A court may have declared Steve Fossett legally dead back in February, but a group of backcountry experts and wilderness athletes is setting out to search for any sign of the super-adventurer. The 10-person squad has set up a base camp between the Bodie Hills and the Sweetwater Mountains, about a 110-mile drive south of Reno, Nevada.
Geologist and "adventure racer" Simon Donato is leading the ground search team, and his group will cover 15 to 20 miles of territory a day, focusing on wooded areas that could obscure aerial views of the wreckage of Fossett's plane.
Another similar but separate team will try its luck with an independent ground search later this year. Fossett's widow, Peggy, isn't involved with either effort.
After a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful hunt for adventurer Steve Fossett last year, Nevada was left holding a search-and-rescue bill for $687,000. Now the governor wants his family to chip in for some of those costs. Barron Hilton, whose Flying M Ranch was the setting-off point for Fossett's fateful flight, has already sent the state a check for $200,000.
The Governor Jim Gibbons' press secretary says any contribution would be voluntary, but added:
We are going to request that they help offset some of these expenses, considering the scope of the search, the overall cost as well as our ongoing budget difficulties.
The search for Fossett was indeed a massive one, involving multiple agencies and covering 20,000 square miles. Ultimately, though, rescuers found no trace of the world record holder, and he was declared legally dead on February 15, 2008.
Super-adventurer Steve Fossett was declared dead by a Chicago judge on Friday, more than five months after he vanished into the Nevada wilderness on a daytime flight in a light aircraft.
His widow, Peggy, took the stand during the court proceedings, testifying to Fossett's legendary survival skills:
Everybody thought he'd come walking down the road one day and have another story to tell.
Sadly, that never happened, and there's been no sign of him--or even his plane--despite a massive search operation that went on for weeks. A search-and-rescue expert at the trial testified that Fossett could've crashed in a crevice near Mt. Grant in Nevada. It's also possible, he said, that pine trees were obscuring the wreckage of his plane.
This ruling not withstanding, we're betting people will be pondering the mystery of Fossett's disappearance for decades to come.
It's now been four days since record-breaking adventure travelerSteve Fossett set off from the Flying M Ranch, and there's still no sign of him. He was expected back at Flying M the same day he took off, reportedly to scout locations for a land speed record try.
The search has been going on almost around the clock, except when weather keeps search and rescue craft grounded. Teams are covering a vast amount of territory looking for Fossett, and despite finding nothing yet, his friends, including Richard Branson, are still optimistic that'll he be found.
