For folks who haven’t been following it, a family on a road trip in Oregon ran into a snowstorm on a remote mountain road last week and were stuck and lost. The family was found a week later, but the dad had gone on alone to find help.
The poor man has been found dead.
What with the snow and cold in that region, it was unlikely he’d be found alive, but I was hoping. Poor thing - that’s a horrible way to go, alone, freezing and starving in the snow.
I didn’t expect it to end well either, but that really sucks. I feel sorry for the wife and little girls.
Rule number one for getting found when lost is to stay together and stay put. Remember it people. Someone will miss you and come looking for you and they will start at your last known location. Had Dad stayed with the family, it would be a happy ending.
Oh, no… 
He and his wife had a fairytale romance too. His beautiful children won’t get to know him in person, and holidays will be hard for his wife.
Actually… I think the cell phone ping that allowed searchers to pinpoint the family was detected after James Kim set out on his own, so it is possible that the ping was only received because of the additional distance he covered. If not for that, they might well have all starved in their car.
I have been following this story near-obsessively all week and have been sick to my stomach since hearing the tragic news this morning. All I can think is that this family is so similar to my own family and through a few seemingly small mistakes that anyone could have made – or at least that I certainly could envision myself and my husband making – two children are now without a father.
God, this sucks. I have no words.
I’ve been following this, heard about the tragic end a while ago on the radio. It’s pretty easy to get into trouble up here in the winter. We usually get a couple every year, some turn out OK, others end like this one. It’s not a place to go joy riding in the woods unless you’re very well prepared.
This guy seemed to do the right thing, I was hoping they’d find him alive, too bad.
My empathy to the family. The worst way to die imho. Thinking that if he failed his family would die. He is a hero in my book.
I was hoping they’d find him alive, too
I am never going anywhere again where my cell phone is even roaming, let alone anywhere where there is (presumably) no cellphone service.
He worked for www.cnet.com. They have a special banner on their homepage.
I wish that was possible. I live a few hours north of the area he died in, and it’s amazing how difficult it is to find a signal if I go even 20 miles outside of town. This last weekend, for example- I spent the weekend at a friend’s cabin a few hours away, and didn’t have signal at all. If we’d had an accident, the cell phones would’ve been dead weight.
I was really hoping James Kim would manage to beat the odds and be able to celebrate the holidays with his family.
K…I’m cellphone impaired. I don’t understand why some areas are dead. Can’t they just put more cell towers up? It just seems like they should be everywhere by now, with the number of phones in use and the competition. If you pay for everywhere coverage, which most people do, they shouldn’t have as many dead zones as they have. What gives?
Looked to me from the footage shown up here was of a national forest and people don’t like cutting down trees to make access roads to put up cell phone towers. And we pay for everywhere in the service area coverage. Here in WI, we get coverage around big cities and towns and along the interstate. When you are out in the boonies, or half a mile down the state highway from the interstate, no dice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that he was stupid, just desperate for help for his wife and little girls. It sounds like he was very smart to have kept his family alive and well for as long as they were lost. It’s just too bad that there isn’t a happily ever after.
I try to spread the word about being self-sufficient, being prepared, and having a backup plan when you go away from home so that things like this don’t happen so we don’t have to have another thread like this one.
Towers are expensive. In sparsely-populated areas, they would be cost prohibitive.
Celphone range is very small and the signal is greatly affected by terrain, trees, buildings and weather. I can’t get a good celphone signal from the 2nd floor of a city building where I can almost see the main tower outside in the distance, and can’t get a signal at all at home, 6 miles from the nearest tower due to a thick forest in between us. They could put up another tower, but it would serve only 1000 homes, farms, boats and nearby streets and that doesn’t seem to be enough to attract their business. Imagine what it would be like in the REAL wilderness.
Can any post links to articles from the past week following this? I want to get up-to-speed.
I am very curious as to why they left the interstate and went so far down a back road in such bad weather.
Agreed. In the area the Kims were lost in, it’s unlikely anyone would use the proposed cell tower during the winter months at all. That’s four months without any use at all.
Granted, though- that ONE time it’d be really handy… but there’s no way the phone companies could make it break even.
On another forum, I see people wondering why Kim, being so tech-savvy, didn’t have a GPS with him. In that area, a GPS wouldn’t do much good- something that, on the GPS, looks like it’s only a hundred feet away may actually be up a sheer five-hundred foot cliff.
It is- depends on where you live. I’m in the Bay Area, and pretty much never go anywhere that could be counted as “rural”. Well, there are cows, but they’re right alongside a major commuter freeway, so I don’t think that counts 
I don’t have any plans to ever live in a rural area or small town, and the closest I get to one on vacation is when I go to the wine country (and then, I usually stick pretty close to major roads, since I don’t like windy back roads), so it’s easy for me. If you like wilderness and camping and stuff, it might not be so easy for you. I, on the other hand, might add this to my arsenal of excuses not to go hiking or camping, right in there with “I somehow attract thunderstorms and bears.”
They’d missed a turn, and rather than double-back, they looked at a map and decided to continue forward and take another road that looked like it would go where they needed. Unfortunately, the map didn’t say it was a gravel road that’s subject to seasonal closures, and they got stuck.
Lessons:
There is a reason why the authorities prefer that pilots file flight plans.
Once a plan is “filed,” stick to it. (How much sooner would they have been discovered on National Forest 23/33 instead of three miles up one of the dozens of snow-covered gravel trails? Their last call to say they were still coming should have included the route they intended to take–and they should have been on it.)
In winter: always have blankets; always have food. (IMO, always have a shovel; always have winter gear.)
Maps, in winter–particularly through mountains or forests, are still for people who know the area. Sticking with state highways instead of National Forest or County roads would have kept them in “civilization.” (Ironically, Kim may have been done in by his tech savvy: Google Maps actually indicates Bear Camp Rd as the appropriate route south of Rte 42 through those mountains even though local cops and park people claim that is definitely a “summer only” road.)
(Mind you, I have violated several of these lessons, myself, but never more than one at a time and never with my wife and kids along for the ride.)
Here is a blog entry with various news links written by Steve Huff of recent Rolling Stone fame. (This and this are the Steve Huff blogs Rolling Stone was talking about though.) He’s a very good writer, and has had quite a few exclusive scoops, even scooping the other reputable newspapers/stations.
Adding, make sure you read the comments too, sometimes the ongoing story is a group effort.
What a tragic and huge mistake. It’s just common sense to only stick to interstates and state highways in a snowstorm in a mountainous region.
Wasn’t there a similar case within the past year that was discussed on the boards? It involved a family in a trailer or motor home? I remember thinking, what they heck were they thinking bringing a trailer that far onto a forest service road???