We started out this trip with the goal of finding the black box — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder — of Eastern Airlines Flight 980. We also had a goal to live a life of adventure, to challenge ourselves physically and mentally, and to come back with a story.

We found what we believe to be the flight recorders.

The first piece of international orange metal we found, but weren’t yet sure if it was from one of the recorders.

On day 1 searching the lower debris field near Mina Mesa Khala, we found two pieces of metal. On both, one side was “international orange” and the other was what we’ve been calling Boeing green because it seems to be on every piece out here and isn’t an Eastern Airlines color.

Also, both pieces were significantly mangled, twisted, and scratched presumably from three forces: the Boeing 727 flying into the mountain at 500 mph, the metal fell 4000 feet down from the impact site to the base of Illimani, and the natural grinding of ice and boulders that make up this living mountain.

Marking the location of the second piece of one of the recorders found.

After finding these pieces on the first day, we suspected they might be part of the recorders but didn’t have total confidence. The metal was so mangled that it didn’t look strong enough to be part of the black box, so we continued thinking of other parts of the plane it might be and we continued searching.

On day 2, we found three more pieces of metal that matched the first two — orange on one side, green on the other, and torn up clearly due to a significant amount of force exerted on it.

Still, we’re not sure. Maybe the boxes didn’t fall down at all. We didn’t find pieces that we were 100% confident were the tail, where we knew the recorders should be. Maybe the tail is at the impact site at 19,600 feet? Maybe we’ll have to dig through feet of ice in a few days to find out?

On day 3, we committed ourselves to searching the huge area of glacier at the lower debris field. Crampons on, risk assessment aside, we dove in, Isaac almost literally. Midday he piped up on the radio, telling us he had gone spelunking in the crevasses. If the recorders were down here, we wanted to cover the most area possible. And the more we searched, the more Isaac grew obsessed with finding the recorders.