Two Men Uncover Mysterious Fate of Flight 980

11. Training

Dan, the more spontaneous of the two, first suggested the excursion into the Bolivian mountains and was ready to leave right away. Isaac was a bit more pragmatic about it. He also believed in the mission and the adventure that awaited them in Bolivia, but he knew they had to prepare. As known of them had ever been hiking at that height, the two embarked on a five-month training plan. They ran up and down flights of stairs for hours at a time and slept in a Hypoxico altitude-simulation tent.

12. Challenge Accepted

Once they arrived in Bolivia, they decided that their primary search area would not be the crash site itself. Instead, they looked into previous expeditions and decided to explore a roughly one-square-mile patch of glacial moraine located 3,000 feet below it. They knew that Flight 980 hit high on Mount Illimani, close to the top, and the plane's parts, any that remained anyway, had likely slid down towards the glacier over the past 31 years….