Steve Fossett’s Wreck Location Suggests Overlooked Clue

Text by Contributing Editor James Vlahos

The first time I looked for Steve Fossett, in September 2007, search and rescue crews were despondent—the desert was large, Fossett was small, and how could he ever be found? The second time, however, nearly a year later, the searchers I met were seriously pumped. As documented in “Zeroing In On Fossett” (ADVENTURE, November 2008), three new volunteer teams were scouring the desert and mountains, the unaffiliated searchers united by a common belief: Fossett’s wreck would be found, and soon.

And they were right. On September 29 ski shop owner Preston Morrow, not affiliated with any search group, stumbled upon Fossett’s Federal Aviation Administration identification while hiking off trail in the wilderness west of Mammoth Lakes, California. Two days later, searchers found the remains of his Bellanca Super Decathlon, which apparently had been flown into a mountainside of rock. The engine was thrown several hundred feet from the disintegrated fuselage. At the time of this writing, Fossett’s remains had not been found.

Over the past year, thousands of people have been involved in the quest to find Fossett, and they fell into two camps.

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