The range of FRS is so limited that someone in the air could see you before they pick up the FRS signal.
I've found that cell phones are rather terrain dependent too, you can go over hills and get a signal and down in valleys and loose it. So something to try would be to hike to high ground and try calling or texting.

It will all depend on my available time, which is squeezed very tight these days, especially with Sue's situation. That's just the current reality. I have published a very brief Lessons Learned on my Equipped.org Blog that covers some major issues, in hopes that with the media coverage and our high Google positioning we'll get the message across to some who might otherwise never receive it. Of necessity, its focus is on what might have prevented the tragedy in the first place, lessons that others can take away and do something with now. A more comprehensive article could delve into a lot more, including the obviously effective survival strategies, some good, some sub-optimal but they worked, made while the family was stranded and what went right as well as what went wrong.

The bottom line is ETS is severly handicapped by lack of funds and I am only one person. Even with sleep being but an option, <~> there's only so much I can accomplish...

Doug,

Is there any way that the picture of the gear in your blog can be made so if I click on it I get a bigger picture? OR is a bigger picture and a complete list of what is in the picture available somewhere on ets.org?

BTW, the Kim incident and your articles at ets.org have convinced my wife and I to invest in a PLB for a family trip to Glacier National Park. I've spent waaay more than the cost of the PLB on all sorts of toys (cameras, boats, horses, etc...) Thanks for your help in making that decision.

Thanks,

Ken K.

I keep going back to the original mistakes they made. Missing their turn, picking a bad alternate route from a road map, not knowing the area, not understanding that they didn't have enough gas to endlessly wander around unmarked forestry roads.

A PLB or sat phone could have gotten them out of trouble sooner, but those are a hard sell to even a hardcore geek / preparedness nut family.

They could have avoided all the trouble in the first place with a GPS navigation system. There are plenty of sub-$500 systems now where you can carry detailed road maps of multiple states and never have to wonder if you're on the right road. I've held off purchasing one but I think it's getting to be time. I just wish they had one with sat photo overlays. Or Google Earth on DVD.

It may or may not have gotten them rescued.... but being able to communicate with each other beyond line of sight, even if range is limited by terrain, is always a good thing IMO.

Even if rescuers do not routinely monitor all the possible channels of FRS, GMRS, HAM... if one or the other got rescued, even if the other party is out of range, they can tell SAR personnel that the other DOES have a radio, and what channel they're on. That immediately allows them to cover much larger swaths of land during their search pattern, as they may wander within radio range long before the could see you (if they could see you at all)

Even the cheapo radios may prove useful, and they're dirt cheap, so why not? (GMRS licencing is of course important to stay legal, although in an emergency I don't think I'd feel too bad about it).

I must respecftully disagree. You are creating an unlikely and overly-complex hypothectical to justify a flawed premise. DO NOT TRUST YOUR LIFE TO AN FRS RADIO. SAR is not going to conduct an investigation into what you may or may not have with you. The likelihood is they will not even have with them any equipment capable of monitoring FRS frequencies. All radio equipment sold in the US must be type-approved by the FCC. Aircraft raidio will not tune to FRS frequencies and an unmodified amateur radio may monitor, but not transmit on those frequencies. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO HEAR YOU PERIOD.

On the other hand, hams are dedicated people. I guarantee you that hams were monitoring frequencies in the area as soon as they heard someone was lost. And if SAR was able to do any investigation, they would find my name in the FCC license database pretty quickly. Law enforcement and ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) are tight. The right people with triangulation equipment could be brought in quickly.

Don't go cheap, go smart. Used amature HTs can be picked up off Ebay for about the same price as some of the so called "long range" FRS/GMRS units.

Trust me on this one, FRS is only slightly better than 500mw child's toy you buy at Wal-Mart. Get your license and get the right equipment. Its not difficult and you will meet a helluva lot of nice people along the way.

Craig.

The news is now saying that the road had been closed with a locked gate, but that vandals had cut the lock and opened the gate. Hope they lose a lot of sleep over this. But jerks being jerks, I doubt that they will...

Just wanted to add my thoughts to this situation:

I drive close to 9 hours just about every weekend. My drive starts off in a rural area, goes on highway, then brings me to a suburban/city area, then back again. Even when traveling on the main roads I have used the stuff in my kit so many times it's amazing. People are generally very unprepared. From what I've heard the common thought is, "I carry a cell phone and if that doesn't work I'll just flag down another car." I can tell you that this doesn't always work. One guy I dragged out of the ditch in the side of the road with my tow strap was stuck there for three hours. His car wouldn't run and he had little more then the clothes on his back. Other people have the tools, yet don't know how to use them. The most common one being, "how do you change a tire?"

I guess the point I'm trying to make is: Carry the most amount of equipment and gear you can (factoring in space and financial restrictions) and learn how to use it. It only has to save your or someone elses life once to pay for itself.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I wish more people would learn. The thing that kills me is; I've made threads in other internet forums talking about carrying some extra gear and such in winter and more then half of the people just shot me down. The worst of the bunch being the younger teenagers who just started driving. They again ask, "I carry a cell phone, what do I need all that other crap for, why waste money on it?" <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Back up there bud, I never said you should trust your life to an FRS radio, nor did I imply you should use that over, say, an Amateur radio. All I said was that they might prove useful with regards to communicating with each other outside of shouting range, certainly better than nothing at all, and that is not a flawed premise. Of course getting an amateur licence is the way to go.

Just a few thoughts:

The rule of staying with the vehicle exists because a vehicle is easier to spot from the air than a person. But if no one is looking for you, the rule may become pointless. The rule has never said: Stay with the vehicle until you die. There will probably come a time when you have to make a decision.

I can't help but think that there are a lot of armchair adventurers at this site. That area is really rough country. Traveling 8 or 10 miles in up-and-down terrain like that, in winter, is no easy feat. The fact that he died a mile or half-mile from food, heat and shelter doesn't mean anything. If you don't know it's there, it might as well not be.

Food: One energy bar isn't going to last anyone a week or two, esp Americans. People who are used to eating are going to worry about not eating, and it would probably cloud their judgment and affect their decisions. No matter how macho you are, lack of food will probably begin to affect you after two days or so, esp in the cold. And if you have kids with you....

They were driving an AWD. I live in rural WA, where an awful lot of the people drive AWD. They think it will prevent them from sliding on ice and will get them out of any predicament that could possibly happen to them in a vehicle. The Kims were from the city... need I say more?

From the local coverage of this ordeal, it seems that the county involved has no helicopter. If it hadn't been for the family of the Kims, the whole family might be dead by now. They were the ones who tracked down the tower pings through the phone company, and narrowed the search area. They were the ones who hired a helicopter to search the area. If they hadn't put forth this effort (and money), the news coverage and the searching may not have been quite so extensive.

People think that smoke always travels straight up. In times of low pressure, it just sits on the ground and hides under the trees. Don't expect anyone to notice.

I did snort at the authorities saying they were going to try to find the vandals who cut the chain on the gate closing the road. They haven't a clue and never will.

Sue, who hoped this situation would turn out better than it did