Glider fatality in Idaho

I'm sad to report that we lost one of our own on Wednesday. Thierry
Thys was participating in an Idaho glider safari and crashed sometime
that afternoon or evening on his return to Arco's airport. SAR didn't
locate the wreckage until just before dark on Thursday, and it was not
accessible until either that night or Friday morning. A friend who is
on the safari reported that Thierry was killed on impact. I had held
off posting since those of us who knew Thierry were holding out hope
that he had landed out and would be found alive. Sadly, that did not
happen.

Thierry was an avid aviation adventurer, flying his motor glider from
Point Barrow, Alaska to the tip of South America, over a two year
period. I knew he had other aircraft, and
http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_13176488
shows him with his MI2 Russian helicopter -- something I was unaware
of.

Several of us who knew Thierry have been discussing the need for a
repository for SPOT Messenger shared page URL's. From what I've heard,
Thierry did not have a SPOT, which is a learning in and of itself.
But, even if he had one, it would not have done any good in the first
few critical hours of searching if no one on the scene knew how to
access it. I've shared my SPOT URL with a number of friends and
family, but none of them might be known to SAR or reachable when
needed. So I hope that Thierry's loss can have at least one positive
outcome by getting us to develop such a repository (totally voluntary
of course), perhaps on a public SSA page or similar. Please post your
thoughts on this idea so we can hopefully move forward.

In ending, I offer my condolences to Thierry's family and friends.

Martin