James Kim

After encountering heavy snow at high elevation on Bear Camp Road, the Kims backtracked and ventured onto BLM Road 34-8-36 (North Fork Galice Creek Road) (42.5744°N, -123.7504°W), a paved logging road supervised by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) thinking that could be an option.

A road gate intended to prevent such mistakes was open despite BLM rules requiring that it be closed.

Media outlets reported that vandals had cut a lock on it, but a subsequent investigation showed that BLM employees had left it open to avoid trapping local hunters and others who might have ventured past it.

After 23 miles of slow travel along BLM Road 34-8-36, the Kims stopped at about 1:00 am on November 26 because of fatigue and bad weather (42.6885°N, -123.7773°W).

As more snow fell around their immobilized Saab 9-2X station wagon, they kept warm by running the engine.

When it ran out of fuel, they made a campfire of dried wood and magazines.

Later, they burned the car's tires to signal rescuers.

Search efforts began shortly after November 30, when Kim's coworkers filed a missing persons report with the San Francisco Police Department.

After investigators learned that the Kims used their credit card at a local restaurant, search and rescue teams, including local and state police, more than 80 civilian volunteers, the Oregon Army National Guard and several helicopters hired by Spencer spent several days looking for them along area highways and roads, to no avail.

On December 2, Kim left his family to look for help, wearing tennis shoes, a jacket, and light clothing.

He believed the nearest town (Galice) was located four miles away after studying a map with Kati.

He promised her he would turn back the same day if he failed to find anyone, but he did not return.

He backtracked about 11 miles down BLM Road 34-8-36 before leaving the roadway and electing to follow a ravine northeast down the mountain.

Although the Kims had a cellular phone with them, their remote location in the mountains was out of range of the cellular network, rendering the phone unusable for voice calls.

Despite it being so, it would play a key role in their rescue.

Cell phone text messages may go through even when there appears to be no signal, in part because text messaging is a store-and-forward service.

Two Edge Wireless engineers, Eric Fuqua and Noah Pugsley, contacted search and rescue authorities offering their help in the search.

On Saturday, December 2, they began searching through the data logs of cell sites, trying to find records of repeaters to which the Kims' cell phone may have connected.

James Kim (August 9, 1971 – December 4, 2006) was an American television personality and technology analyst for the former TechTV international cable television network, reviewing products for shows including The Screen Savers, Call for Help, and Fresh Gear.

At the time of his death he was working as a senior editor of MP3 and digital audio for CNET, where he wrote more than 400 product reviews.

He also cohosted a weekly video podcast for CNET's gadget blog, Crave, and a weekly audio podcast, The MP3 Insider (both podcasts were cohosted with Veronica Belmont).

Kim graduated from Ballard High School in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1989 and from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1993 where he double-majored in Government and English and played for the varsity lacrosse team.

The son of Spencer H. Kim, an aerospace company executive and internationalist, he and his wife, Kati, owned two retail stores in San Francisco, California.

Kim was most widely known as a television personality on the international cable network TechTV, where he was a senior technology analyst for TechTV Labs.

He made frequent appearances testing new products for shows including The Screen Savers, Call for Help, Fresh Gear, and AudioFile.

He was best known for his "Lab Rats" segments, in which he reviewed the latest electronic gadgets.

After leaving TechTV, he became a senior editor for CNET, a technology trade journal, which he had joined in 2004.

He wrote product reviews and co-hosted a weekly podcast for CNET's gadget blog, Crave.

Prior to working for TechTV, he had been a legal assistant at law firms in New York and France; a media relations assistant for baseball's American League; and a script reader for Miramax Films.

Kim's disappearance, death, and his family's ordeal made them the subject of a brief, but intense period of news coverage in December 2006.

After spending the 2006 Thanksgiving holiday in Seattle, Washington, the Kim family (James, Kati, and their two daughters, 4-year old Penelope and 7-month old Sabine) set out for their home in San Francisco.

On Saturday, November 25, 2006, having left Portland, Oregon, on their way to Tu Tu' Tun Lodge, a resort located near Gold Beach, Oregon, they apparently missed a turnoff from Interstate 5 to Oregon Route 42, a main route to the Oregon Coast.

Instead of returning to the exit, they consulted a highway map and picked a secondary route along Bear Camp Road that skirted the Wild Rogue Wilderness, a remote area of southwestern Oregon.

They discovered that on November 26, 2006, at around 1:30am, it made a brief automatic connection to a cell site near Glendale, Oregon, and retrieved two text messages.

Temporary atmospheric conditions, such as tropospheric ducting, can briefly allow radio communications over larger distances than normal.

Through the data logs, the engineers determined that the cell phone was in a specific area west of the cellular tower.

They then used a computer program to determine which areas in the mountains were within a line-of-sight to the cellular tower.

This narrowed the search area tremendously, and finally focused rescue efforts on Bear Camp Road.

On the afternoon of December 4, John Rachor, a local helicopter pilot unaffiliated with any formal search effort, spotted Kati, Penelope, and Sabine walking on a remote road.

After he radioed their position to authorities, they were airlifted out of the area and transferred to a nearby hospital.