Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 18:50:31 -0800
Reply-To: Rob <becida@COMCAST.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Rob <becida@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Re: OT-stranded in the wilderness with a westy what would you do ?
In-Reply-To: <21947990.1165542736127.JavaMail.root@webmail8>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
At 12/7/2006 05:52 PM, Mike Riley wrote:
>I'll bet the fellow that died had all the trick
>nav tools as he was a editor for cnet.
>All he lacked was common sense.
>mike
From oregonlive.com:
Kim family not first party to go missing on Bear Camp Road
Map - The seemingly straight link between Gold Beach and Grants Pass
is confusing, difficult
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
MATTHEW PREUSCH
The Oregonian
On paper, Bear Camp Road looks like a straight shot across the Coast
Range, but the road between Gold Beach and Grants Pass is a winding
cliffhanger in the best conditions and impassable once snow hits the
higher elevations.
That's information that James and Kati Kim of San Francisco probably
didn't have when they traveled up the national forest road 12 days
ago and became stranded in the snowy mountains.
"There's a history of people who have tried to make that shortcut" --
and failed, said Jared Castle, a state transportation spokesman based
in Roseburg.
Heading west out of Merlin, the single-lane road passes through U.S.
Bureau of Land Management forests, then winds over and along steep
ridges in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, reaching
elevations over 4,500 feet. Turnouts are scattered along the way, and
often sections of the road and shoulders are unpaved or washed out.
In summer, rafters riding the Rogue River's white water use the route
to return to Interstate 5, sharing the road with motorcyclists,
tourists and even cyclists.
After having dinner in Roseburg on Nov. 25, the Kims intended to
follow Oregon 42 west to Coos Bay on their way to a resort near Gold
Beach but missed the turn off Interstate 5, authorities said Tuesday.
Instead of backtracking, they looked on a map and saw a direct line
from Grants Pass over the mountains to Gold Beach on Bear Camp Road,
said Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson.
Wrong turn
They ended up traveling about a dozen miles up Bear Camp Road before
turning down a BLM road, where they got stuck 15 miles later.
"They've had problems there in the past with people going down that
road," said James Roper, lead road engineer for BLM in the area who
has been participating in the search. "It's a big wide intersection,
and both sides are paved, and sometimes it looks better than the road
they're supposed to be on."
To prevent travelers from taking the BLM road, the agency closes it
off with a locked gate in winter but somebody had vandalized the
gate, leaving it open, Roper said. It's not clear how the Kims
decided to get off the freeway and follow the route in the first place.
They had stopped earlier in the day at the Wilsonville Chamber of
Commerce and gotten a map, but it was produced by the Oregon
Department of Transportation and labels Bear Camp Road in fine print
as closed in winter.
They must not have used the ODOT map, said Anderson, the Josephine
County undersheriff.
Mark Ottenad, executive director of the Wilsonville chamber, said the
Kims were given the ODOT map and a guide to the coast. A map inside
the guidebook doesn't show Bear Camp Road. He said the chamber
employee suggested Oregon 42 or Oregon 38 as the best options to the
coast.
"Our visitor information specialist cautioned them against taking
forest roads and to stay on the main highways this time of the year,"
he said.
Not all commercial or tourist maps offer warnings like the ODOT map.
Online, Google's map service suggests that Bear Camp Road is the
quickest route from Grants Pass to Gold Beach, while Yahoo and
MapQuest advise taking U.S. 199.
It's easy to think that Bear Camp Road is passable year-round if
you're not familiar with the area. That's what Doug Gruendell of
Seattle thought earlier this year.
On a return trip up I-5 from California last February, Gruendell
decided to detour to the coast. "We looked at our Rand McNally road
atlas and said, 'There's a road to the ocean, let's take that,' " he
said Tuesday.
He ended up having to call a tow truck to pull his four-wheel-drive
pickup out of the snow on Bear Camp.
Other incidents
Regardless of the map they were using, as the Kims began the climb up
the eastern slopes of the coastal mountains in their Saab station
wagon, they should have seen signs warning them of possible snow
closures on the road ahead, said Patty Burel, spokeswoman for the
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The agency maintains Bear Camp
Road and posted the signs last month.
There are gates that can close the road off on either end, but the
agency leaves them open in winter so people can reach upper
elevations for winter activities such as snowmobiling or hunting.
"We don't lock those gates when it snows," she said. "We lock the
gate when there is flooding or erosion of the road surface."
Last March, the Stivers family of Ashland spent two weeks snowbound
in their motor home after trying to take Bear Camp Road to the coast.
They missed a turn before getting on Bear Camp and ended up to the
north, lost in the tangle of Forest Service roads.
And in 1995, teenagers found the remains of a man who had starved to
death in his pickup after getting lost in the same general area the
fall before. He was on a sales trip through Oregon when he decided to
take the back roads from the coast through the Siskiyous to Grants Pass.
Matthew Preusch: 541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com
©2006 The Oregonian
