It seems the discovery of IDs and some money and clothing in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains thought to have been related to missing aviator Steve Fossett has led a search crew to a crash site of a small plane belonging to him.

A search for his remains continues at the wreckage, reports say. Fossett’s plane apparently flew into a part of a mountain.

Fossett, a well-known adventurer, disappeared a year ago–after taking off in a Bellanca Super Decathlon aerobatic single-engine plane from a private airstrip in Nevada.

After search efforts proved fruitless, he was declared dead.

The search for Fossett was one of the biggest undertaken, and also included a substantial Internet effort called “crowdsourcing.”

That referred to tens of thousands of people poring over satellite photographs uploaded to the Web by Amazon (AMZN) in an attempt to find a crash site in the images.

A man hiking in a remote part of Mammoth Lakes in California’s Sierra Nevada found a pilot’s license and an FAA card, both bearing the name of aviator Steve Fossett.

Authorities are now trying to verify the IDs and other items for authenticity. No human remains or plane pieces were found nearby so far, although a fleece pullover and some money were also retrieved in the same area.

The discovery is about 50 miles away from Nevada desert locations where teams had been searching for the well-known adventurer, who vanished while on a solo flight in a single-engine Bellanca Super Decathlon a year ago.

It has been assumed that Fossett, who has since been declared legally dead, crashed, and the search for him was suspended a month ago.

After Fossett’s disappearance, tens of thousands of Web users mounted an unusual online search mission, studying satellite photographs of a huge swath of ground.

The images were uploaded by Amazon (AMZN) to its Mechanical Turk, in an attempt to find a possible crash site.

Google Earth (GOOG) was also used in the effort, which is called “crowdsourcing.”

The Turk was also used in another unsuccessful search for Microsoft (MSFT) techie Jim Gray, who went missing on a boat off the coast of California.

Computer-aided image-scanning technology has also been used in the search for Fossett, to no avail, until this very old-school break was made.