The saddest part is knowing that soon after he left, his family was rescued. Makes you wonder if he really had any hope of surviving in the cold wilderness so far away from help. I guess he felt that he had to do something for his family, even if it costed him his life.
RIP James Kim. This is just a sad story, all-around. Eternal rest grant unto him, And let perpetual light shine upon him.
Yep. Unless you have the proper gear (clothing, food, compass, shelter, etc...), the know-how & survival skills to use it, a basic knowledge of the area you're in, and some luck...in most cases you're much better off staying put and waiting to be rescued. Especially given that he was expected somewhere (i.e. reasonable to assume someone will miss him & call for help). Tragic. I can only imagine what his last conversation with his wife was like & the guilt & whatnot she's going through right now.
Yeah, I have always heard that is the rule. If in a hostile situation, stay together. You're chances of survival increase greatly.
really terrible news. i've been thinking about it since they found his family and though i wanted him to be alive it just seemed so unlikely after all this time. i think they said he was less than a mile away from the car where they found him but wasn't in a position where he could reach it. can't blame him for trying to save his family but just thinking about what the wife must be going through now is crazy. prayers for them for sure.
He was found about a mile from his car, but what is amazing is that he traveled about 8 miles to get there.
Do you think he left and couldn't find help so he tried to make it back possibly never knowing if his family made it to safety. Oh my god the thoughts that must have been going through his head. It makes me cry just thinking about it.
Were there foot tracks going for 8 miles away from his car, and then tracks back to 1 mile toward his car again? From what I read they took an off road and got stuck in the snow. I was wondering why they couldn't have just walked back to the main road?
yeah i just read that on yahoo and thought the same thing. i guess the weather at the time was more hectic then we can imagine. it might not have been as easy as just getting back to the road. gosh from a wrong turn to this.
He was half a mile as the crow flies. He knew he was close to gold beach, so he was probably trying to follow the rogue down river (where he would have passed the lodge well before he got to gold beach). He took a drainage path down to the Rogue, and was then following the Rogue down stream--he may have been a half mile from the car, but the only way back to it would have been the same eight mile way he came or straight up a sheer cliff.
According to a story, here's the general area... Here's what it looks like on Google Maps... http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&z=11&ll=42.59606,-123.7603&spn=0.242119,0.466919 and here it is with the Sat overlay... you can see how rugged the country is... http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&z=12&ll=42.621581,-123.860207&spn=0.12101,0.233459&t=h I can assure you that althought the yellow road looks big, it is not much different from the other roads in the area... they are all logging or fire roads... some curves barely large enough for a small car and a logging truck to meet, if that. No guardrails, no cell towers, no traffic. The Coast Range is not that high in elevation, but because of where it sits, it bears the brunt of Pacific storms and gets lots of snow. It seems that every year or two, someone tries to do just what the Kims did and dies up there. I feel for the family and those who appreciated Kim's work, but let's face facts...This was entirely preventable. So you missed a turn... double back and go get it. So you're thinking about going on a road that is not a State or Federal Highway... stop and ask a local if it's OK. So you're going up to the mountains in winter... don't think that just because the roads are clear at a lower elevation that they will be at the higher elevations. So you're taking your family with you... have emergency supplies, blankets, water. The rule for the Forest Service and Park Service is this... be prepared to stay a week. And don't go in a low clearance vehicle. The general rule for the Forest Service and Park Service is this... go as far as you can in 2-wheel drive, then use 4-wheel drive to turn around. (Every year, we have to take a class... Winter Driving... that reinforces the basic safety issues of driving in snow and ice and driving in the middle of nowhere during the winter... doesn't matter how many times you've sat through it, you take it every year.) And always take proper footwear and gloves. Tennis shoes in snow will kill you after awhile. If you're going to leave your party, do it just enough to find an open spot visible from the air and leave something there, then return to your party or at least pick a direction and say "I'm going to stay on this road." Anything that makes it easy for the rescuers to find both. It's incredibly stressful on the search and rescue folks to mount more than one search, particularly, as in this case, when they get that momentary relief of finding people alive and then realize they have to keep going. Be aware of where you are... Kim was about a 30 mile hike through rugged country from Gold Beach. He was about a twenty mile hike from I-5 back down the road he drove up and probably closer than that of finding some help. Roads, even when covered with snow, are much easier to walk then going cross country and there is a much better chance you will be found on a road. Don't depend on cell phones... ever. Don't depend on national or state level maps... ever. Don't depend on any technology... ever. Cell phones and maps and Onstar and such give you a false sense of security that could lead you to compund your stupidity. Don't let it happen. Let people know where you are going. And finally... please recognize that there are places that are wild and dangerous and have risks beyond that of a theme park. Every year, we have to pull out dead bodies from the Grand Canyon because they took off on an 18-mile up and down hike with a water bottle and a candy bar. Every Summer, people go biking in Moab and think it's just like biking at sea level on paved paths in 75% humidity... by the time they realize it's not, they've stripped naked and crawled up under a Juniper to die. People go cross country skiing and think it's cool that they found this nice open spot with views and then they realize too late that it's an avalanche chute... we've dug film out of the snow that show the deceased stopped in the middle of the chute to take pictures. Every year across the West, just about everybody responds to a car wreck where people were driving like they were on an LA freeway when they needed to be going 15 mph on a curvy, washboarded road. Kim is a great example of a really smart guy getting in over his head before he had a clue it was happening. He didn't have the knowledge or skills to be where he was or the humility to turn back... and it killed him. Don't let it happen to you.
Do we know that he had the ability to 'turn back'? Meaning, was it just a matter of things suddenly got out of control before they realized it? Was he just trying to get to the coast, following a map or something? I'm a little unclear on the details. Been mostly following the story through the net. Was he really trying to do something and get in over his head or just stumbled into a bad situation?
I'm assuming he got stuck in something because obviously his car was still working. They said they ran the heat until the car ran out of gas and then burned the tires for heat. That tells me that he got stuck.
I understand what people were saying about staying put.. But afer 9 days in the car with almost all your food gone and 9 DAYS.. man you have to do something..
James Kim was very smart guy. Hence he's doing all these cool reviews on the newest gadgets. This is man vs nature. technology was made to help man. At least going forward, some technology will help in future cases in that area: Satellite to be rerouted in James Kim search By Greg Sandoval http://news.com.com/Satellite+to+be+rerouted+in+James+Kim+search/2100-1028_3-6141211.html Story last modified Wed Dec 06 08:09:26 PST 2006 A commercial satellite-imagery company said Tuesday it is rerouting one of its satellites to fly over the Oregon wilderness where rescue crews search for CNET editor James Kim. GeoEye's Ikonos satellite will fly over the Western seaboard at about 10:30 a.m. PT Wednesday at a distance from the Earth of about 423 miles, said Mark Brender, a spokesman for the Dulles, Va.-based GeoEye. The satellite could record images of an area as large as 2,000 square kilometers. The cameras on the Ikonos boast a very high resolution, able to get a bead on objects 39 inches wide. "If you set a card table out on a street, we couldn't see it was a card table," said Brender, "but we could let you know something that looked like a card table was there." Kim is believed to be on foot in a remote wilderness area of southwest Oregon. He and his family were stranded while traveling home to San Francisco following a road trip to the Pacific Northwest. Kim's wife and two daughters were rescued Monday, nearly a week after the family was reported missing. The search for Kim has focused on a 5-mile stretch of a narrow canyon a few miles from where the Kims' car was found. The satellite, which is used by the U.S. military for mapping and gathering intelligence, could be rendered useless if the weather is bad, said Brender. The snow and large trees would also make it nearly impossible for a satellite image to pinpoint Kim's location, but it could help authorities plan their search efforts, Brender said. "We can't see through clouds," he said. "If it's cloudy, we wouldn't be able to get back for three days." The forecast for the area around Grants Pass, Ore., where Kim is believed to be lost, calls for early morning fog. Another concern, said Brender, is where to send the pictures. The company only flies the satellite and doesn't employ analysts to comb the photos. Brender said his company was notified by a concerned citizen interested in helping to find Kim. "We need to be in contact with someone involved in the search so we know where to send the images," Brender said. Brender declined to state what the cost was to the company to "retask" a satellite. "We're doing it because it's the right thing to do," he said.
