James Kim

The latest reports from Mt. Hood leave almost no hope that the two lost climbers are alive. The bottom line on the two outdoor tragedies in the state this month is: 4 males dead or missing, 3 females alive and well. The three females are the members of the Kim family who stuck with the Saab on Bear Camp Road on December 2, when James Kim went off to try and find help, and died of exposure.

"There is a teaching there in the woman and kid and baby taking the soft path, and living," Rob Buchanan, a contributing editor at Outside magazine said to me at the time.

Maybe that's the teaching in the Mt. Hood disaster too. It looks like after Kelly James dislocated his shoulder summiting Hood, Brian Hall and Nikko Cooke parked him in a snow cave below the summit and went off to find help. The weather turned on them, a full-on storm on treacherous Cooper Spur. The evidence suggests that they fell hundreds of feet and their bodies are buried. The only one to be found is James, curled up dead in the cave, from which he had made a distress call on his cellphone a week ago. It does raise the question: Should Hall and Cooke have waited in the cave with James? Would they have gained anything? Of course I can imagine how they felt: impatient to take action, impatient to get down off the mountain. Especially if they lacked fuel. The same feeling that drove James Kim after a week to leave the Saab that saved his family's life. Propelled by maleness, I would have done the same.

I hope the outdoors experts weigh in on this question...

Yesterday's investigation by The Oregonian of the Bear Camp Road tragedy two weeks ago is haunting on a couple of levels.

First there's the family drama. The Oregonian reports that the Kims "drove past signs that said the road was impassable in winter, getting out of the car, Kati Kim later told authorities, to move boulders that blocked their path." Wow; they were blue-state achievers. Then after coming to a fork in the road and taking the wrong turn—right, on to Logging Road 34-8-36—the Kims traveled "21 miles on the logging road as it corkscrewed into the forest." Scary.

The greater pity, to me, is: I have to believe that there was tension between the Kim adults as they drove into the forest; that one of the Kims was pushing to continue on and the other was doubtful. That's what happens in my marriage when we get lost on a back road. One is always for going on (me). The other is always saying, "Let's turn around." There's tension and rage and fuming vindication. Of course, how many of us get punished this way?

The bigger lesson is even scarier: When you're in a crisis, you can't trust the authorities.

Yesterday's Oregonian shows that Josephine County Under Sheriff Brian Anderson didn't take his (inexperienced) search-and-rescue director's call on Saturday December 2, because he was watching the Oregon State game on his day off, and that he showed up to an emergency meeting the next morning 45 minutes after everyone else. At that point the family had been marooned in snow more than a week.

Yet (as the newspaper failed to point out) it was that same Brian Anderson who we all watched on TV a few days later, when James Kim's body was found.

"I'm crushed," said a grief-stricken Undersheriff Brian Anderson, the Josephine County undersheriff who announced the discovery of James Kim's body Wednesday, then had to turn away from reporters to regain his composure.

That's the stuff of a noir movie. The same guy who is crying and turning away from the cameras on national television December 6 can't be bothered on December 2 'cause the football game's on. And meanwhile the authorities are ignoring the tracks someone's spotted on the logging road, aren't digging up cell-phone records, and do nothing to summon the heat-seeking helicopters on the ground.

I read this lesson personally. Every time I've been in a crisis—a friend's cancer diagnosis, a mortgage that's not going through on time—I trust the authorities, I cling to them a little emotionally, in a Stockholm-syndrome kind of way. My wife doesn't. She assumes a certain degree of incompetence; and believes you have to stay on these people. She's right, I'm wrong.

I pity anyone in the Kim family who believed the Josephine County authorities when they were assuring them, "We're doing everything we can..."

Now when everyone is gazing at Mt. Hood, let's not forget the last outdoor tragedy in Oregon. Today's The Oregonian prints a bravura piece of reporting about why local authorities failed to find the Kim family on Bear Camp Road 2 weeks ago. The story documents a series of bonehead maneuvers inside the Josephine County Sheriff's office——and explains why it took a week for anyone to check cell phone records that might have saved James Kim, and how it came to pass that a guy who owns Burger Kings found the lost mother and girls by flying his own helicopter up a logging road many knew to be suspicious but that had gone unchecked.

Among the shocking findings: One top county official was too wrapped up in an Oregon State football game to come in and look for the lost family, a week after they went missing. And for two days as James Kim staggered dying in the forest, and authorities knew his whereabouts, no one thought to deploy helicopters that were available that had heat-seeking equipment that might have located him. (The same technology used in the last couple days on Mt. Hood.)

Here are some excerpts:

Rubrecht, a 32-year-old former police dispatcher, was named Josephine County's search coordinator in 2001 with no prior experience in the field... "I'm not afraid to tell anybody that [this case] was overwhelming -- beyond anything I'd ever handled before," she said.

[Dec. 2] Rubrecht tried to phone her boss, Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson, who was watching the Oregon State-Hawaii game. He said he chose not to take the call, noting that it was his day off.

[Dec. 3] As the authorities deliberated, a local helicopter pilot set out on his own... John Rachor grew ever more certain over the weekend where the Kim family was stranded. At 10:30 a.m., he lifted off in his own four-seat helicopter, convinced he could find them. Rachor, who runs a string of Burger Kings, asked no one where to look. He said he flew straight to Bear Camp Road and logging road 34-8-36.

Three days later, James Kim's body was found.

The Oregonian has crushed the S.F. Chronicle on the Bear Camp Road tragedy. I guess it's their story; geography is huge. Check out the Oregonian's aerial tour of the roads the Kims went up till their car foundered. And there's a .pdf map showing how close they were to Black Bar Lodge, stocked with food.

The shocker is Outside magazine's site. A story that millions are following, and Outside has nothing on it. I'm disappointed.

Memo to editors: when will someone do the high-tech angle? James Kim worked for a high-tech company, but high-tech failed his family disastrously. They disappeared on Saturday 11/25. Josephine County, Ore., authorities didn't track a "ping" from the Kim's cell phone to Bear Camp Road for another week, Dec. 2. Egad. On TV they do that kind of thing inside of 15 minutes.

Meantime, Richard Silverstein was unable to post his response to my last re the Kims' AWD vehicle. I'm posting it for him (and commenters, we're working on the problems, sorry):

I don't think that was really fair Phil. Today's NYT notes that they took a wrong term in the mtns. Considering the awful conditions at the time, I'm sure it's something any of us could/would do. 4,000 feet isn't that high an elevation for western mtns. They made a terrible mistake clearly. But mainly, they should've stayed in the car no matter what; and they should've stocked the car with proper gear & supplies considering they were traveling through mtns. in winter. We cityslickers here in the west live near these mtns. & so become familiar & comfortable w. them. But we don't realize that when you IN them, they can be forbidding, punishing places.

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