|
By Mike Gervais
Register Staff
10-2-2008 A Mammoth Lakes resident hiking in the Minaret Mine area has located what is believed to be missing aviator Steve Fossett’s pilot’s license, possibly giving authorities long-awaited clues needed to solve our modern era’s own Amelia Earheart mystery.
Kittredge Sports employee Preston Morrow, during a hiking trip near Minaret Trail Monday, stumbled across several items now linked to Fossett, including the license and a card issued by the Federal Aviation Administration in Illinois. (The 63-year-old millionaire and renowned adventurer owned a home in Chicago.)
In response to Morrow’s discovery, the first of four search teams was flown into the remote area by California Highway Patrol helicopter by noon on Wednesday. Searchers were expected to focus on the John Muir Trail between Dorothy and Shadow lakes.
Already, news reporters from around the globe were beginning to set up shop in Mammoth Lakes.
Morrow, meanwhile, never would have guessed he’d find himself at the center of it all after setting out for a simple hike.
Morrow was hiking the Minaret trail to the Minaret Mines late Monday afternoon when, because it was growing late, he decided to cut the trip short, summit a nearby peak to take in the view, then head home.
It was while he hiked down the peak, back towards the trail, that he came across the ID cards – an FAA identity card, a pilot’s license and a third ID – believed to belong to Fossett.
“It was really steep terrain, way, way off the trail,” Morrow said Wednesday. “The ID card was all plastic, so it held up pretty well; the other two cards were laminated paper, and they were in pretty bad shape. There was another card I left that was all paper, and it was pretty tattered.”
Morrow also found a stack of crumpled and tattered cash with the ID cards. He said there were 10 $100 bills and a $5 bill.
“I looked around the area, because the first thing I thought was an animal, a bear or something, got into a tent and drug this stuff out. I thought I’d find a wallet or a bag or something,” Morrow said, but he could not locate any other effects.
Morrow said he didn’t immediately connect the found items to Fossett. He packed the items with his gear, and headed back home to Mammoth Lakes.
He and several coworkers at Kittredge Sports examined the found items, ultimately linking the ID cards to Fossett.
Together with his wife, friends and a camera man, Morrow led a search team back to the area where he found the cash and cards. From there, Morrow’s wife, Natalie, found a weathered sweat shirt lying on the ground.
The team recorded the GPS coordinates of the items, hiked home and notified authorities of the find Wednesday morning.
Morrow didn’t see any signs of the light plane Fossett was flying when he disappeared Sept. 3, 2007, but aviation experts said that doesn’t mean the items are fakes or counterfeits, a report from the Associated Press states.
The area where the items were found is located in a very remote region of the Sierra outside of the zone east of the Glass Mountains originally searched by members of the Civilian Air Patrol in the month following Fossett’s disappearance.
Fossett, legally declared dead eight months ago, disappeared after taking off from the Flying M Ranch in Nevada to scout the desert for an appropriate area to conduct a land-speed record run. His disappearance sparked a massive manhunt, featuring hundreds of state and federal personnel, airplanes, helicopters and even private citizens.
The 20,000 square-mile search was called off after a month without any trace of the missing adventurer or his plane. Other private search endeavors in the area this past summer failed to turn up any evidence of Fossett, until the chance finding this week.
The initial search of the desert wasteland in Nevada uncovered the remains of several ancient plane crashes, but no signs of the missing millionaire.
Earlier this summer, a 28-member team of elite climbers and search and rescue personnel called the Explorers Club set out in search of Fossett and came up with what at the time was the most promising lead in the effort to find Fossett, a scrap of blue cloth blowing in the barren desert.
The piece of cloth was believed to belong to the Bellanca Super Decathlon acrobatics-specialty plane Fossett had borrowed from hotel mogul and friend Barron Hilton, who owns the Flying M Ranch.
Later analysis determined the cloth did not belong to the plane, and searchers were back at square one.
That is, until this week.
Rumors and speculation have run rampant since the famed adventurer’s disappearance, with some self-proclaimed conspiracy theorists claiming Fossett faked his death.
Fossett’s wife petitioned a judge in February to have the missing adventurer declared dead, a move that drew international headlines and prompted more speculation about his disappearance. Generally, a person is not declared dead until they have been missing for seven years or more.
Fossett was an avid aviator, sailor and adventurer who set numerous world records in several endeavors on land, air and sea. Among his accomplishments in flight were five nonstop circumnavigations of the earth as well as long-distance solo flights in a balloon. He also circled the globe in a sailboat.
Fossett funded all of his projects with a fortune he amassed in the financial services industry.
|
