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Day 6:

Adventure Science Crew / 22.07.2008

Day 6 was spent on more of a reconnaissance hike through the Cottonwood Creek Canyon on the northern slope of Mt. Grant as we were following up on a lead from a top aircraft crash expert. The initial plan was to drive to a specific lat/long coordinate and search the slopes for several miles around that point. This idea was foiled though when we arrived to find the road gated. Instead we ended up trekking in and scanning the terrain as we went. The canyon is definitely an interesting area with mixtures of bare rocky and craggy slopes with moderately forested upper slopes in places. We also saw several large herds of mountain sheep and Greg Francek caught a deadly wasp (for his son’s insect collection. This day was the hottest by far, with the temperature reaching 42 degrees Celsius. Due to our time constraints, we did not travel far from the main road through the canyon, but did collect video footage of the area which may be of use for future search efforts.

By 3 pm on Saturday afternoon, our search had officially come to a close without locating Steve Fossett’s airplane. This was obviously disappointing for me, but the team and I knew that we were up against tough odds considering the expert searching that had preceded us. Ultimately we know that we were able to add new information to the search, and our effort can rule out specific areas from future searches.

Being on the ground though in this area, one gets a true sense of how vast and rugged it truly is, and why it is not unfathomable that an airplane flown by one of the greatest pilots of our time could not only crash, but vanish. In my opinion this is a mystery that will be solved by putting people on the ground. If enough back country hikers, athletes, or hunters travel the more remote and difficult to reach areas I think that the wreck will be found.

Overall I am proud of what the team accomplished during the week, and although we did not find the wreck, we have thoroughly covered over 100 km2, and perhaps have provided inspiration for other adventure athletes with similar skills to offer to use these skills to help others through SAR or similar groups. The team learned much during the week and we were able to hone our searching skills and become very efficient by the end.

Will we return to continue searching? Possibly. None of us like to quit or lose so time will tell. We will share our search information with others though, and provide maps of the areas we searched so to avoid duplication for any future search efforts. Collaboration and cooperation are important to this overall process and we will ensure that it happens on our end.

Thank you for following the search expedition, and thank you to those who took time to write encouraging emails and to provide helpful information.

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