The Times obituary | Picture special

Search teams scouring the rugged terrain of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains discovered human remains last night in the wreckage of the aircraft flown by the missing adventurer Steve Fossett.

An aerial rescue team found Fossett’s Bellanca aircraft 10,000ft up a mountain after a hiker came across several of the aviator’s belongings in a bush more than a year after the disappeared.

The items included two identity cards, Fossett’s pilot’s licence, and $1,005 (£570) in cash. The hiker, Preston Morrow, 43, who works in a sports shop, said that he did not initially recognise Fossett’s name.

“It was just weird to find that much money in the back country, and the IDs,” he said. “My immediate thought was it was a hiker or backpacker’s stuff, and a bear got to the stuff and took it away to look for food or whatever.”

Having initially found the items on Monday near the town of Mammoth Lakes, he returned to the scene the next day with his wife and three others to carry on looking. They found nothing but a black Nautica pullover fleece, size XL. After noting their GPS co-ordinates, Mr Morrow contacted the authorities on Wednesday, having first attempted to contact Fossett’s family directly.

By sunset — just before a snowstorm was due to set in — the aerial search team reported seeing a crashed aircraft. Yesterday morning, America’s National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that the wreckage “appears to be the aircraft piloted by adventurer Steve Fossett”.

Sheriff John Anderson said that Fossett appeared to have flown head-on into the mountainside. The fuselage was smashed to pieces and the engine lay several hundred feet from the main crash site. Fossett’s belongings were found about a quarter of a mile away.

“The Bellanca 8KCAB has been missing since September 3, 2007, when the pilot departed Yerington, Nevada, for a local flight,” the safety board said in a statement. “The wreckage was located at about 10,000ft of elevation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the vicinity of Mammoth Lakes, California.”

Jeff Page of the emergency services of Nevada said: “It was a hard-impact crash, and he would’ve died instantly.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the information on the pilot’s licence discovered in the wilderness, including’s Fossett’s name, address, date of birth and certificate number, matched their internal records. Last night officials announced that a “very small” amount of human tissue had been found in the wreckage, but enough to provide coroners with DNA.

Mammoth Lakes, a popular skiing town for residents of bothSan Francisco and Los Angeles, is about 80 miles south of the hotel magnate Barron Hilton’s Flying M Ranch, where Fossett, 63 at the time he went missing, was last seen alive as he set off in the single-engine aircraft.

The town is at an altitude of more than 7,800ft on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada, where some of the peaks rise above 13,000ft. Although search and rescue teams looking for Fossett’s plane had flown over Mammoth Lakes, it was not considered a likely place to find any wreckage, given what was known about sightings of the aircraft, Fossett’s planned takeoff and landing schedule, and the amount of fuel he had on board.

The initial search, which cost the state of Nevada $1.6 million (£900,000), was called off after covering 20,000 square miles.

Fossett’s widow, Peggy, was awarded her husband’s estate, worth more than $10 million, after he was declared officially dead by a Chicago court in February, an unusual move, as it usually takes seven years in Illinois for a missing person to be declared dead.

Last night she thanked rescue workers and spoke of her relief that the uncertainty was over. “I hope now to be able to bring to closure a very painful chapter in my life,” she said. “I prefer to think about Steve’s life rather than his death and celebrate his many extraordinary accomplishments.”

Fossett, born in California, was a commodities salesman in Chicago before getting rich by renting stock exchange memberships to traders. His success allowed him to work part-time and concentrate on his passion for adventure, which brought him friendship with Sir Richard Branson.

Fossett went on to achieve global fame for setting a total of 116 records in high-tech balloons, airships, gliders, jets and sailing boats. In 2002 he became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in July 2007.

The author of an autobiography entitled Chasing the Wind, Fossett also swam the Channel, completed an Ironman triathlon, and climbed more than 400 mountain peaks, including Mount Kilimanjaro.

Sir Richard Branson said in a statement yesterday that he expected the body of his “great and extraordinary” friend to be found soon.

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