I wondered why they didn’t burn the spare tire to make smoke indicating where they were. Then I read that they did burn the tires. It’s surprising that was not visible.
I just heard an update on the local news. His wife says that he thought the creek led to the town of Galice, which he thought was about 3 miles away. In fact, he had the wrong creek, but even then, the town was about 15 miles.
They also reported that the Kim’s had stopped when they realized they were in trouble, intending to wait for daylight and then tun back, but they were snowed in by morning.
A typical folding state map would not have shown many of the logging roads and that’s what they were using. Even the main route was very winding, so they were obviously disoriented.
Some are now trying to blame the forest service and/or the State Police, for not closing gates on the road, but that’s not realistic, it’s a winter sports area and many go there to cut Christmas trees this time of year. There are prominent signs warning of the danger, Kim should have turned back when he saw the sign, it’s just a mistake that ended tragically.
There’s a lot of discussion about how he got to where he was. I’m trying to understand some of the logistics myself. Apparently, they stopped overnight to sleep on the side of the road because they were very tired and wanted to wait for daylight to find their way back, then got snowed in overnight. At first, I was under the assumption they must have slid off the road and got stuck in a snowbank or the side of a hill.
I’m sure this this might be a trivial side issue to some, but does anyone know what sort of vehicle they were travelling in? Every story I’ve read only says “car” or “silver vehicle”. Was it a passenger car? Was it a larger SUV with all-wheel drive? Was the model ever specifically identified? How much snowfall was there? I can’t help but be curious about what sort of drivetrain it had and how they got stuck. Even if it didn’t have AWD, a set of tire chains could’ve made all the difference. Was this snowstorm (which was obviously enough to bury a vehicle to the point that it was stranded) somehow not in the forecast? Sounds to me that if the forecast called for such severe snow, it’s probably not the best idea to go driving up a mountain road, then parking overnight to sit through the eye of the storm. I just have a hard time accepting how he could be so defiant of the elements. I like to think that anyone preparing to go on such a trip would take weather conditions into account, particularly if their vehicle wasn’t capable of dealing with them. I know James was smart and this story has hit home for a lot of folks, but seriously … sometimes you’re just asking for trouble. I don’t know if this was so much a question of him being overconfident in tech-gizmos like a GPS system or a cell phone network. I think one of the unwritten rules in life is to not go offroad with a passenger car and no tools or supplies right before a serious snowfall. Putting your faith in a GPS or a Google route, or even a paper map for that matter, is hardly a safety net when your vehicle can’t perform. I know this from personal experience, but the price he paid for this mistake is heart-rending.
I’m not trying to second-guess the situation because I’m sure if they could have gotten their vehicle out, they would have. If it were me and this was just a heavy snowfall, I’d be digging my mittens off. I’m just curious how a heavy snowfall could have caused them to be hopelessly stuck if they were still on the road. They were stuck for a whole week and weren’t able to dig themselves out? What am I missing here?
From overhead pictures it LOOKED like a volvo 5 door station wagon. Digging themselves out I think would of been pointless. Sure they can dig their own car out but what if the entire road was like that. One man cannot dig an entire road out by himself after 9(?) days of starvation and no shovel.
GPS units are near worthless if you don’t have a map loaded up with them. Especially if they were in the mountains. My first trip into the mountains of the Grand Tetons, one of our two gps units failed to get a signal. The other problem was we didn’t have an adequate enough map of the area to load onto the gps unit.
I’ve read it was a 2005 Saab, not sure what model.
I found a shot of it … it was a Saab. A 9-2X, which is one of the only Saabs that has AWD (besides the massive Chevy Trailblazer-based 9-7X SUV). It was essentially a clone of Subaru’s Impreza, which made a name for itself with AWD.
I suppose Burrido’s right. If the whole road were covered, I guess it’s no good digging oneself out, but again, was there any mention of how much snowfall hit the area? Do you think a set of tire chains combined with AWD would’ve made any difference in, let’s say, a foot of snow? I know it’s probably a long shot. Obviously when all was said and done, he’d have been better off staying put, but I’m genuinely curious if anyone’s had experience with tire chains in a similar situation and how effective they are (if at all) in deep snow.
Yes it was a Saab 9-2x which is a perenant AWD vehicle. It likely had On Star since Saab is owned by GM.
On Star still uses cellular technology though. Didn’t work for me once on the Skyline Drive.
permanent
Sorry
Ever done any long-distance travelling? One of the more frustrating aspects is that you are moving through multiple broadcast zones for widely distant radio stations. You can be picking up broadcasts for clear skies for the next three days and a single click or twist on the dial will get you a broadcast of doom. Unless you are getting specific information regarding the broadcast location and the area included in the weather report, then you are not really going to get a clear idea of whether good or bad weather is ahead of you or behind you or off to the side with no relevance to your trip. It has been around 30 years since the FCC dropped the requirements for broadcasters to announce their exact location along with their call signs. Now days you get a lot of “93.3 the Real Home of Rock” or “Q-108” with no idea where that might be. A weather report from Roseburg and another from Medford–both on the lee side of the mountains–might not have even mentioned a storm that was expected to dump snow at elevations 2,000 feet higher than any presumed listener to the stations.
I doubt that the Kim’s made the mistake of thinking that whiz-bang gadgetry would see them through any problems. I suspect that it is the more common issue that people who have not actually encountered bad situations do not realize what sort of things they may encounter.
If you go to Google Maps, select Directions, enter From Grants Pass OR and To Gold Beach OR, the route Google provides is the one that the Kim’s followed (or tried to). This was not a reliance on gadgetry, in this day and age; it is the simple method that computer literate people use to find explicit directions that are actually clearer than looking at a printed Rand McNally or Gupta map.
What the Kims probably did not realize was that gravel roads in National Forests may not have clear signs that indicate what they are. A direction that says “Continue on NF-23 - go 24.3 mi” (taken directly from the Google Maps instructions) does not indicate that there may be any number of forks in the road where the instructions presume “Stay on NF-23” but there is no indication whether the left or right fork actually IS NF-23 and that the other fork is an improved logging road that does not have a marker because it is privately maintained by the logging company (which does not post “Private” signs because “everyone knows” that that is a private lane–or where some idiot vandal has taken the “Private” sign as a souvenir). Even the Forest Service signs can be obscured by brush or knocked over by errant trucks. For that matter, when they got off I-5, they were not on a gravel road. The road is certainly paved as far as Merlin and is paved much of the way, if not all the way, to Galice. So once they began to follow the instructions and encountered gravel, they may have simply followed the natural human inclination to “push on” (since they had directions and they may not have had information about the storm).
So, it is not really an issue of being “defiant of the elements” or “just asking for trouble” so much as simply not recognizing that gear that works really well for 99.9% of the situations one encounters in daily life will fail if one finds oneself really outside daily life situations. And it is hard to recognize what is outside daily life until one begins to encounter it.
Tom,
Thanks for that post. You’re quite right about the confusing situation with broadcast zones for determing forecasts, especially for the inexperienced who might suddenly find themselves in a bad situation. I have done some long distance travelling and that was what I was referring to in that post … because I’ve gotten caught in some very hairy weather while driving which seemingly came out of the blue, so I know how that goes.
I suppose me second-guessing his actions and saying he was “begging for trouble” is simply my overreacting to the tragedy after the fact. It’s hard not to think “what if?” in hindsight, and we all wonder what we might have done in a similar situation. As others have said, hopefully something can be learned from this, which is why I’m curious about whether or not there was any way he could’ve been more prepared (in terms of his vehicle) for getting un-stranded. Their vehicle was capable of getting around rugged terrain reasonably well, which I think is actually part of what contributes to these sorts of scenarios. My suggesting that he was overconfident or asking for trouble might’ve been harsh, but it’s only because I know more than one person with an AWD or offroad vehicle who has gotten very badly stuck because they thought traction at all four corners could get them out of a jam no matter what, and it just ended up getting them in deep trouble.
The most scary part of this story to me is that it was just snow on a road … and this is why I’m curious to know if attaching a set of tire chains could’ve possibly helped him get out of there even if the whole road had been covered in deep snow. Has anyone used them in a similar situation?
It seems to me that there is a basic assumption that a person with a car and a map can go anywhere in the United States. It isn’t part of the general consciousness that you could so easily end up in such a remote and inaccessible area. It was only a couple of turns off the Interstate, after all.
I grew up in Washington State, and was an avid skier. Up in the mountains, even main passes can get closed due to snowfall. We’re talking passes that require chains when there’s snow on the road (I got good at putting them on and taking them off, believe you me). Heavy snowfall on an unplowed mountain road would make for extremely treacherous driving even with chains and AWD.
Another factor that may have played into it (I don’t know that this was the case) is that in the Pacific Northwest, snow often starts as rain OR starts as snow falling onto surfaces that are above freezing temperature – either way, there’s often ice underlying the snow, making traction even more of an issue. One of the many reasons cities like Seattle completely shut down when it snows is because of the black ice that forms all over the place.
A mobile GPS would have probably helped. It would have alerted the Kims that they were off track if they had the route loaded in.
Well, maybe, maybe not.
and
Even assuming they had a GPS unit with a good map loaded, as tomndebb pointed out, there are lots of unmapped roads and poorly marked road. They could very well have gotten stranded off the right route by the sudden snowstorm with a GPS.
I read a lot of articles on this and ran across a couple that provide enlightment on some issues mentioned in this thread. I’m sorry, I don’t have cites for most of it, but I did most of my reading on SFGate, CNet, and kgw.com if you want to go looking yourself.
A helicopter pilot from the area told the newspaper that he’s familiar with the area, and what the Kims did was turned onto Bear Camp (Bear Creek?) Road, thinking it would get them to Gold Beach. There is a confusing turnoff at one point that in the words of this pilot “trips up a lot of people”, or something to that effect. If you go left, you go down the mountain and wind up at Gold Beach eventually. If you don’t, you veer from Bear Camp Road and wind up on an unmapped logging trail that goes 15-20+ miles up the mountain. This latter path is what the Kims inadvertently wound up on. It is why many of the newspaper articles reported that the car was “10-15 miles from Bear Camp Road”, which confused me at first because I thought that’s the road they WERE on.
The Kims did not have OnStar. I also believe they were not using Google Maps, as Mrs. Kim had made statements at one point referring to an Oregon map they were using, which sounded like Rand McNally or some other printed map. The road they took instead of US 42 was on this printed map and they thought it would be a good shortcut.
I too questioned the wisdom of James Kim’s deciding to walk away from the road and go towards the creek, through rugged wilderness, in his search for help. However, I saw some speculation from state troopers indicating that they thought he was trying to follow the creek to civilization, as you see that advice in some (outdated) survival guides and that sort of thing. (Apparently it is contraindicated these days because that strategy gives you a higher risk of succumbing to hypothermia.) MrWhatsit also pointed out that after a week of no food and cold temperatures, the guy probably wasn’t firing on all cylinders and making the best decisions he could have. However, I can’t fault him for leaving the car. After a week of being stranded with no help in sight, and no way to know if any help would ever come, I would have left the car too. After a week, the food situation was getting extremely dire, and I personally would rather die on the road trying to find help, than starve in my car.
And watch your wife and children starve, too.
From Rilchiam’s link:
Depending on where they first encountered snow–before Galice or after getting part way up the mountain–would modify my guess as to whether he was simply unprepared for conditions he did not imagine or was foolishly reckless.
The fact that they were using a printed map also might be a strike against their judgment: on my Rand McNally, at least a quarter of the overall road is indicated as unpaved. A city kid has no business tackling a gravel mountain road he has never been on at night when the option is simply to turn around and lose an hour or so going back to the exit he had first chosen.
Daylight, summer, experience with the road would all mitigate that judgment. I’m still guessing that folks without experience of some situations simply do not recognize what certain things mean.
When I first heard about the Kims being found, I thought that Mr. Kim was an idiot. Now that more of the facts have come out, I have revised my thinking. He made a couple of mistakes, mistakes that anyone who is not very very familiar with the forest in question might make.
He drove past a sign that said closed during snow. Living in SF he probably did not realize just how serious this is. Do we even know if he saw the sign? He drove on a gravel road. Now this one should have been a DANGER WILL ROBINSON moment, but again if he is not familiar with the area, he probably ignored it. He took a wrong turn. I mountain bike on forest service roads, and you know what? Sometime I have trouble placing exactly where I am in the middle of the day with a printed topo map in front of me. I cannot fault him for missing the turn.
The only thing I think I would have done different if I was him, was I would not have stopped for the night. I would have turned around and headed back before the drifts got too bad. But even that would have been no guarantee.
Two things we have to remember
- Hindsight is always 20/20
- That Murphy guy is a son of a bitch.