Experts Doubt Steve Fossett Still Alive

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Like most people following the search for Steve Fossett, survival expert Kurt Kuznicki hopes the missing aviator will be found alive. But like other experts, Kuznicki doubts that will be the case.

Like most people following the search for Steve Fossett, survival expert Kurt Kuznicki hopes the missing aviator will be found alive. But like other experts, Kuznicki doubts that will be the case.


"As kind of an adventure guy myself, I hope the other way. But I would say it would be really, really tough," said Kuznicki, a member of the conservation group Friends of Nevada Wilderness.


Fossett, 63, a former commodities trader who was the first to circle the globe solo in a balloon, was last heard from Sept. 3 after taking off from a private airstrip about 80 miles southeast of Reno. Authorities believe he was carrying only one bottle of water.


Fossett's plane was equipped with an emergency beacon, and he was wearing a high-tech watch capable of generating a similar alarm. Searchers have received no signal from either device, and haven't spotted a lower-tech distress signal such as a fire or massive X made of rocks or sticks.


"There's no news of him signaling for help and that's a problem," said David McMullen of Berkeley, Calif., a leader of the hiking group Desert Survivors, whose members frequently venture into some of the country's harshest terrain. "He's either so injured he can't signal or he's perished."


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Fossett is a skilled survivalist who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Matterhorn, and who lived through several failed attempts to circle the globe in a balloon.


Maj. Cynthia Ryan of the Nevada Civil Air Patrol said Tuesday she's still betting on his "sheer grit and determination."


"We still find people against all odds," said Ryan, who said she was not concerned by a lack of a signal. "Maybe he's got a couple of broken arms and can't signal."


But such injuries would worsen his chances of finding the scarce water sources in the 17,000-square-mile search area - about twice the size of New Jersey.


People can go only two or three days without water in the summer, experts say, and Fossett would be hard-pressed to find water in unfamiliar country, even if he were in good health. Nevada, the driest state in the nation with less than 10 inches of precipitation a year, is coming off an unusually dry winter. Stream flows usually diminish by the late summer even in wet years.


"At this point, you'd be lucky to find him alive," said Lee Bergthold, director of the Palmdale, Calif.-based Center for Wilderness Studies and a former Marine Corps survival instructor. "No food, that's not a problem. No water, that's a problem. That's a harsh desert out there."


Temperatures in the search area have been in the 80s and 90s, with lows in the 50s and 60s. Fossett wouldn't have faced the bitter cold and snow, but he also couldn't melt snow and ice for water.


Shelter from the sun would be just as important as water to Fossett had he survived the crash, added McMullen of the Desert Survivors.


McMullen was stranded with a severely sprained ankle for three nights in Death Valley National Park in September 2001. He hunkered down in the shade of a fig tree before he was rescued by a military helicopter, with the help of a detailed itinerary he had left his wife.


"You'll lose water faster than you can absorb it in heat, and that's why a shelter is so important," McMullen said.


He and other survival experts faulted Fossett for not filing a flight plan, which might have allowed searchers to focus on a smaller area.


"The itinerary I filed for my 2001 hike saved my life," McMullen said.


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Associated Press writers Sandra Chereb in Minden and Scott Sonner in Reno contributed to this story.