A hiker in a remote area of California has found two aviation identification cards belonging to millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, presumed dead after his plane went missing a year ago, a police spokesperson said on Wednesday.
”We got confirmation they were his,” said Eirca Stuart, a spokesperson for the Madera County Sheriff’s Office, referring to the cards — one a pilot’s licence and the other from the Soaring Society of America.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson Ian Gregor said he could not confirm the authenticity of cards but that information on one matched FAA information on Fossett.
The cards and a sweatshirt were found in a remote part of Madera County in the eastern Sierras between Yosemite National Park and the Nevada border, but wreckage from the small airplane Fossett was piloting when he disappeared was not found.
Stuart said more than 30 search teams were being formed to comb the mountainous area for the wreckage in coming days ahead of a potential snowfall.
”It’s very rugged alpine terrain,” said Michael Salvador of the Madera County Sheriff’s Office. ”You hike in or you fly in” by helicopter.
Fossett (63) vanished in his airplane after taking off from a private airstrip in Nevada in September 2007.
Despite weeks of extensive land and air searches, no wreckage was found, and he was declared legally dead in February after investigators concluded that his airplane was destroyed in a fatal accident.
Fossett’s family was monitoring developments as authorities set up a command post to search for the wreckage of his plane.
”I am hopeful that this search will locate the crash site and my husband’s remains,” Peggy Fossett, the missing adventurer’s widow, said in a statement.
ID cards and $100 bills
Hiker Preston Morrow told Fox News Channel that he had found the Federal Aviation Administration ID cards with Fossett’s name on them, along with several $100 bills, while returning from a mountain hike on Monday. There was no sign of any wreckage, he said.
The sweatshirt was found in an area higher up the same mountain ridge by searchers on Tuesday, Morrow said.
”I was coming back down this really steep terrain, and what caught my eye was these little [ID] cards in the dirt and the pine needles, and some $100 bills.”
”I see the ID. I caught the name. I got the ID cards … and about five or six of the hundred-dollar bills, [which] were dirty and muddy,” he said.
”I was wondering, ‘Why are there some ID cards and money when there was nothing else?’ No wallet, no bags, nothing nothing, nothing,” Morrow told Fox News.
Fossett held several aviation and sailing records. In 2002 he became the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world.
He disappeared after setting off from western Nevada on September 3 2007, in a single-engine plane for what friends said was a casual pleasure flight. — Reuters