I'll Take the Low Road

Greetings. Welcome to a new calendar year, and the tail-end of Blasphemes' first year of existence. May all your resolutions rest in peace.

Underneath this paragraph, you will find my first contribution of 2007. I apologize for the length-- I know what a drag that can be. In an attempt to make it more reader-friendly, I've broken it into "chapters." Hopefully --if you feel even slightly compelled to slog your way through it, but aren't able to do so in one sitting-- this will make it easier to find where you last left off...

ONE.
I have a friend who calls them Stupid, Useless Vehicles.
That designation would only be a little bit clever if all it did was express his disgust with the flocking, dumb animal, herd mentality of a great majority of the people who own them-- not because they're sporty (they aren't), not because they're utilitarian (ditto), but because they're trendy. Likewise, it would only be a little bit clever if all it did was articulate his frustration with the inconvenience and, yes, very real danger they pose to the rest of us due to their size and the fact that they are so often operated with such an appallingly high mixture of ignorance and arrogance. What makes the phrase "Stupid, Useless Vehicles" truly clever, though, is how accurate a description it is.

By now, no doubt, you have heard the heroic saga of the heroic James Kim, the heroically citified San Francisco tech writer and editor for CNET Networks and heroic father of two who heroically got his heroic self --and his family-- heroically stuck in the snowbound Klamath Mountains of southwestern Oregon. If so, then you have heard how he heroically sat on his heroic [posterior] for seven heroic days, waiting heroically for someone to come along and save his... well, his heroic [posterior] before finally, heroically, wandering away with some vague, aimless, heroic notion of either walking heroically out of the wilderness or dying in the heroic attempt.

In case you haven't heard: He died in the... heroic attempt.

No, dammit, I'm not talking about those three Extreme Idiots who died in a snow storm on Mount Hood, which is also in Oregon. That was a different situation. Those guys knew what they were getting into. They knew it was dangerous. The danger, in fact, is why they did it.

James Kim, however, didn't know what he was getting himself and his family into. And therein lies my point: He should have.

In the days that followed James Kim's death from hypothermia, the disappointed searchers choked up over the tragedy of it all and echoed each other in calling him a hero. The media, of course, took to that syrupy slop like the pigs they are, and it was juuust starting to become nauseating when something newer, and therefore shinier, caught their attention and they completely forgot about James Kim as if he had never lived. Or died.

While all the cameras and microphones were still available, however, Oregon State Police Lieutenant Gregg Hastings held forth with a definitive press conference in which he said that what had happened to the Kim family was tragic and regrettable, but it was just one of those things. Then he rather pointedly proclaimed, "James Kim did nothing wrong."

Um.

Uummm, actually, Lieutenant, James Kim did any number of things wrong.
What's more, I think you know that.
You just won't say so, because you don't want to speak ill of the dead.

I, on the other hand, feel no such compunction...

TWO.
On November 17th, the Friday before Thanksgiving, James Kim packed his wife, Kati, and their two daughters and what he thought was enough luggage for about ten days into his silver-colored (gray) Saab four-wheel-drive station wagon and left San Francisco, headed for Seattle. He had already made several mistakes before he even crossed the Bay Bridge.

The first one, of course, was buying a trendy car.
The second was believing Saab when they told him his trendy little car was a "four-wheel-drive station wagon." In the words of Bugs Bunny, "But there ain't no such animal." Seriously: Four-wheel-drive station wagon is an oxymoronic phrase. Someone should file a class-action lawsuit against Saab for claiming such a thing really exists. Buyer beware: Trendy little cars are not designed to take the family off-roading, armed only with their tourist clothes. They are designed to be trendy. Period.

James Kim's third mistake was not packing properly for the trip. Consider: His destination was Seattle, 800 miles due north and the unofficial capitol of the Pacific Northwest-- widely acknowledge to be a particularly rainy region. The trip was to last from mid to late November, which is the rainy season on the left coast-- with winter just around the corner. Yet James and his family took along very little wet-weather gear, and virtually no cold-weather gear. Big mistake-- even if nothing had gone wrong.

Nothing went drastically wrong the first week. The Kims cruised north, then north and, finally, north: Up through Shasta country and over majestic Siskiyou Pass into Oregon and then on across the wide Columbia River into Washington State. They spent most of that first week with relatives in Seattle, staying through Thanksgiving Day. On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, they said their good-byes and headed south again.

It's roughly 170 miles from Seattle to Portland, where they had lunch with an old friend. It's about that same distance from Portland to Roseburg, Oregon, where they stopped for dinner. They ate at Denny's. If they had known it was the last hot food any of them would see for more than a week, they probably would have been more selective.

As I said before, this was the rainy season. On that fateful Friday night, as the Kims finished dinner and headed back onto the highway, a massive storm front was whipsawing in off the cold north Pacific, deluging the coast and low valleys with rain, and dumping large amounts of heavy, wet snow in the mountains.

Four miles south of Roseburg, James Kim made his key mistake-- the one where the whole trip started to go bad.

THREE.
James and Kati were planning on spending a day or so at an upscale lodge (another oxymoron) near Gold Beach, Oregon, on the now darkened and wind-whipped Pacific coast. To get there, they planned to take State Highway 42 west from Interstate 5. It was a route that would deliver them to the coast highway somewhere near Coos Bay, where they could again turn south. It wasn't a bad plan, but James missed the turnoff.

Despite the fact that I see this sort of thing every damned day, I still find it unfathomable. Because, you see, James Kim did not miss a "turnoff."

It's a matter of connotation. Use of the word "turnoff" in this instance is imprecise, even misleading. It's a toss-up whether the few media types who bothered to tell this part of the story chose that word by accident, because they are sloppy reporters, or on purpose, because they feel that misleading the public is perfectly alright so long as it makes for a "better" story.

A "turnoff," I think you'll agree, calls to mind a pocked and narrow country road, jutting sharply away from another country road stark and sudden and gone, several miles outside of Nowhere Junction. If you're lucky, a "turnoff" might have one tiny sign marking its existence. It is nailed to an old wooden post over yonder. On a dark night, you'd have to stop and get out and tramp through long roadside grass and bramble and shine a flashlight on it to read it.

In short, a "turnoff" is easy to miss.

What James Kim missed that night, however, was not a dark, narrow, half-hidden country road. No, he missed a big ol' honkin', football-field-wide, very well-lit exit ramp off of a major Interstate highway.

One can only assume that the main reason he missed the exit was because, more to the point, he missed the exit signs: At least two --and more likely three-- big, bright, cloverleaf-green highway signs, taking up more square feet than the average domestic kitchen, lit by two or three or maybe even four flood-lamps and embedded with reflective material. The damned things practically glow in the dark.

Especially the lettering. Yes, that's right: The signs have writing on them-- tall, white, reflective letters and numbers in an easy-to-read font, set in sharp contrast to the rich green background. Those of you who've ever taken half a dozen split seconds to read one already know this: They can be chock-full of information...

Exit numbers, for instance. Exit numbers that, by absolutely no coincidence whatsoever, correspond directly with the nearest mile marker-- so you can almost never go more than about 65 seconds (usually less) on any Interstate without knowing how far away your exit is...

Highway numbers and/or street names, so you'll know which road this ramp takes you to...

Map/compass directions: North, south, east, west-- so you'll know which direction you'll be going...

Many highway signs list major destinations along a given route. Coos Bay, for example, or Pompey's Pillar or Fancy Gap or, uh, Ninety Proof or --I don't know-- Comcast (or DirecTV or whatever that town in Texas changed its name to)...

Some signs even have broad-brush diagrams of the interchange, like simplistic, large-scale maps hanging over your hood. Most of them have, at the very least, a large, canted, extremely phallic-looking arrow, leaning like the Tower of Pisa, explaining in the most basic symbology that if you want to go this way, then you should go... this way.

No, brothers and sisters, James Kim did not miss a "turnoff." He missed a major-league interchange. If I were to characterize it not as a "mistake," but as a "blunder," how would that be for connotation?

As I said, missing the exit for highway 42 was a key mistake. Had it not happened, the Kims' vacation would have proceeded largely as planned. The next mistake, though, would compound the problem.

FOUR.
I don't know how far James and Kati Kim drove before one or both of them realized they'd missed their exit. I don't know if Kati was the only one to look at their Official Oregon Department of Transportation Highway Map, or if James looked at it too. I don't know the dynamics of their relationship: I don't know whose decision it was to keep going south. I'm gonna hang it on James, though, because that's the kind of guy I am. It was, perhaps, the most crucial decision of the trip. Indeed, it may have been one of the most crucial decisions of their entire life together... because it was the wrong one. Rather than backtrack and pick up Highway 42 West on the second try, James decided to keep pressing south and try to pick up a thin gray line on the map called Bear Camp Road, outside the small town of Merlin, Oregon. The map, by the way, had the following notation regarding Bear Camp Road: "May be Closed in Winter." Perhaps the Kims missed the notation... or maybe they just chose to ignore it.

It was getting late when James piloted his Saab four-wheel-drive station wagon down the grade known as Sexton Mountain Pass and took the exit toward Merlin, about three miles away. Having grown up and lived in a city all his life, he may have expected to find an open gas station in town. Then again, it might not even have occurred to him to look for one. In either case, he neglected to fill his tank before leaving the Interstate. Another crucial error.

They found Bear Camp Road without any trouble, and turned west. For the first eight or ten miles, the road closely followed the Rogue River. They passed the tiny town of Galice --a hamlet, really, barely a speck on the map-- and the road veered away from the river and began to climb into the rugged Klamath Mountains. The rain quickly turned to snow, and it came down fast and wet.

At some point early on, on that winding, climbing road, James and/or Kati spotted a roadsign that gave them pause. It was the kind of sign that is usually squarish and bright yellow with stark, black letters-- the kind of sign that begins with a word like "Attention" or "Warning." In this case, the sign warned that the road they were on was subject to closure due to heavy and/or drifting snow. It was the same thing the map would have told them earlier, had they heeded it.

They decided to turn around.

They couldn't.

You might want to read those two sentences again and let them sink in. I'll wait.

They decided to turn around... but they couldn't.
James Kim, it seems --the man who thought there really was such a thing as a "four-wheel-drive station wagon," the man who was quickly learning the hard way that trendy, sport utility lites are merely trendy and not much else, the man who took his family the better part of a thousand miles due north in the latter half of November without wet- or cold-weather clothing, the man who had failed to properly read a key highway sign, and a map, and a gas gauge-- James Kim, it seems, couldn't execute a simple three-point turn when his life literally depended on it. Not even with the benefit of (light-duty) four-wheel-drive, nor the fact that his was the only vehicle on the road.

Unable to turn back (unbelievable as that sounds), they kept going-- higher and farther into the mountains. They had put Galice, that last little niche of humankind, about 10 miles behind them when bad luck took over: They, uh, they missed a turnoff.

FIVE.
This time, it really was a missed turnoff. Bear Camp Road forked. James could have stopped the car and tramped through the wet, driving snow and wiped off the tiny brown and white sign that was nailed to the old wooden post like an afterthought. Having no --ahem!-- having no wet- or cold-weather gear, however, it would be understandable if he was reluctant to do so. Even if he had, it might not have done any good: The sign is a bit confusing. It stands in the middle of the Y formed by the two forks and has the word "Coast" on it, followed by a squat little arrow that points... straight up. Hardly definitive. Besides, the sign is so small, and the snow was coming down so heavily, it's unlikely that either James or Kati saw it at all.

They could have tried to turn around, again. The intersection of the forks afforded more space to maneuver. Hell, maybe they did try... but couldn't.

They could have simply parked there at the fork and waited until morning. But it had been a long, long day (and night) and it was snowing unlike anything they'd ever seen. They were tired, anxious, lost... and low on gas.

The fork to the right seemed to be the wider of the two. James and Kati presumed that it must be the main road, and that's the way they went.

It isn't the main road. It's just a logging road. Blazed by a major logging company and used by the forestry service, it is poorly maintained. Usually, access to it is blocked by a heavy gate: Two yellow-painted, pipe-like, iron arms --each one braced by a shorter, angled, pipe-like strut-- stretch across the road, coupled to each other by a simple padlock. On that Friday night, however, when the Kims made their wrong turn, the gate was swung wide. Sometime in the hours or days preceeding their arrival at the fork, some numb-nuts had cut the padlock with a set of bolt cutters. I don't know what other sorts of vandalism was then perpetrated by said numb-nuts in the vast tracts of wilderness beyond the gate, but rest assured it was almost certainly pointless and unimaginative.

James guided the Saab down the steadily deteriorating road for nearly 10 more miles before coming to another fork. To his eye, this one was unmarked. (Actually, it is marked, but you have to be privy to the forestry service's mapping codes to make any sense of the marker.) Frustrated, exhausted, James finally gave up and parked the car for the night. It was sometime after 2 a.m. Saturday morning, November 25th.

SIX.
Much has already been written and said about the Kim family's subsequent encampment, so I won't go into too much detail. They stayed in that spot for more than a week. That far out in the boondocks, of course, there wasn't a flicker of hope for cellphone service. Thoroughly miserable weather dominated the entire week. James, Kati and their two daughters hunkered down and hoped. They ran out of gas. They ran out of food. They began to run out of things to burn for heat, and they began to run out of time.

They say --whomever They are-- They say that if you are ever stranded like that, on the back side of nowhere, in some rugged and largely untamed wilderness with your car --which apparently happens more often than you'd think it does, proving once again that America is a stupid country-- you are supposed to stay with your vehicle. There are two main reasons given for this course of, uh, inaction. The first one: Shelter. The second one: Searchers will be able to find your car much more easily than they'll ever be able to find you, whether you are out wandering around in circles or, worse, temporarily sequestered under a makeshift lean-to.

As I see it, though, there are times when this strategy simply doesn't apply, because it presupposes that you are being looked-for. James and Kati Kim had no solid reason to expect that anyone was looking for them-- certainly not right away, and certainly not in the Klamath Mountains somewhere off of Bear Camp Road.

They consulted the map. A lot. There wasn't much else to do (except, of course, get the hell out of there). It was a highway map, not good for pinpointing their position on some logging road in the mountains, but it was all they had. Already tired and lost when they'd headed in, they had virtually no sense of distance or direction. Studying the map, they concluded they were about four miles from Galice.

Four miles. Even in bad weather, at high altitude, that is not an impossible hike. It would be an easier hike, of course, if James had had --ahem!-- the right clothing: Boots, heavy coat, hat. He had none of these. What he did have, though, was a suitcase full of everyday clothes. If he'd have put on, say, three pairs of socks and five or six shirts and fashioned another shirt into a hat... Well, some people will tell you that layering is better protection against the cold, anyway.

Instead, James Kim chose to wait.
And wait.
And wait. And wait.
And wait. And wait. And wait.
And with each passing hour, his family's circumstances grew more dire.

Finally, on Saturday morning, December 2nd, after more than seven full days of waiting, he decided to do something. With more hope than knowledge, he told Kati he'd be back in about five hours, and started walking. He never returned.

SEVEN.
James Kim had a far longer hike ahead of him than he realized. He and Kati had estimated that they were about four miles from Galice. In truth, the town lay nearly twenty miles away. Even Bear Camp Road, where they had made their wrong turn and where there was at least some chance of being seen and picked up by a passing motorist, was nearly ten miles.

James only made it about half that distance --five miles-- along the logging road. Then, for reasons that will probably never be known for sure, he abruptly turned left and stumbled down a steep embankment into the deep canyon cut by Big Windy Creek.

Some have speculated that he mistook the creek for the Rogue River, or that he realized it would lead him to the river. Disheartened by the length of the journey, and knowing that the river ran past the town, he may have fooled himself into thinking that following the river would be shorter, or easier. If that was his thinking, he was wrong.

Another possibility: James Kim was immeasurably fatigued. He wasn't a hiker. He wasn't used to the high altitude. He had already spent seven torturous days fighting the cold and the wet and the worry, subsisting on a diet of wild berries, melted snow, and unanchored hope. He may have made his abrupt turn from the road simply because he was light-headed, even delirious.

Or there may have been a much more concrete reason. Searchers later found bear tracks along the logging road. No-one, in this day and age, is a good enough tracker to ascertain whether or not the bear was on the road on the same day, let alone the same hour, as James Kim was... but it's a possibility. A chance encounter with a wild bear would be daunting, to say the least. While a black bear --which is the type found in those parts-- is not as big, bad and belligerent as, say, a grizzly, they aren't exactly even-tempered, either. The undisputed king of his turf, a black bear is bigger and stronger than a man, several times over. And he knows it. He's also faster in a footrace, a better swimmer, a better tree-climber, and can sense fear and weakness more acutely than a professional poker player. Having a high-powered rifle with you would improve your chances, a little. It had better be a damned good shot, though, or you'll just make him mad.

If James did encounter a bear, and if the bear acted threateningly toward him, then a controlled plunge --of nearly seventeen hundred feet!-- into Big Windy Creek Canyon may have seemed the best avenue of escape.

Once he was down there, he couldn't get out again. He didn't give up, though. Reports vary, but James walked approximately thirteen miles in all. Most of those miles were arduous: Through the log- and rock-strewn canyon bottom, in and out of near-freezing water.

EIGHT.
The search for the Kim family began on Friday, December 1st. It had been more than six days since they'd exited I-5 and headed into the mountains.

James began his ill-fated trek the next morning, unaware if or when a search had gotten underway. He told Kati and the girls he'd be back by early afternoon.

Two days later, Kati and her daughters were rescued. They had been stranded for more than nine days. The helicopter pilot who first spotted them said he'd been following footprints in the snow. The footprints were James'.

Two days after that, James' body was found in Big Windy Creek. Virtually trapped inside the canyon, the terrain had forced him northward-- back in the general direction of the car. He froze to death, in fact, less than a mile from his family.

Now, don't get me wrong...
The effort James Kim put into saving his family --once he finally did decide to do something about their plight-- was, indeed, heroic. And his death was a tragedy.

What makes it a tragedy, though, is that it was so stupid and useless. And I take exception to the contention that "James Kim did nothing wrong." Of course he did. Some may call me a blasphemer for saying such things. I refer those people to the big word at the top of the page.

Besides, not pointing out James Kim's mistakes --if only so that others might learn from them-- is far more blasphemous than doing so.

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P.S.... Bud "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" Selig must go.