This is from a post on Joe Duck...thought some of you would like to see it.
for those who questioned him leaving the car, I saw this:
Link to full story below.
“It is easy to say now that Kim should have stayed with the car. But back in 1995, a salesman named DeWitt Finley was trapped on Bear Camp Road. He got his truck into a snowdrift and realized he wasn’t going to get it out. The locals say Finley, a healthy man of 56, probably could have walked out on the road pretty easily.
But Finley was a believer. He was convinced that God would save him. For nine weeks he sat in his truck, meticulously marking off the days and writing in his diary.
In the spring, a couple of teenagers found his body. He’d starved to death in his truck.
Up in the mountains, they still say Finley was foolish for what he did. He could have made other choices, they say, better ones, and he might have saved himself.
In a way, that is true of James Kim. And if it makes you feel better about yourself to criticize him, go ahead. But don’t be surprised if no one wants to hear it.
He tried to do the best he could for his family. Trapped, cold and desperate, he had no way of knowing that help was on the way. He didn’t know that satellite technology was “pinging” the sound of their cell phone and that someone was still working on pinpointing the signal. He didn’t know that turning off the road would be a dead end.
He pulled on his jacket, kissed his wife and children (does anyone doubt that?), and struck out toward hope. That’s what dads do. ”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/08/MNG75MRTTA1.DTL
Thanks, Surfer, we should just direct the naysayers to that story and save ourselves the debate. If he encountered a bear going toward his family, I think he could have gone off course to divert it. There are so many ifs and maybes, and none of them in my mind point to him doing anything remotely wrong.
See my post #1359 proving conclusively that if he had used the higher ground next to the car, the added 1270 feet (over about a mile or so) would have put him within 10 feet (maybe better) of being in line-of-sight of the Wolf Peak cell tower 20 miles away near Glendale and the call would have clearly gone through. Mr. Kim did not do that.
In 1995, I climbed just a couple hundred feet from a river valley to increase a cell signal from barely detectable to useable and call for help. If you have a cellphone, use the highest available ground to try it. A tech guy should have thought of that. (I'm a tech guy too.)