Searching for .........

[Erich]

James Kim

you guys in the States heard about this latest epic in my area ?

yep, a family decided to take a short cut in winter weather from my spot out the Rogue River on Merlin-Galice Road 18 miles and then up and over Bear Camp road with snow on the road to in effect over the Coast range and down some 60 miles to Powers and then Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast.

what were these folk thinking ? they got off the main road and went into the hills some 15 miles according to authorities and got stuck, ran out of whatever they had on hand and burned the tires on the car, the wife and kid ? were left with the car and were found while James decided best to set out alone in the frigid cold with lows in the teens at 4500 feet elevation going down what drainage towards the Rogue River. Helicopters and search and rescue have been looking for him for days, and they found sadly his pair of blue jeans in the snow. what is so bothersome is this is a strong indicator of Hypothermia, where the body shuts down makes the brain think the core is too warm and you start to shed your gear, for all we know the guy is somewhere frozen in time completely naked ........

another very inexperienced couple with a possible end, tragic and in unknown territory. Can tell you unless you know our Mtn.s even in winter I would not want to be up there hiking as there are no real landmarks, small elusive canyons with no ending, ridge upon ridge leading to no-where. And people wonder why we call it here the "Platonic Sphere" ...........

 

[Matt308]

Heard that they found his pants yesterday. A classic sign of hypothermia. Hallucinations that you are too hot and the victim begins to shed clothing. Sad really.

 

[Erich]

have dealt with this in other episodes which I will not go into. Can imagine the guy was probably walking around like a zombie. we have had incidents when we found guys sitting on big cold stone boulders on ridge tops huddled up and murmurring stupidities, no clue where they were or whom they were

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Wow what was that guy thinking. It is almost like the guy who decided to treck out into the Alaska wilderness and survive. They found him in a van in the middle of know where frozen to death years later and the van is still there today.

 

[Erich]

Chris that is such a suck memory ! Kim from what I heard, he and his familie looked on an internet map of our area and found this road thinking it would be a good short cut up and over the mtn's to the coast, being from wherever they had never been here in the winter before and bluffed themselves into thinking it was a major hi-way. had this been done in the summer no problem but the road is closed from Octobers end usually till March due to snow slides and wash-outs......

getting back to that wilderness thing my Brother did a solo in Alaska's Denali park around the peak system and off the other side and then the long solo trek through Canada and back home here in southern Oregon by himself, my brother never felt so good nor looked so mountain manish as that time in his life. Granted this was in the summer but ........ There is no doubt in my mind a person needs to be prepared for all events if possible especially this time of year. My bro and I grew up nearly in the Mtns' from a very early on age and trained by a father and grand-father whom did the same and our love for the great outdoors will stay with us till we leave this earth, it is always so bone chilling to read and be part of these most sad events in peoples lives had they even given 2 centos of thought before they went out could of saved them needless hours of pain ......

 

[Matt308]

They just found him. He was not alive.

Mother and kids (6mo and 4yo) survived 9 days by her nursing them both and burning the cars tires once the gas ran out.

Tragic.

 

[pbfoot]

aside from the obvious how many peoples lives were risked trying to rescue these fools no doubt there were air assets involved, local and state police not to mention the volunteers . Flying SAR in the mountains is intense flying and costly

 

[Erich]

on rescue personell was injured yesterday. James Kim was found in a canyon lying face down in the snow. rescue attempts were almost put on a hold due to the low ground visibility due to freezing fog. Brian Anderson sheriff who they interviewed is a good friend of mine for many years one of the first kids at the time to climb Mt. Hood with me. he looked absolutely terrible and in the interview with MSNBC broke down and had to turn away. The kid has a huge heart for people .......

PB you have it so right, I wonder now if the BLM will be smart enough to barricade that narrow paved road with a iron walled gate. We had another incident with a whole family living out of their stocked RV last winter they were found all alive ............. Idiots, funny they were proclaimed as heros for about a month until they looked into the elder parents lives and found they were drug smugglers, their kids at ages of mid 30's and their little ones had no clue

what a crap way to spend Christmas

 

[pbfoot]

If people are rescued because they placed themselves in crap because of stupidity then they should foot the SAR bill

 

[Erich]

pb for ground rescue attempts this is what exactly happens on such places as Mt. Hood and Mt. Shasta. I've been on 2 attempts on Mt. Hood what a bunch of sh*t as you are so pressed for time, with folk totally unprepared, and you risking your neck and whatever else in an attempt to save them at your own risk but that is what you sign up to do, good weather or no

Again I point out if this long winding high elevation road would get closed down from both ends this type of nonsense would stop at least from our direction going up and over west ............

 

[pbfoot]

They started to charge the rescuees that get caught on the river here. In some of the rescues they are forced to restrict the flow of the river as to lower it or slow it down for the rescue

 

[lesofprimus]

Interesting little sage here, proves that the unprepared dont get off lightly.... Supposedly they found his shoes as well as his pants.... I myself have been hypothermic before, and been close on numerous occasions, and I can tell u this much, disorientation is a part of hypothermia...

Kim, from what the news said, had some outdoor experience... WTF does that mean??? The guy looked like a computer programmer or something...

And for the record, when stranded in a desolate place like that, dont walk off into the woods, walk back the way u came....

 

[Erich]

well gents I tired to contact first hand some that were on this idiots plight, no comment I was told.........

Les you are on the mark, follow the stinking road down the one you drove up on ............ geezo ! how simple even if it was 15 miles back to the main road you gotta know search and rescue is monitoring that chill of a pavement section with just that very hope

this guy didn't know squat and he paid dearly for it .........

 

[pbfoot]

What was the temp . The rule of thumb with an airplane crash is to stay put or as les says backtrack . He's in an area with wood and has gasoline sounds like a fire to me its gotta be better then tires but then I'm just guessing at his circumstances

 

[lesofprimus]

People in the news are reporting that he was leaving a trail of personal items for rescuers to follow...

How pathetic that crap is....

The poor guys body was shutting down and restricting blood to his brain.... He didnt stand a chance.... I feel for the guys family, and after a week I would start to consider going for help, but over the meadow and through the woods???? Maybe he was delirious before he set out....

 

[Erich]

the temps at night were probably 18-25 F. We were 25 F for the lows the last several nights, sometimes with freezing fog sometimes not.

lets just put it this way, the guy was plain lost, he made some rash decisions on his course down the big hump out there, no roads to follow let alone see by using a drainage that he thought was going to lead into the mighty Rogue and in most cases are dry creeks even this time of year leading nowhere.

from what I am hearing now and this is out of the wifes mouth they missed there turn to the west off the main freeway I-5 to go west on 42 to the coast which is a main thouroughfare. Why didn't they just turn around ??, instead they saw the Merlin-Galice southward cut off on the road branching off winding up to the summit and down thinking they would surely take that cutoff, and make it........ even on the stinkin map it says the road is closed in the winter .........

like I said what were they thinking ? .......... they weren't

 

[pbfoot]

somebody wanted to brag about his SUV off road adventure '...I'll bet its an upper end SUV

 

[k9kiwi]

Les and Erich.

Probably dehydration after 7 days. Unless they had a consistence heat source to melt water (and we know it takes a shyte load of snow) he would have been well dehydrated adding rapidly to his hypothermia.

Most people don't think to keep hydrated when in extreme cold, it kills them fast.

 

[lesofprimus]

Word I have is that they were infact melting snow for water... The "trail" of articles left by Kim is still being hyped up by the media... BS..

 

[Matt308]

Hypothermia. That guy must have weighed a buck and a quarter max.