Published: December 2007/January 2008 Special Report: The Search
For Steve Fossett The Vanishing What went wrong in the record-
setting search for Steve Fossett. Text by and photograph by
James Vlahos  Hawthorne, Nevada, is more than 100 miles
southeast of Reno and 300 miles northwest of Las Vegas. A tiny
spot of civilization on a sunbaked desert plain, the town of
3,311 residents sits between the arid peaks of the Wassuk and
Gillis Ranges. When I arrived, it was nearly a month after famed
aviator Steve Fossett had disappeared, and the effort to find
him had flagged. Private search flights and some ground efforts
continued, but the Civil Air Patrol had announced in the third
week of September that they were suspending further aerial
missions. “It’s against our nature to walk away from a search,”
said Nevada Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan. “But at some
point you have diminishing returns.”  On Wednesday, September
26, however, Gary Derks, the Nevada Department of Public Safety
official who helped oversee the