Due to the massive recent publicity of the Kim case in Oregon, there has been a lot of interest on winter survival in the US. Here is a recent article from the San Jose Mercury News, a California newspaper about some examples of trips gone tragically wrong in the winter.
They are going to talk here about the Stolpa family. Now for a bit of historic trivia, I drove through that very same storm down a parallel road in Nevada the same day the Stolpa's got stranded.
Yes, I saw the road closed sign. The wind had blown it over and it was half buried in the snow. I could tell where the ditches were on each side of the road because there the snow was slightly lower. It was so cold, that even with the heater blazing on maximum, frost was forming on the inside of the jeep's back window, but up in the front seats it was nice and warm.
The difference between me and the Stolpa's was that I had a very agile, fuel efficient 4x4 (Suzuki Samurai/Sierra), a gasoline stove, an electric drink heater, wool blankets, a very good North Face sleeping bag, food, water, serious winter clothing, a CB radio, etc. The greatest danger I was in was probably if I had accidently locked myself out of the vehicle whenever I stopped to take a leak - that would have sucked.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/
Posted on Sun, Dec. 10, 2006
A wrong turn, a fierce storm, little food or water, no shelter, could you survive?
HERE ARE THE STORIES OF FOUR FAMILIES WHO FACED THE ELEMENTS
By Truong Phuoc Khanh
Mercury News
Fourteen winters ago, a California couple set out on a road trip with an infant, took a detour off the main highway and found themselves horrifyingly lost to the world.
Jennifer and James Stolpa and their 5-month-old baby survived the wilderness. James Kim, 35, did not, although his wife and two young daughters were rescued after nine days stranded on a snowy road in Oregon.
Both tales captivated the public imagination: Days without food or water. The mothers, weak and hungry, nursing their children. The fathers, despairing but determined, walking away into the unknown to find help.
Now living in Milwaukee, James Stolpa, 35, didn't need to be told why a Bay Area reporter was calling him this week. Yes, he knows about the family from San Francisco who vanished in Oregon.
"The fact is that we're all ordinary people," said Stolpa, who has since divorced and remarried. "And if these ordinary people are facing this, then something extraordinary can happen to any of us, without warning."
Some tragedies take but a second and then they're over, fade to black. But for the Kims, the Stolpas and the Stehles -- the San Jose couple who went hiking and became lost in the Santa Cruz Mountains for five nights after Thanksgiving -- the terror unfolded slowly, surreally over days.
Thanksgiving trip
A missed exit leads to a family tragedy
The Kim family was returning from a Thanksgiving visit with family in Seattle. Heading to the coastal town of Gold Beach on Nov. 25, where they had reservations for the night, they missed their exit. They consulted the map and took another route, which they didn't know wasn't plowed in the winter. They were stranded, and for days no one knew they were missing.
Kati Kim has asked the media to respect her privacy as she mourns her husband. But in interviews this week, survivors of similar ordeals recalled how at first they felt stuck and inconvenienced, then optimistic that any day help would surely come, and finally desperate with the realization they were fighting for their lives.
Their accounts offer some insight into what the Kims might have faced as they huddled in their station wagon during their last seven days together: the excitement of seeing a bird, a living creature; pressing the juice from the tiniest wildflowers; and having nothing but time to ponder, as James Stolpa said, "to really search your soul, to know who you are."
Stolpa was 21 when he spent nine days wandering in a blizzard in the high desert of northern Nevada with his wife and infant son in late December 1992.
"Hours started to feel like forever," Stolpa recalled, "and the days just went on for a long time."
James and Jennifer Stolpa, who lived in Paso Robles where James was a private in the Army, had been heading to a family funeral in Idaho. Their planned route, Interstate-80, was closed because of a snow storm, so they took a detour. Their truck became stranded in snow -- 40 miles from civilization.
For four days, they lived in the truck's camper-shell, hoping someone would come along. No one did. Then they started walking, towing their baby, Clayton, on a makeshift sled until Jennifer could walk no longer. They found a cave-like spot hidden from the wind to shelter Jennifer and the baby, and James continued on his own.
"She didn't really want us to split up. But deep down, I think she knew," Stolpa said, "if I had stayed there, then we all would have died."
Surely that's what James Kim must have felt when seven days passed and rescue did not come, Stolpa said.
"Clayton was completely helpless and needed us to survive," he said. "That was my inspiration and until I found help, I wasn't going to lay down and die."
Quick hike
At first, they were just lost and embarrassed
Maria and Arnaud Stehle of San Jose went missing in Castle Rock State Park the same weekend as the Kims got lost. They had planned only a brief hike and carried no food, water, jackets or emergency supplies.
"It could have been us. It could have been my husband," said Maria Stehle, 30, near tears, reflecting on the fate of James Kim.
Their first night lost, a Saturday, the Stehles remembered joking about their predicament.
"We thought people would make fun of us," said Arnaud, 29.
At night they sought shelter in the dense vegetation to keep warm. Every day, they hiked in search of trails. The terrain alternated between steep cliffs and valleys, with thick brush and fallen trees covering the ground.
Maria Stehle, who plucked wildflowers for their juice, kept fantasizing that a helicopter would fly over them, drop down a ladder "and I would climb it."
Her mind was fixated on one thing, she said: "When are they coming for me? That's all you're wondering. Where is the helicopter?"
Television has discovered Americans have a seemingly insatiable appetite for the drama of real people in precarious situations. But the human fascination with the survival story line, with its hopeful beginning and suspense building to an unknown ending has always existed in literature, most famously in "Robinson Crusoe" the 1710 fictional autobiography of a castaway.
This fall, the Discovery Channel launched a mini-series called "I Shouldn't Be Alive," which, according to its Web site, "explores the very best true stories of survival, focusing on the moral dilemmas, crucial moments, chance events and life-or-death decisions of the survivors." The Stolpas were featured in November.
Backpacking with the boys
Ordinary people are `taken aback by nature'
It wasn't an island but a mountain on which Frank Horath, a financial adviser from Aptos, found himself stranded in October 2004.
For Horath, the media's intense coverage of the Kims has brought back strong memories.
"I've watched it closely," said Horath, 47. "It's just a symbol of how fleeting life is, and how ordinary people doing just ordinary things can be taken aback by nature."
Horath, his brother-in-law Paul Bargetto and their two sons were backpacking in the Sierra Nevada one sunny day when a surprise snow storm grounded them at 10,000 feet.
"We didn't really have adequate equipment," Horath recalled. "On a scale of one to 10, we were at about a three."
He remembered feeling denial at first.
"I just couldn't believe this was happening," said Horath, an experienced wilderness hiker.
Days turned to nights; the storm and rain kept pounding. One night Horath and his brother-in-law had serious talks with their sons, privately.
"This is a bad night and a tough situation and we may not come out of it," Horath recalled telling his 16-year-old. "I love you."
The denouement
Four stories end with painful lessons and loss
HORATH, BARGETTO AND SONS: Horath and his son Dominic, after five days stuck in the High Sierra, were rescued on Oct. 21, 2004, along with Bargetto and his son Michael.
THE STOLPAS: James Stolpa walked nearly 50 miles over two and a half days, in sneakers, before stumbling incoherently -- and accidentally -- into the arms of a passing motorist who helped rescue Jennifer Stolpa and Clayton on Jan. 6, 1993. The Stolpas' tale was made into the movie, "Snowbound" in 1994.
THE STEHLES: Arnaud and Maria Stehle were found, after five nights missing, by rescue volunteer Kevin Donohoe on Nov. 30. Search-and-rescue volunteers used ropes to pull the couple up a steep trail.
THE KIMS: Kati Kim and her daughters, 4-year-old Penelope and 7-month-old Sabine, were found on Dec. 4 in good condition and rescued by helicopter. James Kim's body was found Dec. 6 in a creek four days after he left his family to look for help. He had walked 10 miles along a road and through terrain that challenged even skilled search-and-rescue workers, who said they were awed he made it that far.