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cuts, short or long
I don't know if I can say this without being misunderstood. But as a person very sensitive to maps and geography I feel that I should try.
It was cartographic ignorance that stranded the Kim family. I'm not sure how much play this story has gotten outside CA and OR, but this is the San Francisco family who, driving home on I-5 from Seattle, missed the exit south of Roseburg that would have taken them out to the coast on a state highway for their hotel reservation in Gold Beach. So they drove on for a ways and then took a back road directly over the mountains. It was dark, cold, and wet; they lost their way and got stuck in the snow. The mother and children survived a week in the car and were rescued; the father had set out for help and died of hypothermia.
I am in awe of the courage and resourcefulness they showed while trapped in the mountains. I don't think I could have done half as well in the circumstances.
But I am terribly dismayed at the bad planning and overconfidence in their map-reading (apparently it was a state highway map) that got them into this situation in the first place.
First off, their intended plan was bad. To drive from Seattle to California there's no point in leaving I-5 at all unless you're deliberately taking the scenic route. If you are, you want to allow more time than they did, and you don't want their intended crossover route, Hwy 42, which is long, meandering, and twisty, a tricky road even in the daytime. There are other cross highways further north that are straighter and simpler, and will take you to the part of the coast with the dunes, which are neat. And you want to plan to do this in the daytime, instead of at night which is when the Kims left Roseburg. Both the cross highways and coast highways are one-lane winding country highways: more dangerous at night and pretty much pointless then anyway, because you miss all the gorgeous scenery.
I understand why they missed Hwy 42. This is not clear on all maps, but it actually comes off a branch highway and not I-5 at all, and as I recall the exit isn't well marked. That's understandable, but still - if you're not savvy to that level of map-reading you may make worse mistakes too.
But having missed the exit -- this is the part I really find dismaying. First, they continued south on I-5 almost to Grants Pass. This is a mountainous stretch of over 50 miles, full of mountain passes and valleys and curves with slow-down warnings, that takes well over an hour in good weather. Did they drive all this not realizing they'd missed their exit? When it took as long as it did even on a freeway, why didn't they realize that even if there was a good road to Gold Beach it would take forever to get there? (Had they taken Hwy 42, it would still have taken them more than an hour to reach the coast, and then another hour at least to Gold Beach.) When they turned off I-5, they were less than ten miles from Grants Pass, a big town with lots of motels. By this time it was 10:30 PM, and cold, and dark, and raining, no time to set off on a 95-mile drive over more mountains on an unfamiliar road. Time to quit, phone the hotel (they had a cell phone) to say they're not coming, and find a place to stay in Grants Pass.
Instead, they take this back road. Forest Road 23, it's called. Not a state highway, as some newspaper diagrams of the journey have had it. And requiring considerable map-reading skill to find from the freeway in the first place. Forest Road 23. The one that, on my state highway map of Oregon, says "Closed in Winter" on it.
Y'know, I consider myself pretty confident with back road driving. I've done a lot of it. I've been all over the Santa Cruz Mountains, which are twisty beyond belief. Even some in that part of Oregon, which I've visited a lot. I haven't driven that particular road very far into the mountains, though. It's not one I'd take for fun: it's very long, and mountainous, and tedious, judging from what I know of the area. (And I have been rafting on the Rogue River in those parts.)
But even considering myself fairly skilled at this, here are my rules for venturing off state highways onto back country roads. 1) Only in the daytime. 2) In good weather. 3) When I have lots of time to spare, because you never know what the road will be like. (I've had to give up and turn around a few times when the map insufficiently resembled the territory.) 4) A full gas tank.
5) And never, ever, without a much better and more detailed map than a state highway map. One mile = 1/4 inch on the map is about minimum scale. And I keep that map open and check it as often as necessary to establish exactly where I am at all times. (James Kim died because he was ten miles away from where he thought he was when he set off from the stranded car.) If you've been hiking with me you've seen me with my thumb on the exact spot on the trail map at all times, and my eyes more likely to watch the map than the trail. No, I don't drive that way, but I come pretty close.
The amount of overconfidence it takes to set off on a road like that, even without knowing how tough a road it really is, without a decent map, in a snowstorm at night and late to get to a hotel a hundred miles away ... I find it hard to imagine, I really do. As hard as I find to imagine the guts for survival the Kims showed afterwards.
Does this mean it's their fault? Well, no, not exactly ... except that this is why one shouldn't do things like this. Because when the map is bad and you get lost, the cold and the snow and the dark don't care if it's your fault or not.
Update: Jon Carroll discusses some of the same points, with the added complication that hadn't occurred to me: mindless Internet map-service directions. Of the road across the mountains and its appearance on a road map, he says: "[It] wasn't even on the map. Oh, wait, yes it was, a faint trace of gray across the mountains, the universal language for 'we have to put this one here because it's a road, but it'll take forever and not be fun and besides, rattlesnakes.' Doesn't mean I wouldn't ever take that road; I sometimes like the rattlesnake routes. But I sure wouldn't take it at night, with two small kids in the car, hurrying to get to my holiday motel." Pretty much my point.
It was cartographic ignorance that stranded the Kim family. I'm not sure how much play this story has gotten outside CA and OR, but this is the San Francisco family who, driving home on I-5 from Seattle, missed the exit south of Roseburg that would have taken them out to the coast on a state highway for their hotel reservation in Gold Beach. So they drove on for a ways and then took a back road directly over the mountains. It was dark, cold, and wet; they lost their way and got stuck in the snow. The mother and children survived a week in the car and were rescued; the father had set out for help and died of hypothermia.
I am in awe of the courage and resourcefulness they showed while trapped in the mountains. I don't think I could have done half as well in the circumstances.
But I am terribly dismayed at the bad planning and overconfidence in their map-reading (apparently it was a state highway map) that got them into this situation in the first place.
First off, their intended plan was bad. To drive from Seattle to California there's no point in leaving I-5 at all unless you're deliberately taking the scenic route. If you are, you want to allow more time than they did, and you don't want their intended crossover route, Hwy 42, which is long, meandering, and twisty, a tricky road even in the daytime. There are other cross highways further north that are straighter and simpler, and will take you to the part of the coast with the dunes, which are neat. And you want to plan to do this in the daytime, instead of at night which is when the Kims left Roseburg. Both the cross highways and coast highways are one-lane winding country highways: more dangerous at night and pretty much pointless then anyway, because you miss all the gorgeous scenery.
I understand why they missed Hwy 42. This is not clear on all maps, but it actually comes off a branch highway and not I-5 at all, and as I recall the exit isn't well marked. That's understandable, but still - if you're not savvy to that level of map-reading you may make worse mistakes too.
But having missed the exit -- this is the part I really find dismaying. First, they continued south on I-5 almost to Grants Pass. This is a mountainous stretch of over 50 miles, full of mountain passes and valleys and curves with slow-down warnings, that takes well over an hour in good weather. Did they drive all this not realizing they'd missed their exit? When it took as long as it did even on a freeway, why didn't they realize that even if there was a good road to Gold Beach it would take forever to get there? (Had they taken Hwy 42, it would still have taken them more than an hour to reach the coast, and then another hour at least to Gold Beach.) When they turned off I-5, they were less than ten miles from Grants Pass, a big town with lots of motels. By this time it was 10:30 PM, and cold, and dark, and raining, no time to set off on a 95-mile drive over more mountains on an unfamiliar road. Time to quit, phone the hotel (they had a cell phone) to say they're not coming, and find a place to stay in Grants Pass.
Instead, they take this back road. Forest Road 23, it's called. Not a state highway, as some newspaper diagrams of the journey have had it. And requiring considerable map-reading skill to find from the freeway in the first place. Forest Road 23. The one that, on my state highway map of Oregon, says "Closed in Winter" on it.
Y'know, I consider myself pretty confident with back road driving. I've done a lot of it. I've been all over the Santa Cruz Mountains, which are twisty beyond belief. Even some in that part of Oregon, which I've visited a lot. I haven't driven that particular road very far into the mountains, though. It's not one I'd take for fun: it's very long, and mountainous, and tedious, judging from what I know of the area. (And I have been rafting on the Rogue River in those parts.)
But even considering myself fairly skilled at this, here are my rules for venturing off state highways onto back country roads. 1) Only in the daytime. 2) In good weather. 3) When I have lots of time to spare, because you never know what the road will be like. (I've had to give up and turn around a few times when the map insufficiently resembled the territory.) 4) A full gas tank.
5) And never, ever, without a much better and more detailed map than a state highway map. One mile = 1/4 inch on the map is about minimum scale. And I keep that map open and check it as often as necessary to establish exactly where I am at all times. (James Kim died because he was ten miles away from where he thought he was when he set off from the stranded car.) If you've been hiking with me you've seen me with my thumb on the exact spot on the trail map at all times, and my eyes more likely to watch the map than the trail. No, I don't drive that way, but I come pretty close.
The amount of overconfidence it takes to set off on a road like that, even without knowing how tough a road it really is, without a decent map, in a snowstorm at night and late to get to a hotel a hundred miles away ... I find it hard to imagine, I really do. As hard as I find to imagine the guts for survival the Kims showed afterwards.
Does this mean it's their fault? Well, no, not exactly ... except that this is why one shouldn't do things like this. Because when the map is bad and you get lost, the cold and the snow and the dark don't care if it's your fault or not.
Update: Jon Carroll discusses some of the same points, with the added complication that hadn't occurred to me: mindless Internet map-service directions. Of the road across the mountains and its appearance on a road map, he says: "[It] wasn't even on the map. Oh, wait, yes it was, a faint trace of gray across the mountains, the universal language for 'we have to put this one here because it's a road, but it'll take forever and not be fun and besides, rattlesnakes.' Doesn't mean I wouldn't ever take that road; I sometimes like the rattlesnake routes. But I sure wouldn't take it at night, with two small kids in the car, hurrying to get to my holiday motel." Pretty much my point.
no subject
My home town is Challenge, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. My father was a US Forest Service officer, and I lived with him on a series of USFS bases. I know a bit about back-country roads. But I also know that years of city living have made me a bit soft, and I don't think I'd try taking a debatable road like that. It's easy to say in retrospect, though.
Some years ago, Lisa and I were driving up I-5 through Oregon in that same general area. (She doesn't go that way very often, as she prefers the US-97/OR-58 route, which, while not a freeway, is still a main highway.) During the day, we got the idea of trying to follow a minor road indicated on our AAA map that appears to follow more closely the railroad. (The railroad in this area is the original Southern Pacific route to Oregon; SP built a better route via Klamath Falls later, and this "Siskyou Route" is now operated by a short-line railroad, Central Oregon & Pacific.) We got off the freeway where the map seemed to indicate, and hunted around for the road on the map. We found several places, none of which resembled the road we wanted. When pavement ran out and we found ourselves with a choice of dirt roads, neither of which appeared to be going the direction we wanted to go, we turned around and drove back to I-5, grumbling about AAA. I wrote to AAA complaining about that phantom road on their map. When the next edition of the Oregon highway map appeared, I looked at it, and found that the phantom road had vanished. So I guess I'd done a good deed by reporting an inaccuracy and getting it corrected.
Oh, I do carry a several-days emergency survival pack in my van, too -- it doubles as the earthquake-preparedness kit. And besides my cell phone (which probably won't work too far beyond the narrow I-5 band), I have my amateur radio and CB radio. So while I hope to never be in such a dire situation as the Kims, I also have made preparations to try and survive and recover from it should it ever happen.
no subject
I've done what you did: taken some obscure road that looked interesting on the map. But I'm always prepared to give up on it, because often enough it doesn't work out like the map implies it should.
no subject
My grandfather was one of the construction workers on I-5 through this area, and back in 1969-70 he and my grandmother rented a house in Weed (it's still visible from the freeway), as it saved him having to rent a motel room for months. I came and stayed for them for some period of time -- I don't remember how long it was -- when I was, I guess, between 4 and 5 years old. (It must have been before I was five because my parents divorced when I was five and I ended up living with my grandparents for the next seven years thereafter, but it was after the time in Weed. I mainly remember that the railroad tracks ran right outside the back yard and the trains crews would wave to me.