Even if the caretaker was gone & the phone & power were turned off there is a chance that some stale crackers or who knows what might have been in a cabinet there. Maybe they clean everything out perfectly when they close it down, but who knows.

And surely they had a fireplace & some firewood. It was the exposure that killed him in the end.

Agreed. Regarding James Kim, the man made the best decisions he knew how and went all out to save his family, which in the end is a husband/father's ultimate job. I salute him.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." -- Roosevelt

Dang! I wish I could give you 20 of my pounds!

I agree with you, but you have to keep in mind he was sitting there day after day looking at his two kids wondering if they would survive another 2 weeks assuming help didn't come. One heck of a scenario. The mental anguish would take it's toll.

Something gear-wise I have not heard mentioned is that the price of satellite phones has come down recently and there are available usage plans for the "emergency user". Following Katrina, alot of these phones were dumped onto Ebay and there are many still available for about the same start up cost as an PLB. Yes, there is an ongoing usage charge that may make it somewhat more expensive, but the sat phone gives you the added peace of mind of knowing that help is immediately on the way. My understanding, at least with the Globalstar phones, is that they utilize GPS technolgy so that the phone can be used to find you even if you do not know where you are.

I'm not advocating one over the other, I personally carry both into the backwoods of Utah. The sat phone may be a little easier to justify from a purchase point of view given its non-emergency usage.

Stay safe.

Craig.

I believe you can rent sat-phones too. I think I recall reading that, after someone got lost in CO a couple of years back. I could be wrong though.

Wow! Just read this on CNN. Sickening.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/08/missing.family.ap/index.html

That's a good point. All survival literature the general public may have seen is movies like Alive with Ethan Hawke (the rugby team where there are cases of cannibalism) and maybe The Edge with Bart the bear and no character dies of hypothermia. Hollywood doesn't teach the statistics, only spectacular exceptions. I wonder if this factor influences decisions of people.

Frankie

It is interesting to me that the news people can not decide if he walked eight miles, ten miles or 10.5 miles, and if he died one mile or one half mile from his vehicle. This article used both the one mile and one half mile figures in the came article.
I can give them the half mile, but two miles difference is a lot.

Accuracy in reporting at its finest...

CDMA is cellular technology. This (probably) wouldn't have helped any more than texting their GPS location on their cell. It probably would be a good option in urban areas (faster response in a car crash), but in a rural setting, the PLB is probably still the way to go (and no monthly charges).

-john