CLE ELUM crash: Two Fatalities

What: single-engine, four-seat Lancair ES traveling from Ketchikan, Alaska, to Mountain Home, Idaho. The plane is registered to Eugene Long of Lafayette, Colo. The destroyed plane was amateur-built from a kit and considered an experimental aircraft. The plane won an award for best composite at the 2007 Sun 'n' Fun competition in Florida, a large annual gathering of experimental aircraft enthusiasts
Where: It went down in Section 11, near Pile-up Creek in the mountains of the Naches area, 20 miles south of CLE ELUM (near Mount Clifty, located south of Easton, midway between State Route 410 and Interstate 90.)
When: Friday at about 3 p.m.
Who: An undisclosed man and woman died in the crash; their bodies were found at 5:35 p.m. in a debris field estimated to be a half-mile long and a quarter-mile wide; they were found 100 feet from the fuselage
Why: Under investigation. The pilot's last contact with Seattle Air Traffic Control occurred south of Cle Elum, where controllers lost radar and radio contact. Witnesses in 5 different campgrounds heard the plane's engine running when it crashed.