Steve Fossett Crash Site, Remains Found; Searchers Find Remains at Fossett Crash Site

Francine Kopun: FEATURE WRITER

He sailed around the world in 58 days, plunged 9,000 metres in a burning capsule into the Coral Sea off the coast of Australia, only to be defeated in the end by the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, a fitting place for a cowboy to die.

Police cadaver dogs began searching yesterday for the remains of millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, after the wreckage of the single-engine plane he was piloting was found near a hiking trail in Inyo National Forest, one year and one month after he went missing. Search crews found a “very small” amount of human remains – enough for DNA testing.

“The plane was quite burned and it was scattered so it was thought to be a pretty strong impact,” said Nancy Upham, spokesperson for Inyo National Forest. The engine was found about 100 metres from the fuselage and wings.

“It appeared to me, just looking at the pictures, it was a head-on crash into the side of the mountain, into a rock,” said Madera County Sheriff John Anderson.

The wreckage of the Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon plane was located Wednesday night, two days and 400 metres away from where a hiker found $1,000 in $100 bills and Fossett’s withered pilot’s licence.

Fossett was declared dead by a Chicago court in February, at the request of his wife Peggy. The couple married in 1967. Fossett was 63 when he went missing.

Plagued by childhood asthma, Fossett became an adventurer of epic proportions, swimming the English Channel, sailing around the world in a catamaran, driving a Porsche in the 24-hour Le Mans, attempting Everest.

His most spectacular feats were in the air. In 2006, he and co-pilot Einar Enevoldson became the first people to fly a glider into the stratosphere, setting an altitude record of 15,460 metres. Fossett was the first person to fly solo around the world in an airplane without refuelling.

He was the first person to pilot a hot-air balloon solo around the world, after five failed attempts.

In August, 1998, on his fourth try, he was sucked into a thunderstorm off the coast of Australia and the capsule he was riding in fell burning into the shark-infested Coral Sea. Fossett grabbed his life raft and swam through the capsule’s submerged hatch, according to an obituary in the New York Times. A boat picked him up after 10 hours afloat.

His good friend, fellow adventurer and billionaire Richard Branson helped fund some of his escapades. Fossett also had plenty of his own money to burn. Armed with a Stanford degree in economics, he made a fortune as a commodities trader, starting his own brokerage firm, Lakota Trading. He was also a principal in Larkspur Securities and Marathon Racing, which developed and owned much of the technology he used in his adventures, according to the Times.

Finding the plane might not clear up the mystery of his disappearance to everyone’s satisfaction. The Sunday Telegraph suggested in August that Fossett might have faked his own death. It reported that a detective hired by insurers Lloyd’s of London located a woman who claimed to have been his mistress, and that he had invested heavily in troubled financial companies.

It questioned why he left behind his expensive global positioning system watch on the day he took off from a friend’s luxurious ranch in Nevada, and why he flew in only a T-shirt and shorts, without a parachute or warm clothing to protect him against the cold desert night if anything went awry.

The terrain in the area where the wreckage of Fossett’s plane was located – in an open area near the tree line – is treacherous.

It is also dramatically scenic – with spectacular craggy peaks rising to 4,000 metres, the kind of soaring, lonesome landscape that Fossett spent most of his spare time sailing, flying and floating in.