Searchers scour terrain fruitlessly for Fossett
MINDEN -- High above a landscape of canyons and shadows, veteran pilot Jim Herd sees a tiny flash on a mountainside. A mirror? Plane wreckage?
Flying closer reveals a prospector's small mine, the reflection most likely coming from metal fencing or broken glass. It was just another false alarm during a week of mysteries and dashed hopes in the search for missing aviator Steve Fossett.
Despite a massive rescue effort, the other-worldly terrain of northwest Nevada has bedeviled the crews that have hunted around the clock since the famous adventurer disappeared Monday. Flying over the mountains, flats, canyons and gullies -- a land of tricky shapes and shifting light -- it's easy to see how Fossett's plane has eluded them.
The skies over the search area -- more than 10,000 square miles, or about the size of Massachusetts -- have swarmed with aircraft since Fossett was reporting missing Monday from a private ranch owned by hotel mogul Barron Hilton. On Friday, 26 airplanes and helicopters took off from the official search headquarters at the Minden Airport.
Most of the planes are small aircraft flown by members of the Nevada, California and Utah Civil Air Patrols and contain a pilot and two spotters.
Searchers already have had several false leads. They became excited earlier this week when they spotted a plane wreck from the air, but a helicopter crew reached the site and determined it was a plane that went down decades ago.
Rescue crews were dispatched Friday to another downed plane spotted on a hillside about 45 miles southeast of Reno. It, too, turned out to be an old crash, a plane last registered in Oregon in 1975.
Despite the searchers' frustration and their few clues, they remain hopeful, knowing that Fossett has a Houdini-like history of escaping from seemingly impossible jams.
He has held 116 speed or distance records on land, air and water, including being the first to circle the globe alone in a balloon. His portfolio also includes numerous rescues after spectacular failures, several from the ocean.
