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Title: Search Crews Find Adventurer Steve Fossett's Airplane
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URL Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy ... 008/10/02/ST2008100201712.html
Published: Oct 2, 2008
Author: Karl Vick and Debbi Wilgoren
Post Date: 2008-10-02 14:28:14 by nikki
Keywords: Fossett
Views: 702
Comments: 6
Search Crews Find Adventurer Steve Fossett's Airplane Video Sheriff: Search Teams Find Fossett Wreckage Madera County sheriff John Anderson says search teams have found the wreckage of missing adventurer Steve Fossett's airplane. » LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2 -- Search crews high in the Sierra Nevada mountains have found wreckage of the small plane that belonged to adventure pilot Steve Fossett, who vanished 13 months ago after taking off alone from a Nevada airstrip, a local official in California said Thursday morning. Madera County Sheriff John Anderson confirmed that a ground crew had reached a crash site near Mammoth Lakes -- spotted from the air just hours before -- and confirmed the wreckage was Fossett's plane. The National Transportation Safety Board said in an earlier statement that it had dispatched investigators to the site. Fossett took off from the airstrip of hotel magnate Barron Hilton's desert Flying M Ranch on Sept. 3, 2007, in a Bellanca Super Decathlon, an aerobatic single-engine plane. He did not say where he was going but was expected to return in three hours. A judge declared him legally dead Feb. 15. The search for his remains resumed Wednesday after a hiker came across what appeared to be Fossett's pilot license and other identification while traversing rugged terrain near Yosemite National Park. The hiker, Preston Morrow, said he glimpsed the cards and a handful of muddy $100 bills late Monday while hiking off-trail in steep backwoods of the Sierra Nevadas west of Mammoth Lakes, California. "As I was coming down a very steep terrain, steep rocks, I caught something on the pine needles," Morrow, of Mammoth Lakes, said by telephone. "Some cards and some hundred-dollar bills." Most of the money was folded in half, and within a foot of the weathered but legible laminated IDs. "It didn't click in my head it was him," said Morrow, 43. "At first I thought a bear had gotten hold of someone's wallet or something, scattered it around." Early Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Madera County Sheriff's Office said an aerial search crew spotted what appeared to be plane wreckage near the site late Wednesday. Ground crews were directed to that site, and a news conference was scheduled for 7 a.m. Thursday (10 a.m. Eastern time) to report any additional findings, said the spokeswoman, Erica Stuart. A short time later, the safety board issued a media advisory saying it had been notified that the ground crews had reached the wreckage and believed it to be Fossett's plane. That information prompted the safety board to send an investigative team to the site, the NTSB said. The apparent site of the crash was about 60 miles northwest of the airstrip where Fossett began his journey. Morrow, 43, said he was hiking near Minaret Lake, between Mammoth Lakes and the eastern boundary of Yosemite, when he found the identification documents and money. {snip} 
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#3. To: nikki (#0)
He's dead. Wreckage is around 10,000 ft altitude, but I'm not sure how high above ground level that is out there. The engine was flung 300 ft from the wreckage, it was that violent of a crash. The coyotes/bears scavenged his remains.
Yep.
Not all.
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#5. To: X-15 (#3)
The coyotes/bears scavenged his remains.
#6. To: Turtle (#5)
Replies to Comment # 6.