The Rev. Forrest Pollock, pastor of the Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla., was believed to have crashed Monday, the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times reported. He took off from Rutherfordton, N.C., at 5 a.m. Monday, planning to pick up a friend in Little Rock, Ark., and fly to a conference in Texas.

The Civil Air Patrol spotted the Piper PA-32-260 from the air at about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday on top of a ridge accessible only on foot. A search party got there a few hours later.

The National Transportation Safety Board was to investigate the crash. Winds were high in the area Monday.

Pollock was well-known in the Tampa area as the pastor of a church with 3,000 members and was prominent in the Southern Baptist Convention. He was scheduled to be a speaker at the church's annual conference next month in Indianapolis.

A church spokesman said that he flew to North Carolina on Sunday to visit his mother on Mother's Day.