Steve Fossett, the round-the-world-in-a-balloon guy, disappeared just under 13 months ago. On Monday, a hiker in the hills near Mammoth Lakes found what appear to be items belonging to Fossett, the Associated Press reports.
Update: LA Times says the items were found near Red’s Meadow
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A hiker in a rugged part of eastern California found a pilot’s license and other items possibly belonging to Steve Fossett, the adventurer who vanished on a solo flight in a borrowed plane more than a year ago, authorities said Wednesday.
The hiker, Preston Morrow, said he found a Federal Aviation Administration identity card, a pilot’s license, a third ID and $1,005 in cash tangled in a bush off a trail just west of the town of Mammoth Lakes on Monday. He said he turned the items in to local police Wednesday, after unsuccessful attempts to contact Fossett’s family.
Mammoth Lakes police Investigator Crystal Schafer confirmed that the department had the items, including the ones bearing Fossett’s name.
Search teams led by the Madera County Sheriff’s Department have been dispatched to the scene, and an air and ground effort was expected to be under way by afternoon, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Erica Stewart.
Morrow said he found no sign of a plane or any human remains.
Fossett, whose exploits included circumnavigating the globe in a balloon, disappeared Sept. 3, 2007, after taking off in a single-engine plane borrowed from a Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton. A judge declared Fossett legally dead in February following a search for the famed aviator that covered 20,000 square miles.
Rest of the story here.
So check this out: Some folks think Fossett faked his own death.
Some Canadian adventure-racer guys searched for Fossett in July and came up empty.
More details (including a picture of one of the ID cards) at National Geographic Adventure’s blog.
Tom,
Good sleuthing. This is great – you put all the relevant links together! Kudos.
Now to Fossett. Kinda reminds me of DB Cooper and his jump out of a plane over the Northwest with $$$$$.
His ID and money is very interesting. How in the heck did they get there? Where’s his clothes? Didn’t the plane have a beacon? Did Fossett have a premonition of the financial collapse? Thougth he had enuff sough to goon forever – did his wife get rich on th einsurance. Call MONK!! We need some good PI work. And the m ovie rights! Is he now hiding in Argentina? This is fastinating.
Rick D
http://www.hikehalfdome.com
Rick: thanks. From the accounts I’ve seen, the finder was walking along a trail, saw these dollar bills and these documents with no wallet or carrying case of any kind, clumped together.
Thing is, this stuff has been presumably blowing around the High Sierra for over a year. It should have blown loose nearby recently, otherwise it would not have been so close together, but it could have been dragged across untold peaks in some kind of container before it got shaken loose.
They’re sending up search planes today nearby but the wreck could be miles and miles away.
Hello Tom,
I just read that searchers have found the plane a quarter-mile from where the hiker found the ID. So far they haven’t found any remains; could he have parachuted out before the crash?
I don’t know much about small planes. I’ve only been in one, and that was in 1979 or so when I jumped out of it for my first and only skydiving experience.