Private Teams Will Concentrate On Two Areas Near Planned Destination

Two private ventures to find adventurer Steve Fossett, missing since last September, plan to renew the search in rugged mountains now clear of snow.

As reported by ANN, after months of searching, a judge in Illinois officially declared Fossett, 63, legally dead on February 15. Despite this, many hope to at least find the wreckage of the small borrowed plane he was using to survey possible locations to conduct a land speed record attempt he was planning. 

The Associated Press said the renewed searches will not match the massive search last year covering nearly 20,000 square miles and involving the efforts of many private and government groups plus ground search crews, high-tech equipment and satellite imagery.

The new effort includes two teams hoping to search primarily on the ground in two distinct smaller areas they feel are likely places where Fossett may have gone down.

Many involved in the search effort last year are not helping directly with the renewed searches, but are assisting by providing maps and detailed information on the rugged terrain they aim to cover.

"The more people we have, the more eyes and boots on the ground we have, the better our chances are of locating Mr. Fossett," said Gary Derks of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, who oversaw the 2007 hunt. "I wish them a lot of luck."

A team led by Canadian geologist Simon Donato, 31, will set out in late July to search a remote area on the east slope of the Sierra range. With experience in adventure racing through wilderness areas around the world, Donato will bring up to ten other backcountry athletes, some with search and rescue experience, with him.
"You never know what you're going to find out there," said Donato.

"It's going to be getting into those hard-to-reach areas and basically crossing them off the map," he said. "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 said his efforts were to honor Fossett who he said "was a hero to so many people."

"He had a huge following. People loved him. They love adventure, and he was pushing the boundaries. Somebody like that just deserves to be found” he said.

In late August, Washington, D.C., investor, alpinist and longtime Explorers Club member Robert Hyman, 49, plans to lead a team of up to 15 climbers, mountain guides and others with backcountry expertise to check an area just east of the area Donato is concentrating in.

Hymans search will focus on cliffs, crevices, ledges, steep canyons and other hard-to-reach spots around the Wassuk Range, dominated by 11,239-foot-high Mount Grant.

When Fossett departed on September 3, 2008, he originally headed toward Lucky Boy Pass in the Wassuks in the borrowed Bellanca 8KCAB Decathlon

“We're going to have to do this on foot, the old-fashioned way," Hyman said referring to the massive aerial search last year. "He's obviously in an area that you just can't see from overhead, even with satellite imagery and high-altitude mapping and infrared and everything else."

"If we go out there and don't find anything, OK, well, we tried. And if next week, we hear on the news that someone else found him, that's great. That's what we're all about. That's what we want," said Hyman, an experienced climber who has climbed the highest peaks in all but three U.S. states and veteran of numerous mountain and jungle expeditions.

Issuing a statement through a spokesman, widow Peggy Fossett said that an analysis of high-tech mapping photography done in late 2007 was completed with no results and she's not involved in the upcoming activity and has "no further plans for additional searching."

Fossett’s disappearance remains an open case for the Lyon Country Sheriff’s Department  with jurisdiction over the sprawling Flying M Ranch which Fossett departed from owned by hotel magnate and friend, Barron Hilton.

While no official search is planned, Lyon County Undersheriff Joe Sanford said search-and-rescue crews will be sent out immediately if the teams led by Donato and Hyman spot something.

"I truly thought someone would find something come springtime when they started traipsing around hunting and things like that," Sanford said.

The sheriff said his department is cooperating with the summer-season searchers as much as possible.

"We're not going to tell people not to go, but what they do if they find something is always our concern," he said. "Where are they going and what do they do if they need help - those are the things that we're concerned with."

The chances of finding evidence of Fossetts loss seems for many to be a hopeless effort. The area around Hilton’s ranch, 80 miles southeast or Reno, typifies Nevada landscape including barren areas as well as rugged terrain and wide swaths of trees that could easily hide a downed aircraft.

"Don't give up hope. We waited 60 years or more," said Jeanne Pyle, brother of WWII airman Ernest Munn whose body was found last year in the high Sierra after his trainer disappeared in 1942.

(Photo of Fossett's plane, N240R, courtesy of Doug Robertson, Jr.)

FMI: www.stevefossett.com