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Plane With 10 Onboard Lost In Cascade Mountains

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By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times

Published: October 9, 2007

SEATTLE - Rescue workers searched a rugged, remote part of the central Cascade Range on Monday for a private plane that disappeared Sunday with 10 people onboard.

The nine passengers and a pilot were returning to western Washington from a skydiving event near Boise, Idaho.

A hunter reported seeing a plane flying low near western Yakima County, on the eastern side of the Cascades, and later hearing a noise that sounded like a crash, emergency officials said.

The plane, a single-engine Cessna 208 Caravan, was partly owned by a skydiving company in Shelton.

'At this point, we don't know; we don't know what they encountered,' said Jessie Farrington, an owner of Skydive Kapowsin, the company that leased the plane to the group, which was from Skydive Snohomish.

Farrington said the group was returning from a 'skydiving boogie' in Star, Idaho, a gathering celebrating the end of the skydiving season in the Northwest, where the rainy season begins in a few weeks.

The plane left Idaho about 7:30 p.m. and was due in Shelton before 11. It stopped appearing on radar near Rimrock Lake, the area where the hunter reported seeing a plane and hearing a crash.

The plane did not send an emergency distress signal. Communications are difficult in the remote area, and some signals may not work there, said Tina Wilson of the Yakima Valley Office of Emergency Management.

Nisha Marvel, a spokeswoman for the aviation division of the state Transportation Department, said it was coordinating an air and ground search that included a state plane and helicopters from the Air Force and King County, which includes Seattle.

Farrington, of Skydive Kapowsin, said the Cessna was made in 1994, had had no had mechanical problems and had been regularly inspected. She said that the plane had a 'very sophisticated' navigation system.

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