The result was nothing. No body. No parachute. No clothing. No money. No evidence whatsoever that a man had come down anywhere in the searched area.
The absence of evidence frustrated investigators and left the case’s most basic question unanswered from the start: did Cooper survive? There are at least three explanations for why the search produced nothing.
The first is that Cooper landed in an area that was not searched, either because the search zone was based on an incorrect estimate of his jump position or because winds carried him outside the estimated area. Washington’s terrain in that region includes extremely remote areas with limited access, and a comprehensive ground search of the entire Pacific Northwest wilderness was not possible with available resources.
The second is that Cooper died in the jump—in a tree, in a river, on a rocky slope—and his remains were not in the searched area, or were in the searched area but were not found. Dense forest, rivers that move bodies over time, and the rapid degradation of organic material in a wet Pacific Northwest environment all work against finding human remains. A person who died in those woods in November 1971 might have left very little that would survive a multi-week search, let alone the years that followed.
The third is that Cooper survived, made his way out of the wilderness, and was never in the search area long enough to leave discoverable evidence.
The search in 1971 was genuine and substantial. But the Pacific Northwest woods are vast, the winter conditions were harsh, and the logistics of a thorough search of a mountainous and forested area are formidable. The absence of anything found is not proof that nothing was there.