His car and his family were eventually found (from inspection by volunteers of aerial footage), on an old, abandoned logging road. Unfortunately, he himself had walked away from the car, seeking help, and did not survive.
I have gotten lost on several poorly-maintained roads in my time in the Canadian rockies. To think this could happen to me and the people I'm with makes me feel ridiculous and stupid.
What should a group of people do if they found themselves in such a situation?
Additionally, you should obviously carry plenty of food, potable water, basic medical supplies including a round of antibiotics, tire inflation/repair devices, a multipurpose sharp knife, two long-lasting external batteries for your USB devices that can also jumpstart a car (super cheap on Amazon, surprisingly), and potentially a firearm if you're into that kind of thing and trained to use it. Standard prepper checklists will work here.
It sounds like a lot, but even semi-rural travel 15-20 miles off marked and standard roads are dangerous as hell, as this story and others clearly can show. You will almost certainly never need all of your equipment, but if you travel even occasionally, you will absolutely need some of it - and you won't be able to predict which piece of gear you do need. It's about being prepared for a wide variety of events, not one severe event.
Nature doesn't cooperate.
EDIT: Forgot, pack a basic set of tools: Screwdriver with various bits, socket wrench (ideally with an extension), car jack, pliers, length of wire, length of rope, aim-and-flame extension lighter (vastly preferred to a handheld cigarette lighter and not any more expensive; get a flexible shaft if you want to be fancy and shell out an extra $2), tire iron (add a breaker bar, probably), and a stack of kindling, which can simply be a bunch of old or free newspapers.
Yes it does. So many people travel without the basics.
I remember reading some years back about a couple being found dead of thirst in the Sahara desert, in to which they went on a day trip... without bringing water.
I heard Joe Rogan (not a frequent listener, but figure he deserves credit) say this once, paraphrased: Look at a 7-11 counter full of cheap pocket knives, $1 lighters, flashlights, and other stupid items. There comes a time in many peoples' lives that they would trade their entire wealth for access to a single one of those tools in a time of dire need.
Spend a few hundred dollars, pack it away, and hope you wasted your money. It's the best possible outcome. But should you need anything in the kit, that $300-500 you spent will have the highest return on investment on anything you bought in your lifetime, even if you were an early adopter of Bitcoin or Google.
Almost everything else on the list is space efficient and/or packs in specific areas in your car made to store things like tools, spare tires, etc. People have a lot of room in their vehicles that go to waste simply because they don't read user manuals.
Totally agree, however. And thank you very much.
Build a fire if you can, a smoky fire is better because it can be spotted from far away.
An air search for an essentially a randomly placed point (the hiker) in a large area is very hit and miss. It is quite easy for even a trained observer to scan right over someone.
It's much easier for an observer to search a fixed location. The searchers could first specifically look at the grid intersections in a given sector of the search before then doing the general area scan, and then perhaps do a second check of the grid intersections before moving on to the next sector.
The idea is to have known places that will definitely be looked directly at by an attentive searcher during the search rather than just seen in passing in a sweep, that the lost person can find if they have a GPS (or if they have a map that has these places marked).
She was 30 minutes away from a road and survived for 26 days but decided to stay put and wait for people to find her.
In the first instance, it gives you time to overcome panic.
In this case, sadly.
:(
Car tires burn very well. Lots of black smoke. And there are parts enough in any car to start a fire (wires+battery etc).
Tell someone where you are going and give them a check in time.
Always bring a decent knife (within your local laws), a fire implement, and a decent medical kit.
It's also a good idea to learn how to actually use a map and a compass. Doing so effectively is not necessarily the most intuitive thing in the world, and does take some skill.
There’s times when people think it’s ‘only a few miles’ of a hike, but sometimes that can take a whole day based on the terrain, and you don’t want to find yourself still stuck in the woods when night falls with inadequate supplies.
I have a high clearance 4x4 with 31x12.5" AT tires and still wouldn't try to take a shortcut like that.
Not so much because I'm terribly scared of getting stuck, in first gear, but putting on tire chains in a muddy slushy pacific NW winter is not really my idea of fun or a time saver.
Kim's wife and children did stay with the car and were rescued some time later. But at the point that Kim left the car he had to be thinking that searchers weren't going to find them in time.
I've often wondered if Kim's fatal mistake wasn't leaving for help but rather leaving the road he was on and going cross country. By the time he made the decision to do that, his thinking might have been very seriously impaired indeed, though.
But what if enough time is passed that searches will have been called off?
This guy stayed with his vehicle for over two months, until he finally died from starvation [1].
At some point you have to recognize that help isn't coming. The question then is how to determine when it has reached that point. This should probably be part of planning for any trip where you might become lost and isolated. At the very least, find out how long they will keep an unsuccessful search going there.
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/...
Can't imagine the horror of trekking through the wilderness, your family waiting in the car, to find help.
Historically it wasn't unusual for people to just never return. You'd never know what happened.
Puts human development in the 20th century into perspective for me.
I don't believe there was any aerial footage. If I recall correctly, he was found by a local person who owned a helicopter and followed some hunches to find his car tracks at one point then quickly located them by following the roads.