Posted on 10/02/2008 12:01:26 AM PDT by Canticle_of_Deborah
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — Search teams combing a rugged part of eastern California for any sign of Steve Fossett, the adventurer who vanished on a solo flight more than a year ago, have spotted what appeared to be wreckage Wednesday, authorities said.
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.
A ground team was en route to the site Wednesday night, and authorities would be able to confirm there is actual wreckage and whether it belongs to Fossett on Thursday morning, Stuart said.
Authorities, however, cautioned that hundreds of planes have gone down in the mountainous region, so any wreckage found could belong to other cases.
Earlier in the week a hiker discovered what may be Fossett's personal belongings in the California woods not far from the Nevada state line.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
ping
This is a bizarre story. The area cited in another report - Red’s Meadow - is hugely popular with campers and hikers.
There would have been hundreds of people in this area on September 3, 2007 which was Labor Day. Also, although the terrain there is rugged, it is not heavily forested like some of the Sierra.
Hard to believe a plane could have gone down here on one of the summer’s busiest weekends and nobody noticed.
You wouldn’t think it would be so hard, but here it is 40 years later, and we are still getting pilots remains back from Viet Nam. We still have so many mountainous, forested, unpopulated regions here.
The area cited in the story is not remote or unpopulated, especially on Labor Day weekend. It’s full of hikers and campers. That’s what’s interesting about this story.
I was backpacking out of Red’s Meadow on Labor Day 2006.
Thanks for the comments. It does sound strange doesn’t it.
That area is incredibly large, rugged, and mountainous. Planes disappear easily in those mountains. Yesterday I read the guy who found the wallet was hiking off the trail, so he would have been in a remote area. BTW, kudos to that guy for being an honest and upright man. They said there was a thousand bucks in the wallet. If he had kept it nobody would have known.
Yes, it seems like so many missing person remains are found by guys out in the woods walking their dogs. I’m sure the family will be glad to have some closure.
Years ago, my neighbor shot an intruder in his house. It was very early in the morning. I heard the shot, but thought it must have been a power transformer blowing up, or some idiot setting off a cherry bomb.
Not until the cops and ambulance showed up, and the cops pounded on my door to ask what I had heard, did I realize what happened.
So, you hear the sound of a plane crashing, but you think it's a distant gunshot from a hunter, or heat lightning, or whatever. Your mind doesn't recognize it as something worse, like a plane crash, unless you see it going down. Easy for such a thing to get lost.
This past summer, went to dinner at a riverfront restaurant at the Jersey Shore. While we were eating dinner, an experimental airplane took a nosedive into a nearby marina, a short walk away. We didn't notice a thing, nor did anyone else in the restaurant. We did see a couple of State Police boats motor up the river, but guessed it was their end of patrol or something.
We read about the crash in the newspaper the next day.
We had something unusual happen here in Panama recently concerning a British couple:
Five years ago he faked his drowning back in Briton. He was a canoeist.
Wife collects on life insurance and moves to the Republic of Panama.
He finds out that she is having and affair with a Panamanian.
Light turns on. Since he is dead, she can walk off with their money.
What to do? He goes back to England and turns himself and his wife into the authorities.
Both in Jail.
End of story.
So much for Steve Fossett chilling out somewhere on a South American beach.
Yes, if his engine cut out and he glided into a crash there would have been little noise.
I remember hearing about that. What a strange turn of events. They pulled it off, but when morals are that low, there’s bound to be other evidences of it.
This guy must have been very ticked off.
Fossett Ping
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - Searchers found the wreckage of Steve Fossett’s plane in California’s rugged Sierra Nevada just over a year after the millionaire adventurer vanished on a solo flight, and the craft appears to have hit the mountainside head-on, authorities said Thursday.
[snip]
Most of the plane’s fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.
“It was a hard-impact crash, and he would’ve died instantly,” said Jeff Page, emergency management coordinator for Lyon County, Nev., who assisted the search.
Where is his body?
Surely there would still be some evidence of him somewhere ... .
“Sheriff John Anderson said no human remains were found in the wreckage.
“It’s quite often if you don’t find remains within a few days, because of animals, you’ll find nothing at all,” Anderson said.”
To be realistic... a bear killed and ate a deer in my backyard. An hour later, the only visible signs of a struggle was blood in the snow.
Thank you for your reply.
If you give me some time (tomorrow), I will send you some articles on this.
Very recently the husband was given a good whacking in prison because he had been working in the prison system before he decided he was dead but then decided he was alive.
My best regards.
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