them for the day. You can
stay other places within the National Park, but it's all Lowlands.
It's not on the flanks of Denale, so it would
just be too hard to get to this place. It's
too hard to get to and the expenses of hiring
guides and everything else if you're trying to do it
all a cart we've made. We actually made our own
guiding company by the way, because we had to do
(35:48):
and and we also with some friends got a really
nice helicopter company going to because we had to yeah,
and and but it's all of these things. It's it's
cost prohibitive on the front end. And that's one of
the reasons why I'm fond of saying Dnaley National Park
is for everybody, but almost nobody can experience it. And
(36:08):
that's why it's so important to us as a family
to make it clear to everyone that the historic mountain
house is still available for the do it yourselfers. And
then Sheldon Chale has this extraordinary experience to to where
you get to see my favorite places and Marnie's favorite places,
and let's not forget Kate's favorite places. To my sister
who who together she and I did the first entire
(36:31):
year of construction before we joined together with the other gentleman.
Can you talk a little bit about the Historic Mountain House,
because my understanding is that your father really built a
lot of the tourism infrastructure in the state at that time,
and so the this is a rustic shelter at first
when he first found and secured this land, right. Yeah,
(36:54):
So the Histruic Mountain House is also hexagon six sided,
and it was a prototype for Sheldon chal a shell
and Chali. It just happens to be exactly five times
as large, so same shape, same roof pitch, a lot
of similar building techniques. Of of course we built with
steel though rather than would we don't want to do
it again, um, And so he uh claimed the land
(37:17):
in approximately nineteen fifty three. The federal government's records are
lost in this area. I believe it from our family
records that that's the the year. And it took them
all the way until the year I was born in
nineteen seventy one, before we even got the land patent.
But in nineteen sixty six he built the Historic Mountain House.
It was I'm guessing somewhere around fifty flights over just
(37:39):
three months. Contrast that with we had literally hundreds of
flights over three years to build something five times as big,
but it was very rudimentary and rustic, as you mentioned
originally that said, I am very impressed with the window
technology even back then in the sixties, be because we
(38:00):
still have several original windows in the historic Mountain House.
Isn't that amazing? Yeah? So in that in that era,
was your father personally flying people to absolutely yeah, he uh,
he was personally flying folks up there. He preferred the
mountain flying. So if you have eight specialty aircraft, you're
(38:20):
not going to let them sit there. So he actually
hired a bunch of pilots and other mechanics and other
folks to assist with a heavy load of having that
many aircraft, but he preferred mountain flying, and basically the
last five years of his life that's what he did exclusively.
And he was really proud of the following record. And
I'm gonna elaborate a little bit more than what he
(38:42):
just said. But so over his lifetime, he flew over
twenty five thousand hours of short hops. That's a lot
of short hops. He wore out forty eight aircraft. You
can guess what that means. But no one ever went
to the hospital. And that's remarkable. And that latter part
is what he was most proud of. He never put
(39:03):
in context. He just always would say, well, you know,
I've had a few crack ups, but no one ever
went to the hospital. No, it's unbelievable to have that
kind of a record in times when you're flying around
harsh environments, your pioneer techniques of how to fly, how
to land on glaciers together my maternal grandfather, and this
is before my dad met my mom um. They were
(39:25):
pioneering techniques, still trying to figure things out together with
a Swiss gentleman over and of course Switzerland. They were
writing letters back and forth and it was just it
was that kind of day and time. But in any event,
that's the little bit of cheer about that. Robin Martey,
I have a question about the future, and you are
(39:46):
on a glacier, and what most of the listeners who
are hearing this here about glaciers is that they are
incredibly at risk and that they're nothing. So you've just
built this incredible thing and you're talking about developing other things.
Is there a risk that in twenty years the glacier
will melt? Yes, And so that's one of the reasons
why we have a whole series of experience experiments going
(40:06):
on up there. Were part of a b study with
the University of California. By the way, it turns out,
we have this really unusual genome of bees, of which
some are on our property. We haven't figured out where
the hive is, but I've not looked really hard because
I don't want to disturb it. But we know they're
there because we take a sample and that each fall.
We also have plants up there that people don't know
(40:27):
what they are. The last time this noona talk was
probably exposed was sixteen thousand years ago, and just in
the last fifty years has it re emerged. Some of
the plants we have are unknown, you're probably and and
so the whole amphitheater, the ice on it has absumed
just three hundred feet in just fifty years, and it's
(40:49):
accelerating more than ten percent spen in the last twenty
four months. And we're going to map the ice on
how thick it is probably this next spring, if everything
works out according to plan. What's really neat my father
who mapped the entire Alaska Range with Brad Washburn. Brad
was trying to figure out the depth of the ice
up there, but the equipment was rudimentarian, didn't work, and
(41:11):
so we resorted to dynamite, in which the Park Service
did not like and neither do we. And so but
there's new technology now two of the guys working with
Bradford Washburn back in two he's long passed away, he'd
be over now um, but two of the guys are
actually on our project this next next spring, and so
we're going to figure things out because there's there is
(41:32):
a real danger to glaciers losing their critical mass and
that affects entire weather systems. There's a lot of science
going on onto Nale, some really neat stuff from folks
at Dartmouth, some really neat stuff from the folks at
University Alaska, Fairbanks as well as UH University of Arizona.
But we're going we're getting to know better what's going
(41:54):
on with our systems up there. But it is a
real problem. We're losing ice and an alarming rate up there. UH.
A lot of the tourism community doesn't want to talk
about this, but the reality is is this year, when
some folks would show up for their glacier UH expeditions
in in coastal areas. Guess what, they weren't there anymore.
(42:14):
Literally that that's a this year thing. It hadn't happened
before this year. But but so it is a real issue.
And so the best way that I like to say
is we're leveraging our Nina talk for better scientific knowledge
of our area, to give tools to the folks who
do make decisions down the road on on what what
does this mean. We've already had some good studies come.
(42:36):
Remember I mentioned that fourteen thout camp that my dad
established way back when. Well, guess what, there's a weather
station up there still, and it takes all sorts of
measurements together with with another one on a mountain very
close by called Mount Hunter, and between those they've already
had conclusive data that's predictive in scope of what it
means for the bounty of our oceans, whether or not
(42:57):
they're going to be very productive in coming years, and
those sorts of things. So this system of the glaciers
impacts other things. Um, we don't know if if it's
necessary correlation is causation, but in some instances we do.
But we're learning about that. Unfortunately, things are happening at
such a quick pace, it's going to be difficult to
to to to know if we're in time. Well, let's
(43:19):
hope we've got the politicians who are making these decisions
listening to this podcast and listening to you. Actually, our
listeners will be able to find out all about Sheldon
shell A on the show notes and um, your website
is Sheldon shell A dot com. Pretty simple and straightforward.
Marty and Rob, thank you so much for being here.
Keep up the good work. Thank you well, thank you.
(43:42):
We appreciate being here and we'll see you there soon. Yes,
and that's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like
what you heard, please subscribe and you know, leave us
a five store review. Oh Wait Ago is a production
of I Heart Radio and Fathom. You can find the
details we talked about in the show notes and on
our website fathom away dot com. Don't forget to sign
up for our newsletter when you're there. You can get
(44:03):
in touch with us anytime at podcast at fathom away
dot com and follow us on all social media at
at fathom Way to Go, Please teg your best travel
photos hashtag travel with Fathom if you want to really
go deep on the travel inspirations. Pick up a copy
of our book, Travel Anywhere and Avoid being a Tourist.
I'm Jarlyne Gerba, and I'm Pavio Rosatti, and we'd like
to thank our producer, editor and mixer Marcy to Pena
(44:26):
and our executive producer Christopher Hussiotis. For more podcasts from
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