The Search for Steve Fossett

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Day 5:

Adventure Science Crew / 18.07.2008

Day 5 felt like the hotest day of them all. We recorded a mid-day temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, but the dryness of the air made us all drink litre upon litre of water. Today was also a very interesting day as it was the final day of the formal search, and we found the most debris yet today.

We all woke early as usual, but had to take a bit longer to depart because we downloaded all of our heart rate and elevation data from our Suunto watches. When I have a chance to view it all it will be really cool to compare heart rate to elevation for all of the athletes. It will also be very useful to Dr. Tarnopolsky and his team as they analyse our fitness data when we return.

We searched the Sonora Canyon today and surrounding area. This region is full of old mine shafts and ruined mining buildings. Consequently, there is lots of metal debris in the area, which kept us very busy while searching. We did not find any aircraft wreckage however.

Today was a challenging day too as the effort of the previous 4 days seemed to catch up with the team and we really had to work hard to keep the pace high. All members of the team are in good spirits, healthy, but busy tearing down camp in preparation for an early departure from the area.

We are planning to travel towards the Flying M ranch to get a sense of where Steve Fossett’s last flight originated.

My thoughts on the week is that we covered an incredible amount of terrain and all of the team worked very hard and suffered extremes each day. Despite all of this, they were all ready to go early each morning and approached each day with enthusiasm and professionalism. I am very proud of this team and the effort that they have put into this.

I will post another update tomorrow with any new information and my final thoughts on this week.See All Event Posts