From Father’s effort to save his family called ‘superhuman’:
The family got stuck in the snow November 25 while traveling home to San Francisco after a Thanksgiving trip to Portland.They attempted to take a shortcut over roads that can be impassable in winter.
Temperatures at night hovered near or below freezing.
The parents ate berries, authorities have said, while feeding the children baby food and crackers. When their meager food supply ran low, Kati Kim — who was nursing the younger child — breast-fed both children.
After nine days James Kim left his family to seek help, promising to return if he did not find anyone.
Dressed only in street clothes, Kim made it eight miles through “rugged, steep, snowy terrain with sodden branches, slick rocks, downed trees and poison oak nestled between sheer cliffs,” before ending up where his body was found, in a ravine, about a half-mile from the car.
What should he have done? That’s not clear, but experts point the rule of threes for surviving in cold wilderness conditions:
- You can survive for three hours without shelter
- You can survive for three days without water
- You can survive for three weeks without food