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SFGate.com
(James Kim) had trekked more than 16 miles through the wilderness to try and save them -- 6 miles more than officials originally thought before realizing they'd made a mapping error.

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Kati Kim talks to rescuers Monday after she and her daughters
were found in southwest Oregon; 7-month-old Sabine is in yellow.



Wed. 12/06/06 Press Conference: KATU.com

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sfgate.com
For four days, as the snowbound Kim family's food supplies dwindled and they used up their gas running their stranded car's heater, no one even knew they were missing.

It was two more days before rescuers narrowed the search to roads leading across thousands of square miles of western Oregon, and another day before cell phone transmissions helped to pinpoint the search area.

The way to Bear Camp Road starts off I-5 just north of Grants Pass. At first it's a two-lane country road called the Merlin-Galice Road, but as it climbs into the Coast Range over peaks as high as 4,000 feet, it gets steep and narrow. In places, the dividing line disappears. During winter, the locals typically won't even try it without a four-wheel drive.

On some maps, however, Bear Camp looks benign. The paper map the Kims are believed to have been using shows it as a major route, and gives no indication of its wintertime dangers.

"We've had tragedies on there before," Dinsmore said. "We have had people die up there before.''

He recalled the 1994 case of a man who got stuck in the snow near Bear Camp Road and kept a diary for 52 days. The man starved to death before anyone found him.

Kim had disappeared Nov. 25 without anyone knowing it, but by now millions were following the search on national television. A satellite was rerouted over the area to try to find him, and a cell phone tower was constructed to help with communications.

Spencer Kim had already spent thousands of dollars a day for private search helicopters, and his family put together 18 plastic bags of survival gear to be dropped Wednesday over a 3-mile section of wilderness. The packages included a heartfelt letter from a frightened father. It was a letter his son would never get a chance to read.

It was 33 degrees and fog had just lifted at 12:03 p.m. Wednesday when a pilot with Carson Helicopters spotted what looked like a person lying on his back in the creek.

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