July 17, 2008 — A 12-member private team comprised of athletes and mountaineers began a search Monday to find multimillionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who disappeared in September 2007 when his single-engine plane went missing in Nevada.
Led by Simon Donata, a Canadian geologist and expert cyclist and racer, the group is searching a mountainous area straddling the California-Nevada state line.
“You never know what we’re going to find out there,” Donata, 31, told the Associated Press. “It’s going to be getting into those hard-to-reach areas and basically crossing them off the map. The best-case scenario is that we find him. The worst-case scenario — we’re making it easier for people in the future to continue this.”
Donato says his team will be able to find any wreckage obscured from the air during the 20,000-square-mile search undertaken in the days following Fossett's disappearance. He chose the region — between the Bodie Hills and Sweetwater Mountain range, with peaks over 11,000 feet high — because of its proximity to Fossett's last known location.
The group has already searched steep canyons with heavy vegetation and 20 to 30 foot Pinyon pine trees, sizeable ravines and valleys and areas thick with poplar trees. To increase safety and communication, the team has been outfitted with SPOT Satellite Messenger, a device that pinpoints a user’s location. Click here to see where the group is now.
While they haven’t yet found signs of Fossett, a longtime EAA member who set several unique aviation records over the years, the team members have discovered a snowmobile windscreen well off the trail, canteens, metal and pvc tubing, and other scrap metal.
Fossett was declared legally dead in February 2008.
A second expedition, headed by Washington, D.C. investor and alpinist Robert Hyman, is planned for late August. A group of 15 climbers, mountain guides and others with backcountry expertise will check an area just east of the section that Donato’s group is searching, WTOPnews.com reported.
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From left, team leader Simon Donata, Greg Francek and Tyler LeBlanc look at a map of the search area at base camp.
(AP Photo / Brendan Riley)
Steve Fossett was an EAA member who set several aviation records over the years, including flying 76 hours and 45 minutes while circumnavigating the globe and establishing a new aviation long-distance record at 26,389.3 miles in the GlobalFlyer.
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