Swarms of searchers combed the rugged Minaret Range Thursday in hopes of answering the main two remaining questions in the mystery of missing adventurer Steve Fossett: Where are his remains, and what caused his single-engine airplane to slam into a steep granite slope 7 miles west of this town?
The investigation will take months, if not years, but Fossett's friend and fellow aviator, John "Bumper" Morgan, doesn't have to see the crash site in the Inyo National Forest to know what probably happened.
Morgan has flown gliders and airplanes for decades throughout the Eastern Sierra, where the pieces of Fossett's borrowed plane were found this week, and he's come to fear the downdraft of wind coming off the slopes and the sudden thermals whipping up from the ground.
"One of those two things got Steve, I'm pretty sure," said Morgan, 63, of Gardnerville, Nev. "Even if you have your head screwed on straight and are a very good flier like he was, downdrafts and thermals can leap up and get you. Mother Nature just knows how to dish out more than you can handle."
Investigators announced Thurs-day that they had found what might be remains at the crash site and that they could be enough for the coroner to process for identification.
The impact of the crash was so forceful that there wasn't much to work with, they added.
All that remained of the acrobatic Bellanca Super Decathlon plane - finally found Wednesday a year after Fossett vanished - was small chunks of wreckage scattered over 400 feet of a steep slope covered with rocks and trees. The engine was found 300 feet from the fuselage pieces.
"We did find very little in the way of remains, but I believe the coroner will be able to do some work," said Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transportation and Safety Board, the federal agency leading the investigation into the crash. He refused to specify further on the remains.
Piece of bone found
However, Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said later that what searchers had found was a piece of bone 2 by 1 1/2 inches. He said it was unclear if it was human and added that he did not know of any confirmed human remains being found.
The bone will be tested for DNA by the state Department of Justice, Anderson said.
Fossett borrowed the doomed airplane Sept. 3, 2007 - the morning the 63-year-old millionaire took off from Nevada for his ill-fated morning flight. The single-engine plane was made of wood, aluminum and cloth. When it hit the mountainside, Rosenker said, it came in horizontally - not a vertical nosedive - and shattered, then burned briefly.
Searchers said they would continue scratching for clues with 50 trackers on foot and with five cadaver-sniffing dogs, until the weather forces them out of the crash area, at an elevation of 10,000 feet. Snow is expected tonight.
"The conditions are very challenging," said Rosenker. He said helicopter crews hope to fly in this morning to begin removing part of the plane.
As for Fossett's remains: Experienced trackers and searchers said animals sometimes drag human remains a quarter mile. The fact that the smashed plane has sat in the mountains for a full year of scorching sun and drenching snow, exposed to bears and other wildlife makes it unlikely that much more of substance will be recovered quickly, they said.
"If anything can find any remains of Steve, it will be those cadaver dogs," said Lew Toulmin, a search-and-rescue expert who was in the New York Explorer's Club with Fossett and helped lead a team hunting for him north of here last month. "They've been able to find remains dating back to the Gold Rush era."
Perhaps the most vexing question about the tragedy is why Fossett, who had set 115 world records in aviation and sailing, crashed.
Weather likely culprit
Pilot Morgan points to the weather.
Morgan shared a love of flying with Fossett, and the two flew out of the Minden, Nev., airport together for years. He was part of the original search effort, which focused mainly in Nevada.
Downdrafts, Morgan said, are winds that whip over the Sierra and force planes down with crazy gusts. Thermals are blasts of air that thrust up from the ground when cold and hot air mix in environments like that of the eastern Sierra and surrounding desert.
The day Fossett disappeared, the skies were clear and the temperature was about 80 to 90 degrees. Seemingly perfect weather for the kind of morning jaunt Fossett had in mind that day. But as Morgan and others pointed out, perfect weather means nothing to downdrafts and thermals - and that day, high in the Sierra, the winds were blowing at more than 30 knots.
"Steve was talented and cautious, but he was adventurous," said Morgan. "He wasn't afraid to fly into challenging conditions. I think this was maybe just a little too challenging."
Other theories are that Fossett suffered an ailment, such as a heart attack, or the plane malfunctioned, searchers here said. But it will be at least six months, and probably longer, before NTSB investigators are able to analyze the debris and come to any conclusion.
Closure for family
For now, the best anyone can do is guess. And be sad. And be grateful that perhaps the family can finally find some closure.
"Peggy (Fossett's widow) is relieved that at least there are some answers now," said Robert Hyman, who also was in the Explorer's Club with Fossett and led last month's tracking team with Toulmin. "She told my team she wants to put all of this behind her, and she is grateful for all our efforts."
Hotel mogul Barron Hilton was a friend of Fossett's and owned the Flying M Ranch that Fossett took off from.
"Of the nearly 7 billion people in this world, Steve Fossett had to be the greatest adventurer of them all," Hilton said Thursday. "Personally what I'll miss the most is his unfailing cheerfulness, determination and friendship."
Fossett was world renowned for his flying and sailing records, which included being the first to fly around the Earth alone without refueling. The wealthy financial broker had also swum the English Channel and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, leading his friends to say that if anyone could survive an air crash, he could.
Day-hiker's find
The confirmation that Fossett's plane had been found came three days after Preston Morrow, the manager of Kittredge Sports in Mammoth Lakes, found Fossett's pilot's license, a glider license and a membership card for the National Aeronautic Association while day-hiking.
During last year's monthlong search - which covered 25,000 square miles and was one of the biggest such hunts in U.S. history - California Highway Patrol officers had flown over the Minarets area 19 times, said Jeff Page, director of the Lyon County Office of Emergency Services in Nevada, where the original missing persons report for Fossett was filed.
Officials said last year when the search was suspended that they believed the best chance for the wreckage to be discovered would be if a hiker came across debris by happenstance.
cludes a lengthy working session with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday, breakfast with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, plus a major foreign policy address and meetings with Russian civil society activists, has done little to calm worries that the agenda holds out scant hope for any strategic breakthrough between the two countries, whose relations have descended into Cold War-style shouting matches at several points in recent years.
