A 10-member team of elite athletes and expert mountaineers hopes to do what search planes andsatellite imagery couldn't - find Steve Fossett's body.
The multimillionaire adventurer was declared legally dead in February, five months after hewas last seen taking off by plane from a remote Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton.
The search team led by geologist and adventure racer Simon Donato will focus on remote,wooded areas near where the
63-year-old Fossett was last seen - areas that could have concealed wreckage from the crewsof the many private and military planes that searched last year.
"Whether we luck out and find the wreckage or not, at least our tracks will be preserved sothat in the future if someone wants to give this a try they'll know where we already were and theycan go to the next mountain range over," Donato said in a weekend interview at a base camp betweenthe Bodie Hills and Sweetwater Mountains.
The search area, with peaks ranging from 10,000 to more than 11,000 feet in elevation, isjust east of the even higher Sierra Nevada and about 110 miles south of Reno, Nev. Because the areais close to Hilton's ranch, where Fossett was staying, Donato believes it's the best place tosearch.
Search team members, who are paying their own way, began arriving Friday to set up camp. Theteam will continue its efforts through this coming Friday and possibly Saturday, covering 15 to 20miles a day depending on the terrain, Donato said.
Previous searchers provided maps and other detailed information on the harsh landscape. Withplanes and high-tech equipment, about 20,000 square miles was covered from the air. Some groundsearches also were conducted, and thousands of amateur volunteers scoured high-resolution satellitephotographs over the Internet of the rugged Nevada landscape where Fossett disappeared.
Donato considers Fossett, declared legally dead Feb. 15 by an Illinois judge, a hero to manypeople and dismisses speculation that his disappearance might have been staged.
"We're here on the premise that he did crash, unfortunately," he said. "I really respect him.He has done so much."
Donato, 31, won't be the only one looking for Fossett. In late August, Robert Hyman, aWashington, D.C., investor and alpinist, plans to bring in a team of up to 15 climbers, mountainguides and others with backcountry expertise to check an area just east of the section where Donatowill search.
Hyman said he will focus in and around the Wassuk Range, dominated by 11,239-foot-high MountGrant. When Fossett took off Sept. 3 from Hilton's ranch in a borrowed plane on what was supposedto be a short pleasure flight, he headed toward Lucky Boy Pass in the Wassuks.
The search area is so rugged that for some a continued search may seem hopeless. It has onoccasion taken decades to find missing people and planes crashed in the area.
Fossett's widow, Peggy, issued a statement saying she's not involved in the latest searchactivity and has "no further plans for additional searching."
