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I guess my earthquake preparations classify me as paranoid then.


If you live in California and are preparing for earthquakes, then no, it's not paranoid. That would not be considered an unlikely scenario. However, if you live Kansas and are preparing for a tsunami, then yes, you might possibly be paranoid. You just have to analyze the risks associated with each one and determine what you want to prepare for.

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It might have given him the confidence to stay put, which without the other gear, he probably should have done.


Having more food might also have given him the confidence to try and look for help earlier, instead of staying with the car. I don't think we can say that would have definitely saved his life.

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They had a fire at the car. I've seen no evidence that James built one while hiking out. We'll have to wait on that one. At any rate, a mirror would have taken far less time for James to deploy than a fire would have taken to build.


Again, we have to look at this from his point of view, with the information he knew at the time. He had stayed with the car for 7 days, burned all 4 tires without any signs of rescue. So he could only assume that there was probably nobody looking for him. We know he did have lighters with him when he tried to walk out, so he had the ability to make a fire. But if he was trying desparately to find help, maybe he didnt want to stop and take the time to make a fire if he thought it wouldn't help.

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Try removing the cars electronic compass and see if it still works. I bet it doesn't, and so would be worthless to James. A roadmap that did not show the inevitable criss cross of logging raods would probably be of little value as well.


The compass would only work in the car, but it would have given him a general sense of direction. A better map would have shown more of the logging roads but again, we're still looking at this with hindsight. He was not planning on driving through this area, and even if he was, how many people carry detailed topo maps of an area they are not planning on staying in? I have quite a whole bag of maps when I travel, but very, very few of them have much more detail than a major highways, and of those, only about 1 of those would show logging roads. And those are only because I specifically searched for ones that did. Let not forget he's 400+ miles from home, most people would not carry roadmaps containing that much detail of every place they pass through.

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Discussing this incident has already convinced me to add snowshoes and a cell phone antenna extension to my vehicle, and perhaps swap the regular shovel I carry for a snow shovel. And what room I need, I'll make. It's that important.


It's good if this incident has caused you to rethink your preparations, but again, this could also have a negative effect. The popular opinion has been to stay with the car at all times, so why would there even be a need for showshoes? Not that I'm discouraging you from carrying them since i don't know your situation, but that does seem to contradict what has been repeated over and over in this forum, which is to NEVER leave the car (advice that I don't agree with btw)

We don't know for sure whether having any extra equipment with the family would have changed the outcome of this incident, for all we know it could have led to an even bigger tragedy. We can analyze and assume all we want, but without ever knowing the full details, and the condition he or his family was in, it's just all hypothesis. It could have been that James learned from the story of the Hill-Strivers family who were stranded for 17 days in the same area earlier this year, in under similar circumstances. Searchers had stopped looking for them, so two of the men walked out to get help, and succeded. Given that knowledge, that there were no searchers, they could possibly be stranded for a couple more weeks, it's no surprise that he tried to walk out. I didn't see any criticism of that family for leaving the vehicle, even when they had a fully stocked RV to live in.

It's good to analyze this situation and learn from it, but we have to be careful not to make any assumptions that might not apply in a differenet scenario. There are NO set rules in any survival situation.

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But here we have a guy who tried and failed, and a family who needs to find some peace in loss, which is darned hard to do


I prefer to look at this a different way. Here was a guy, who's only real mistake was getting lost on a family vacation. His goal was to keep his family alive under very difficult circumstances. In the end, he thought that the only way to keep his family alive was to go out and find help, even if that meant risking his own life. So even though he might not have lived, he did manage to his family alive until rescuers could find them. So while not 100% successful, I wouldn't exactly say he failed.