I don't believe it, I saw him myself Sat night at street vibrations in Reno.. everyone knows he drives a Harley...

Finding the plane may be tough now.

Super Decathalon is fabric covered, wings and fuselage, with aluminum spars (not readily visible) and the fabric may be pretty decrepit by now if it's even still intact.

Also, it's a pretty small plane - like a Piper cub. A 2 seater; tandem. Cruise speed is only 120+ mph.

He didn't file a flight plan, said he was going to fly around and scout for desert landing locations and would return to the same airport a few hours later.

Rated for acrobatics - trainer. Don't know if it would have had an ELT.

Should have been able to glide moderately well if lost power. But not if he hit the side of a mountain.

He could have passed out. Not that old, and in pretty good shape.

Didn't realize he was in a Super D. Good airplane - I've got some time in one myself. Not especially great for mountain flying though. It wouldn't take much of a downdraft to slap one into the ground or much of a rotor to knock one out of control. Plenty of both up in those mountains. Anyone know if there was much of a wind that day? If so, I can guarantee there was some real bumpy and potentially treacherous flying up there. I know it all too well...

If he impacted terrain and the crash caught fire, the fabric covering would burn up leaving only a charred bare fuselage made of small diameter steel tubing which would be nearly impossible to spot on search missions in rough terrain. Also, if it happened to burn on impact, the ELT would have burned up and only transmitted for a moment. All that said, if it burned, the stuff that was found recently would have been destroyed also. It is really hard to know for sure, but as P.O.P. noted above, not much good can happen when a problem arises while flying over that type of treacherous terrain.

Wonder what color the plane was. Visibility from the air?

Tim it's REALLY dry this time of year here ( as it was when he went down) my guess is it didn't burn or they'd have seen the fire..

10:00 PM (PDT) news sez a wreckage has now been spotted from the air in the location of the discovery earlier today......

Here's the news, not much more than stated above:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gfmXbQn-RFLHSjd8_s23ytiM6OVAD93I5P5O0

Seems like the wreckage has been found:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2403486,00.html

Washington - Rescue crews have found the wreckage of a small plane that appears to be the aircraft piloted by millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.

The NTSB said the small airplane found on Wednesday "appears to be the aircraft piloted by Steve Fossett".

Fossett's small Bellanca airplane has been missing since September 3, 2007, when the pilot left Nevada for a local flight.

The wreckage was located about 3 200m up the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the vicinity of Mammoth Lakes, California. The NTSB said it has sent an investigator to the accident site.

- Reuters

That's pretty high terrain. If he was injured or had some broken bones trying to hike his way out of there he'd have had enormous difficulty. Nighttime up there can get extremely cold too. I think he's a gonner and they'll probably find his remains in a week or so a couple miles from the wreck. Unfortunate.

Cold & altitude do not help healing or strength levels either.

Maybe he's been living in a cave and eating berries.

Plane found to have impacted the side of a mountain. The engine was several hundred feet away from the fuselage. Plane "very, very heavily damaged". No human remains.

"If we don't find remains soon, we probably never will, animals typically drag them off and devour them." according to a searcher.

There were very heavy thunderheads in the area of the crash on the day of the crash. Not good w/ that aircraft. Very light and low powered.

Doubtful he survived slamming into a mountainside with that kind of force.

Most of the plane's fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.

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

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081002/ap_on_re_us/fossett_search

At least they can put the mystery to rest. RIP to a true adventurer, not many like him left.

If he had to die, better he didn't survive the impact only to be greviously injured and die of exposure or worse - a bear or something. No one deserves that.

Rest In Peace Steve Fossett.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
AVwebALERT AVweb Breaking News Alert -- October 2, 2008
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FOR THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS, VISIT: http://www.avweb.com

>>> Fossett's Decathlon Located Near Mammoth Lakes

WRECKAGE CONFIRMED AS FOSSETT'S DECATHLON
(http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/SteveFossett_MissingAviator_SuperDecathlonWreckage Found_198901-1.html)

Authorities have confirmed that wreckage found in the Mammoth Lakes
area of northeastern California is that of the Super Decathlon Steve
Fossett was reported missing in just over a year ago. However, early
reports of the circumstances of the crash may raise more questions
than they answer about the end of a flight that sparked the largest
air and ground search in recent memory.

"It was a head-on crash into the side of a mountain, into a rock,"
Madera County Sheriff John Anderson told a news conference, according
to the San Francisco Chronicle
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/02/BAEU13A99B.DTL).
"The plane disintegrated. We found the engine 300 feet from the
fuselage." No body has been found. When Fossett took off from Barron
Hilton's Minden, Nevada-area ranch, the weather was clear and Fossett
was reportedly going on a local flight to check out dry lake beds for
a planned land speed record bid.

Mammoth Lakes is a mountainous area east of Yosemite National Park.
Anderson said the wreckage was found at about the 10,000-foot level
and was about a quarter mile from where a hiker found Fossett's pilot
certificates and clothing
(http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Report_SteveFossettItemsFoundByHiker_198896-1.html)

two days earlier.

Watch AVweb.com for more news on the disappearance of Steve Fossett:
http://www.avweb.com

NTSB spokesperson Mark Rosenker said enough remains were found for the coroner to work with and that "additional property" bearing Fossett's name was found with the body.

Stay with RGJ.com for details as the story develops.

Sounds like controlled fight into the earth. I imagine very low visiblility and he never saw it until he hit or saw it too late to react. Prolly dead on impact.
Pure conjecture but it's plausible.

Not a very fitting way for a man with his accomplishments to end but thats life, sometimes cruel, sometimes ironic. At least now his family gets some closure and once the DNA results are final the insurance company will have to cut that big check they've been holding back on.

About 15 yrs ago when I was taking flying lessons, a friend asked me to ride with him in a rented Cessna 172 to drop off a prototype prop he had made to a college in Virginia. The return trip was at night, and we stopped at some controlled airport near there for fuel which was near some mountains (my memory is shot and I can't recall what airport it was). My friend forgot to reset the directional gyro ( for the non pilots: it is kind of like a compass only it is gyro instrument running on vacuum and must be reset to compass heading after restarting the engine). The controller cleared us to climb out on a certain heading which my buddy acknowledged. I was looking out the right window and could see nothing... not a single light on the ground. Eventually the controllers noticed we were heading off course on the radar and in a panicky voice ordered us to turn immediately. After my buddy figured out what he had done he apologized to the controller and set his DG to compass heading and continued on course. The controller came back on and told us we had been heading right for a mountain side!

Later on that flight home at about 1:00 am, it started raining and he handed me a flashlight to periodically shine it out the window to look for ice on the leading edges. Needless to say, as a new student pilot, I got a good scare and a quick education about treating flying and prepartion with respect. My friend at the time was not very current and did not fly much back then. Since then he has bought a couple planes and is a bit more diligent about safety compared to back then. I still razz him about that lovey trip.