Wreckage of Fossett’s Plane Is Found (update added)

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California authorities have confirmed that the wreckage of a plane they found in the east-central mountains of the state is that of Steve Fossett, the millionaire adventurer who vanished more than a year ago after embarking on a solo flight.

A plane with the same tail number as that flown by Mr. Fossett was discovered in several pieces strewn across a wide area in the Ansel Adams Wilderness section of Inyo National Forest, about 120 miles south of the Nevada ranch where he departed on Sept. 3, 2007, for what he had said would be a brief trip.

No human remains have been found, but 50 ground searchers were going into the region on Thursday with five dogs trained to sniff for cadavers, said Nancy Upham, a spokeswoman for the Inyo forest.

“Most of the plane was not intact at all,” Ms. Upham said. “The search crew was able to locate a number of pieces. The engine was found 300 feet from the main fuselage of the plane. The plane was pretty badly destroyed.”

A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement that its chairman, Mark V. Rosenker, and investigators were heading to the remote airport in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., to confirm the findings.

The search for Mr. Fossett was renewed this week after a hiker, Preston Morrow, said he came across a few of Mr. Fossett’s belongings in some bushes in the Mammoth Lakes region on Monday. Among the items he found were Mr. Fossett’s Illinois-issued Federal Aviation Administration identification, his pilot’s license, a tattered sweatshirt and about $1,000 in cash. The discovery prompted officials from the Mono County and Madera County sheriff’s offices to retrace Mr. Morrow’s steps on foot and by air.

Mr. Fossett, 63, of Chicago, took off for what was expected to be a brief flight on Sept. 3, 2007, from a private ranch in Yerington, Nev., about 120 miles north of the high-mountain Sierra Nevada area where Mr. Morrow found the items. Mr. Fossett never returned, and the largest air and ground search in United States history, across a 17,000-square-mile region, failed to find him or his blue-and-white Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon.

Earlier on Wednesday, Undersheriff Frank Bernard said searchers needed to hurry because the area where Mr. Morrow uncovered the items was expected to receive its first snowfall of the season this weekend. Mammoth Lakes is about 10,000 feet above sea level, and snow makes already difficult terrain largely impassable and could bury plane wreckage.

Mr. Morrow, a 43-year-old ski shop owner, told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles that he was hiking “way, way off” the established trails in the Ansel Adams Wilderness section of the two-million-acre Inyo National Forest when he first spotted a bunch of $100 bills. He then noticed the laminated cards with Mr. Fossett’s name but did not notify the authorities until Tuesday because it took him a day to recall who Mr. Fossett was, he told KNBC.

Mr. Fossett’s wife, Peggy, issued a statement on Wednesday saying she was monitoring the situation.

“I am hopeful that this search will locate the crash site and my husband’s remains,” Mrs. Fossett said. “I am grateful to all of those involved in this effort.”

The Fossetts were married for 39 years and had no children. Mr. Fossett was declared dead by a Chicago judge this year at his wife’s request.

The Inyo region was flown over repeatedly during the monthlong search for Mr. Fossett, but those who have hiked and flown over it say it is dense, mountainous forest where something as small as a two-seat light aircraft would be easy to overlook.

“It’s very hard to see by air; there’s so many crevices, so many rocks, so many crazy shapes that unless you’re looking literally a few feet from it, it would be very hard to see,” said Rusty Aimer, chief executive of Aviation Experts, an aviation consulting firm based in San Clemente, Calif., who has flown the Inyo region many times. “Everybody was saying that someday some hiker would run into the wreckage of his airplane, and here it is, that’s almost exactly what’s happened.”

Mr. Fossett held numerous world records and was the first person to circumnavigate the world in a hot-air balloon as well as the first to fly a plane solo around the globe without refueling. His close friend Richard Branson had said that Mr. Fossett was most likely flying around the Yerington area searching for dry lake beds in which to challenge the world’s land-speed record, his latest quest.

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - More than a year after the mysterious disappearance of millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, searchers have found the wreckage of his plane in the rugged Sierra Nevada along with enough human remains for DNA testing.

The remains were found amid a field of debris that stretched 400 feet long and 150 feet wide in a steep section of the mountain range, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday at a press conference. Some personal effects also were found at the crash site, but investigators would not describe them in any detail.

"We found human remains, but there's very little. Given the length of time the wreckage has been out there, it's not surprising there's not very much," said National Transportation Safety Board acting Chairman Mark Rosenker. "I'm not going to elaborate on what it is."

The 63-year-old thrill-seeker vanished on a solo flight 13 months ago. The mangled debris of his single-engine Bellanca was spotted from the air late Wednesday near the town of Mammoth Lakes and was identified by its tail number. Investigators said the plane had slammed straight into a mountainside.

"It was a hard-impact crash, and he would've died instantly," said Jeff Page, emergency management coordinator for Lyon County, Nev., who assisted in the search.

NTSB investigators went into the mountains Thursday to figure out what caused the plane to go down. Most of the fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.

"It will take weeks, perhaps months, to get a better understanding of what happened," Rosenker said before investigators set off.

Search crews and cadaver dogs scoured the steep terrain around the crash site in hopes of finding at least some trace of his body and solving the mystery of his disappearance once and for all.

Rosenker said enough remains were found to provide coroners with DNA.

Fossett vanished on Sept. 3, 2007, after taking off from a Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton. The intrepid balloonist and pilot was scouting locations for an attempt to break the land speed record in a rocket-propelled car.

His disappearance spurred a huge search that covered 20,000 square miles, cost millions of dollars and included the use of infrared technology. Eventually, a judge declared Fossett legally dead in February. For a while, many of his friends held out hope he survived, given his many close scrapes with death over the years.

The breakthrough — in fact, the first trace of any kind — came earlier this week when a hiker stumbled across a pilot's license and other ID cards belonging to Fossett a quarter-mile from where the plane was later spotted in the Inyo National Forest. Investigators said animals might have dragged the IDs from the wreckage while picking over Fossett's remains.

The rugged area, situated about 65 miles from the ranch, had been flown over 19 times by the California Civil Air Patrol during the initial search, Anderson said. But it had not been considered a likely place to find the plane.

Lt. Col. Ronald Butts, a pilot who coordinated the Civil Air Patrol search effort, said gusty conditions along the mountains' upper elevations hampered efforts to search by air, as did the small amount of debris that remained after the plane crashed.

"Everything we could have done was done," Butts said.

Searchers had concentrated on an area north of Mammoth Lakes, given what they knew about sightings of Fossett's plane, his travel plans and the amount of fuel he had.

"With it being an extremely mountainous area, it doesn't surprise me they had not found the aircraft there before," Lyon County Undersheriff Joe Sanford said.

As for what might have caused the wreck, Mono County, Calif., Undersheriff Ralph Obenberger said there were large storm clouds over the peaks around Mammoth Lakes on the day of the crash.

Fossett made a fortune in the Chicago commodities market and gained worldwide fame for setting records in high-tech balloons, gliders, jets and boats. In 2002, he became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon.

He also swam the English Channel, completed an Ironman triathlon, competed in the Iditarod dog sled race and climbed some of the world's best-known peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

"I hope now to be able to bring to closure a very painful chapter in my life," Fossett's widow, Peggy, said in a statement. "I prefer to think about Steve's life rather than his death and celebrate his many extraordinary accomplishments."

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Marcus Wohlsen reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Malia Wollan in San Francisco and Scott Sonner in Reno, Nev., contributed to this report.

Well, what's next? Amelia Earhart's plane on some remote island?