Steve Fossett's plane found near Mammoth Lakes ?

[The Other Tom]

News reports this morning say that plane wreckage that may be Fossett's was spotted near Mammoth. Anybody got more details ?

[Codester]

There was a story run on the local news last night that a manager at Kittridge Sports in mammoth was hiking up to minaret mine. On his way down, hiking off trail, he found steve fossett's pilot ID along with a bunch of 100 dollar bills. He looked around for a while more, but it started getting dark, and he had to head back. He hiked back in the next day and found a sweater. They reported it to authorities and Just on the news this morning they report that they found some wreckage in the general area.
Pretty exciting! I remember last year working on the roof of the house I was building seeing dozens upon dozens of planes and helicopters flying around looking for the guy. I'm glad that all of this will be put to rest

[packmule]

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — With aircraft and dogs, the search for Steve Fossett was to resume at dawn Thursday where wreckage was seen near a steep mountain ridge on the Nevada border and after a hiker found missing millionaire’s pilot’s license and other belongings on Monday..
Erica Stuart, spokeswoman for the Madera County Sheriff’s Office, would not reveal the exact location of the reported aerial sighting, which she said was called in around sunset.
Searchers had been combing a 10-mile radius around the spot where a hiker had found what appeared to be a pilot’s license and other items belonging to Fossett earlier in the week.
Sporting goods store manager Preston Morrow discovered $1,005, the license and a Soaring Society of America membership card bearing Fossett’s name about 5 p.m. Monday while hiking in the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area near the Minaret range, a popular backpacking and mountaineering area of Mammoth Lakes.

RJG

I am pretty new to backcounty hiking(I have been hiding in the city to long ) but I was just wanting to here some stories of people who may have hiked this area this past summer? Could this have been you who found this stuff?

[SSSdave]

I checked the local Mammoth news site and they are reporting wreckage was about the Minaret Mine area to Dorothy Lake. That is on Volcanic Ridge in the Minaret Creek drainage. Dorothy Lake has me scratching my head though because I believe it is one of those horse pack outfit names for a small no name body of water in that area. There are two Dorothy Lakes, one at the top of the Falls Creek Sierra Crest area in Yosemite and the other up Convict Creek. So they are not talking about those. A friend and I once climb up on the JMT from Shadow Lake south to Rosalie Lake and on to Castle Lake where we camped. The next day we climbed over the spur ridge west at the tail of Volcanic Ridge and made a direct route to Minaret Lake. That area is rarely visited and is mostly lodgepole, mountain hemlock over irregular metamorphic geology terrain. To have a posibility of seeing the crash, someone would have had to been in the area between where the trail leaves Minaret Creek at the long cascade and where it enters the upper canyon due east of Deadhorse Lake.

I have to wonder why his experimental aircraft would be so far off course that needs to continue to follow up the MF of the San Joaquin River Canyon and fly over the low point at Minaret Summit? Thus might be he had a steering problem that only allowed going to the left.

[copeg]

For those wondering, because of the similarity in topics I merged the above posts together into the same topic.
In the last 24hrs I've gotten hundreds if not thousands of hits on my Minaret Lake webpage and map through google searches for Minaret Lake. Completely confused, I saw this news story perhaps now I am wondering if I know why.
Here's another article from the Associated Press:

Plane wreckage found in California belongs to millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Updated Thursday, October 2nd 2008, 10:04 AM

Search teams found the wreckage of missing adventurer Steve Fossett's airplane in the Inyo National Forest, authorities said Thursday.

After an aerial search late Wednesday spotted what appeared to be wreckage near the town of Mammoth Lakes, ground crews were dispatched to the site, Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said. They confirmed around 11 p.m. that the tail number matched Fossett's single-engine Bellanca plane, he said.

The aircraft appeared to have crashed head-on into the side of a mountain, according to the sheriff. Most of the fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away.

Anderson said no human remains were found in the wreckage. Teams led by the sheriff's department would continue the search for remains Thursday, while the National Transportation Safety Board was en route to probe the cause of the crash, he said.

The search began after a hiker stumbled upon three identification cards and $1005 in cash apparently belonging to Fossett in the area. The plane wreckage was found about a quarter-mile from where hiker Preston Morrow made his discovery Monday.

The IDs provided the first possible clue about Fossett's whereabouts since he disappeared Sept. 3, 2007, after taking off from a Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton. The plane crashed about 90 miles south of the ranch.

Anderson said the steep, rugged area around the wreckage site had been flown over 19 times by the California Civil Air Patrol during the initial search for Fossett, which covered a total of 20,000 square miles.

A judge declared the famed aviator legally dead in February.

[The Other Tom]

More info
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... sett_N.htm

[hikerduane]

I was heading towards Devils Postpile from Rosalie on a group trip the day he disappeared. I heard a plane, then nothing, may not have been the one. I called it in the next week, but then, he wasn't supposed to be there, so, not that much attention given to the area I guess. Would have been in the area I heard the plane.

[Shawn]

Here's a Google Earth view of the area:

edit - the forum chops off the right side of the image, here is the full view
http://www.theradioroom.org/fossett1.jpg

[Snow Nymph]

Photos from the search: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockwellb/ ... 737959209/

[The Other Tom]

Latest update from CNN. Looks like they found him.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/30/fosset ... index.html

[packmule]

The Discovery Channel aired the documentary on 12/1 called Steve Fossett: What Went Wrong? My father in law told me about it. They said there was evidence he survived and tried to hike out. I am sure Discovery will air it again so if any knows any times could you let me know!

[Shawn]

I watched the show and was hoping for a bit more. It was generally interesting, but certain parts were rather lame (e.g. if his engine quit the plane would simply nose down vertically into the earth).

No evidence was shown about him trying to make his way out - just stretching the issue about a harness buckle that wasn't found where they expected to find it.

Not much in the way of new information. Mostly I was just hoping to catch some good views of the Minarets - but those were brief.


SIgh

[JMat]

I tivo'd that show and actually watched it last night and it's like Shawn said. A lot of conjecture about how bears don't drag stuff very far and how no animal would have been able to undo his harness.
The truth is... He hit the ground hard and fast and parts of the plane were scattered of a pretty big distance, not to mention the fire afterward. My guess is he didn't survive.

JMat

[packmule]

Yeah that what my F-I-L said. The buckel has to be twisted in order to be released. Instresting! Also what I thoght was instresting was that they had a few thousand people searching grids on goggle earth for wreckage. They sure look at all the angles.

[ERIC]

NTSB: Witness saw Fossett plane fight strong winds

By TRACIE CONE, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, March 5, 2009

A man who believes he saw Steve Fossett's plane moments before it slammed into a mountain said headwinds were so strong that day that the plane appeared to be "standing still," according to a federal report released Thursday.

The report by the National Transportation Safety Board said the unidentified camper and his companions watched the plane struggle at an altitude of about 11,500 feet as strong winds blew out of the southwest.

"It looked like it was standing still due to the wind," the report said.

Fossett, 63, disappeared in September 2007 after taking off from a Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton for what was supposed to be a short pleasure flight. Wreckage of the plane and some of the Fossett's belongings were discovered in October 2008 by a hiker in the Sierra Nevada near Mammoth Lakes.

The report, which did not include a cause of the crash, said Fossett died on impact of multiple traumatic injuries. DNA tests conducted on two large bones found near the crash site positively identified the remains of the millionaire aviator.

Investigators previously said the 10,000-foot peaks near the spot where Fossett crashed were shrouded in clouds that day. Searchers speculated that the Sierra's notorious downdrafts, combined with a loss of power at high altitude, might have made it difficult for Fossett to clear the mountain.

Downdrafts were recorded at between 300 and 400 feet per minute, and the NTSB cited reports from Mammoth Yosemite Airport that the wind was blowing nearly 23 mph at 12,300 feet, with gusts up to 54 mph around the time of the accident.

A pilot who flew over Yosemite National Park around that time also said his ride was interrupted by "random rough chop," according to the NTSB.

The report said radar tracking, which was initially discounted, most likely showed the plane's final path. It also said the emergency release handle for the pilot's door, with the locking pin still in place, was found among the wreckage.

The report said Fossett told the ranch's chief pilot that he intended to fly along Highway 395 and that he did not wear a parachute, which would have been required. It said Fossett's plane had mechanical problems that were fixed after a rough landing and contact with a barbed wire fence two months earlier, and that mechanics had installed a new propeller and logged nearly a dozen hours before Fossett's fatal flight.

Fossett, who made a fortune in the Chicago commodities market, gained worldwide fame for setting records in high-tech balloons, gliders, jets and boats. In 2002, he became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon.