James Kim and Squatching
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 7th, 2006
You don’t need to read here that James Kim, CNET senior editor, has been sadly discovered deceased after being lost for 11 days in Oregon. Or wonderfully that his family was found safe and well-fed. It is all over the media, including this good link at Boing Boing to a site for donations directly to the family.
My thoughts are with Kim’s family and friends. And one friend is familiar to many of us. I want to especially send my heartfelt condolences to that friend of James Kim’s, Scott Herriott. They worked together at Tech TV. Scott is remembered in Bigfoot circles as the stringer for CNN who tried to inject some common sense into the initial stories on the Ray Wallace hoax claims. Scott is also known to many as a warm friend, a humorist, and the director of the comic look at the search, entitled Squatching: Journey Toward Squatchdom.
Needless to say, in cryptozoology, one’s thoughts about this whole Kim family situation turns to a concern for people who go out looking for cryptids like Bigfoot in that part of the world and in other places like it. In my younger days, before I broke my back from a rockclimbing fall, getting out in the field was incredible and often going deep into the wilderness (mostly in California or throughout the Midwest/South for me), occurred without a second-thought, with adventure as the wind in my hair. But the dangers out there are very real.
I note in a local article from Oregon, one of the rescuers gives a clue to what might have scared or happened to James Kim:
Randy Jones, a Rogue Valley builder who volunteers to lead the county’s searches by helicopter…said Kim apparently walked along the road for four or five miles. Then, his tracks crossed paths with a big black bear headed downhill across the road. Jones speculated that Kim headed down the steep ravine to avoid the animal, which appears to have followed him….[Jones] described the rugged territory as “virgin wilderness,” with old-growth trees towering more than 200 feet high, heavy brush, fallen logs and boulders, as well as cliffs walling the creek in some areas.
Please be careful out there, those of you who are still able to do the fieldwork I miss and did before some of you were born.
Scott, sorry for your loss.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I wish to pass my condolences along to the family and friends of Mr. Kim. Apparently it had come to a point where he believed the lives of his family were in jeopardy, which is why he went in search of help. Nobody can fault him for that, and at the very least we must admire him for his display of love. Rest in peace Mr. Kim.
It is obvious that Mr. Kim was a good and loving man, and a brave and resourceful man who did everything he could for his family, up to the end. We need more people like him in this world, and this world is a bit dimmer for his passing. My thoughts are with his family and friends.
I had been following the news about Mr. Kim and was pulling for him. As someone who has personally been lost in the forest, in winter, in the night, I knew that his love for his family would keep him going long after a lesser man would have quit. I realize how lucky I have been. I wish Mr. Kim had had more of that same luck. He *was* incredibly lucky and inventive (pulling the tires off his car for signal and warmth fires), but it was not enough.
Let us not forget his heroic wife who breast-fed their children to keep them alive. Their lives have been shattered now, and although there is nothing we can do for their husband and father, we can help them.
He was a brave man to the very end. The world lost a good and decent human being yesterday.
Sorry to hear about his passing. Remember the rule of three’s
you will die in:
3 hours without shelter
3 days without water
3 weeks without food
PS always stay with the car. Its easier to find a car than a person.
Learn a lesson from this mans sacrifice
My condolences to the family of this brave man who tried with all of his might to save his family and to Scott, his friend.
He was trying to save his family. It was a desperate act to leave the car, but I can see why he thought he had to try. It would be awful to sit there for days and watch your children dying, and it was probably a last resort for him to try to go get help.
It reminds me of that couple a few years ago that got lost in a snowstorm. They left the car to hike out with their baby and got lost worse than they were before. They ended up finding a small cave to shelter in. The dad finally went off to find help. He managed to make it back to the car and someone picked him up. Then a rescue party was sent out to get the mother and child. Everyone survived but both parents lost their toes to frostbite.
His death is a grim reminder of how quick and indifferent Mother Nature is about individual deaths. My condolences to his family. I wouldn’t go driving at any elevation above 5k feet above sea level when the weather looks like snow and especially in mountainous terrain. I went on a ski trip in Colorado in April 84 that socked in the ski lodge for 3 days and those people were prepared but were getting nervous about getting the roads open after the 2nd day. Mr. Kim’s story sounded like they weren’t prepared for a winter trip.
We’ve had multiple days without power here in Texas even as far south as San Antonio due to ice storms. I would have never take a mountain trip like that without my winter sleeping bags and some form of long distance communication like a portable cb radio or satellite phone.
A terribly desperate situation and a most difficult decision was made by this courageous man but at a cost. Thankfully his family was saved but his loss is immeasurable. My heartfelt condolences go out to James Kim’s family and friends at this most difficult of times.
My heart too goes out to the entire family and thank God that more was not lost. Does it strike anyone strange that Bigfoot tracks were not found anywhere in the search area(s) or that a creature(s) did not attempt to curiously see what was happening in and around the car those days and nights? Looking at Autumn Williams website, Grants Pass and the surrounding area has been a well known area for sightings. Again, may the Lord’s blessings be upon James family and friends.
There could be any number of reasons why no Bigfoot footprints were found near the car. Maybe there were no Bigfoot in the area at the time, or maybe they were there but staying under shelter.
We do not know if any other creatures investigated the car, but apparently at least one did investigate James: a black bear. Or maybe it was just coincidence that bear tracks were found near his trail.
I am so glad that mother and children survived. It’s a tragedy that James did not survive too. His children will grow up without him, but they will grow up knowing that their father died for a heroic reason: trying to save their lives.
“Black Bear prints” could just be an official story. Sorry to hear about this, I wish the best for his family.
James Kim was a co-worker of mine at Cnet. As time had gone along, I did not expect him to be found alive. Yet despite that, hearing his body had been found was still harsh.
And yet. The fact is, that no one will get out of this life alone. So while he died too young, dying while trying to save his family.. to me that’s a noble death.
Rest In Peace James
Rest in Peace
More condolences. I was so hoping he would be rescued. There’s been a lot of heartbreaking news lately, and I hope we get some happier news soon.
My wife and I have been following this story, but we didn’t know he was a friend of Scott’s. Condolences to the Kim, family and to Scott.
It’s a damn shame how often it seems like this happens. I’m beginning to think that there needs to be some sort of class in school about how to survive such situations. The way the world is now, not many people go into the woods and don’t have even the basic skills needed to do so. So if they find themselves in a similar situation, they have no clue about what to do, and especially what not to do.
Maybe with a bit of training, this tragedy could have been avoided.