A home featured in 'Basic Instinct', and later occupied by a world-class adventurer, goes on the market.

Among the lies in HBO’s Big Little Lies is that, in order to get from one side of Monterey to the other, one must drive across Bixby Bridge.

A similar, if less obvious lie played out in the 1992 film Basic Instinct, where Sharon Stone’s character drove north over the Golden Gate Bridge and ended up in a cliffside mansion with views of a rugged coastline. No such mansion, or anything like it, exists just north of San Francisco.

But that mansion does exist in Carmel Highlands.

On a mild afternoon in late January, Albert Satterfield, caretaker of the mansion, and Jonathan Balog, a real estate agent working to sell it, open the front doors for a tour. But before stepping in, they slip on shoe-covers – made from the same type of material as an operating room cap – so as not to leave any trace.

“I kind of feel like I live in a hospital sometimes,” Satterfield says.

Yet the home, which was put on the market in December for $16,995,000, feels like something else altogether – a rarefied getaway for the 0.1-percent. It also has a story.

Five years after scenes of Basic Instinct were filmed there in 1991, the house was purchased, for $5.6 million, by Steve and Peggy Fossett. Steve, who made his fortune in finance, was not a typical 0.1-percenter – he was an adventurer obsessed with extreme challenges like the Iditarod and swimming across the English Channel (he did both).

After Fossett left his finance career, he got into adventures full-time, and amassed dozens of aviation and sailing world records in the ensuing decades. Among the most notable was in 2002, when he became the first person to circumnavigate the world in an aircraft (in this case, a balloon) without stopping or refueling.

“He’d be here a week and then go hang gliding in the Arctic for three weeks,” says Satterfield, who was caretaker of the home from 1998 to 2006, and just recently came back on the job. “He was on the phone all the time – he was very meticulous, because these adventures were dangerous.”

Fossett died in a crash in 2007 while piloting his private plane, solo, near the California-Nevada border. Despite an exhaustive search that lasted more than a week, his body was never found, but a year later a hiker discovered wreckage from his plane near Mammoth Lakes.

Fossett’s wife Peggy passed away last fall, and the family trust put the home on the market in December.

Satterfield says the entire house – every room except a dark room – was remodeled extensively between 1996-98, and one of the first rooms he starts in is the kitchen, which has a solid granite island at its center, and every amenity imaginable – even a deep fryer.

“Peggy liked to cook,” Satterfield says.

As he leads the way around the 12,000 square-foot home, Satterfield says most of the 12 fireplaces – nearly one in every room – have never been used.

On the ocean-facing balcony of one room – the same balcony Sharon Stone stood on for a scene in Basic Instinct – Satterfield notes that the house just to the north, across a small cove, was used for scenes of Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film Play Misty for Me.

Adjacent to a room that was Fossett’s office is a pool and giant jacuzzi. The pool, Satterfield says, was used only once.

“I imagine there will be pool parties here,” Satterfield says.

The most striking room in the home (and there are many) is an open, two-level library still stocked with Fossett’s books, some of which, Balog says, date back to the 15th century.

“There’s a couple million dollars worth of books in here,” Balog says.

Scanning the titles is fascinating, and all seem adventure-related: There are old tomes about the Himalayas, polar exploration, tragedy and even two copies of a book titled Great Exploration Hoaxes.

“I didn’t speak with Steve a whole lot,” Satterfield says. “He was friendly, though he was busy.”

Among Fossett’s friends was billionaire Richard Branson. Satterfield says of Fossett: “He had dinners with kings.”

Outside the back of the house, on a bluff overlooking the ocean, Satterfield points out limestone stalagmites from China standing in a garden, and leads the way toward a series of stairs that descend toward the ocean.

“I have seen many, many sunsets,” he says, looking north. “Not many people get a southern view of Point Lobos.”

Wrapping up the tour near the four-car garage in the front of the house, which is just a few dozen feet from a 2,000-gallon koi pond, Balog says he expects the house to sell in 12-18 months, likely to a billionaire – maybe someone in tech, or royalty.

“Everything in this house is immaculate,” he says.

Tour the house in a photo slideshow at mcweekly.com