LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hikers in northern California have found clothing and aviation identification cards belonging to millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who went missing in his plane a year ago, police said on Wednesday.
"Three different forms of (Fossett's) ID were found," Mammoth Lakes Police spokeswoman Renee Placensia told Reuters.
She said authorities were forming air and ground search crews to look for possible wreckage from Fossett's small plane.
Mammoth Lakes Police Chief Randy Schienle told CNN that a sweatshirt had also been found in a remote mountain area near the border with Nevada.
Fossett, 63, vanished in his airplane after taking off in the Nevada desert in September, 2007.
Despite weeks of extensive land and air searches, no wreckage was found and he was declared legally dead in February 2008 after investigators concluded that his airplane was destroyed in a fatal accident.
Hiker Preston Morrow told Fox News television that he had found the Federal Aviation Administration ID cards with Fossett's name on them, along with several $100 bills, while returning from a mountain hike on Monday. There was no sign of any wreckage, he said.
The sweatshirt was found in an area higher up the same mountain ridge by searchers on Tuesday, Morrow said.
"I was coming back down this really steep terrain and what caught my eye was these little (ID) cards in the dirt and the pine needles, and some $100 bills."
"I see the ID. I caught the name. I got the ID cards ... and about five or six of the hundred dollar bills (which) were dirty and muddy," he said.
"I was wondering, why are there some ID cards and money when there was nothing else? No wallet, no bags, nothing nothing, nothing," Morrow told Fox News.
Schienle said that snow and animals may have dispersed or covered the belongings until now.
Fossett held several aviation and sailing records, becoming the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world in 2002.
He disappeared after setting off from western Nevada on September 3 in a single-engine plane for what friends said was a casual pleasure flight.
(Reporting by Jim Christie, Editing by Sandra Maler)
