Steve Fossett's Plane Found in Bear Country

Stefan Lovgren in Los Angeles
for National Geographic News

October 2, 2008

Steve Fossett's plane and a tiny amount of human remains have been found in California near Yosemite National Park, officials confirmed today. The millionaire U.S. adventurer has been missing since early September 2007.

The rugged terrain of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains likely contributed to the crash, which appears to have been a head-on collision, experts said.

The eating habits of animals in the region—including bears, mountain lions, and rodents—probably explain why so few remains have been found, wildlife experts said.

Found Thursday—the day after Fossett's plane wreckage had been discovered—the amount of human remains at the crash site is "very small," Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Boad, told the Reuters news agency.

Before the remains had been found, Erica Stuart, the public information officer with the Madera County, California, Sheriff's Department, had said, "It's safe to say that any human remains would have been taken by animals."

Disintegrated on Impact

Fossett's aircraft appears to have hit a mountainside near the town of Mammoth Lakes at an elevation of 9,700 feet (3,000 meters) in the Inyo National Forest.

Most of the plane's fuselage disintegrated on impact, authorities said.

"It was a hard-impact crash, and he would've died instantly," Jeff Page, emergency-management coordinator for Lyon County, Nevada, who assisted with the search, told the Associated Press.

Three identification cards belonging to Fossett were discovered in the area on Monday by a local hiker walking his dog.

Preston Morrow had veered off a trail in a meadow about 7 miles (11 kilometers) from Mammoth Lakes.

Searchers began combing the rough terrain on Wednesday. They soon found the wreckage about a quarter of a mile (half a kilometer) from where Morrow had found the IDs.

Utta Schmidt, president of California's Mono County Sheriff Search and Rescue team, was at the site late Wednesday.

"The terrain is fairly typical of the eastern Sierra at the tree line, with a mixture of dense forest, some open meadows, punctuated by rocky outcrops and steep cliff ends," she said.

The actual crash site, she said, is in a more open area, and pieces of the plane had been scattered over several hundred yards.

The Civil Air Patrol, a volunteer U.S. Air Force auxiliary, had searched the area for Fossett in September 2007 without finding anything.

But Schmidt is not surprised that the wreckage has turned up more than a year later.

"This is very rugged terrain," she said. "It's amazingly hard to see things from the air, unless you know exactly where to look."

Pennie Custer is a 32-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service who works as a public affairs specialist at a ranger station in Mammoth Lakes.

"The only reason why they were able to find this wreck was because someone wandered off the trails," she said.

Scavengers' Sense of Smell

Steve Fossett disappeared on September 3, 2007, after taking off in a plane he had borrowed from a Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton.

Most of last year's 20,000-square-mile (52,000-square-kilometer) search had focused on Nevada and areas north of Mammoth Lakes. Flight plans had been based on what searchers knew about sightings of Fossett's plane, his scheduled return time, and the amount of fuel in the plane, the Associated Press reported.

Teams led by the Madera County Sheriff's Department said on Thursday that they would continue the search for Fossett's body.

But wildlife experts gave insight into why so few remains have been found.

"This is an area where there are lots of bears, coyotes—a lot of animals that are hungry," the Forest Service's Custer said.

"If there were a body in that area, the animals would have found it. They're really good at sniffing things like that out—their survival depends on it."

Doug Updike, the statewide bear coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Game, is very familiar with the area and its wildlife.

"Bears are not predators per se. But they are generalist feeders; they'll pretty much eat anything," he said.

"They spend much of their daily activity just wandering around, looking for things that are interesting. They use their strong sense of smell," he added.

"When they come across a meal, they are known to scavenge on dead animals."

While black bears generally do not move a carcass, mountain lions and coyotes have been known to drag dead animals for several miles.

Mountain lions will move a body to a shady area, often in small ravines. They may feed on the carcass for a while, and then move the body again.

Bears, on the other hand, will eat more in a single go, often camping out on top of a carcass.

"If a day or so passes after a person is killed from an accident out there, the smell could potentially attract a mountain lion or coyotes or certainly a bear," Updike said.

"Any of those animals could scavenge, and you could have a combination of things going on."

In some cases, even bone remains may be gone, because they are a valuable mineral resource for a lot of gnawing rodents.

"The more time goes by," he said, "the more difficult it is to find out what kind of animal fed on [the remains]."