Gate family drove through wasn’t locked

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – The gate that San Francisco online editor James Kim drove through before getting lost and dying of exposure deep in the Rogue River Canyon was never locked and was not broken open by vandals, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday.

The federal land agency with jurisdiction over the snowy road that Kim and his family drove down while trying to get to a luxury lodge at the mouth of the Rogue River had said last week that the road had been blocked by a locked metal gate since Nov. 1, but that someone broke the lock and left the gate open.

“The gate was not locked as we previously reported,” said Jody Weil, director of public affairs for BLM’s Oregon office in Portland. “We can find no evidence it was ever locked, nor was it vandalized.”

“What had happened is that our engineer and supervisor had asked his folks to close it and assumed it had gotten done and it had not gotten locked,” Weil added.

She said that BLM staff who went to lock the gate could not confirm whether anybody had traveled down that road recently and did not want to lock anyone in.

After spending Thanksgiving in Seattle, the Kims were headed home to San Francisco, where they owned two boutiques and James Kim was an editor for CNET, an Internet site that reviews electronic gadgets.

After eating dinner in Roseburg, they got on Interstate 5 south but missed their turnoff to the coast. After looking at a road map, they decided to get off at Merlin and take Bear Camp Road, a one-lane paved route over the Klamath Mountains that runs 54 miles through BLM and Siskiyou National Forest land.

About driving a dozen miles up Bear Camp Road, part of it in a heavy snowstorm, the Kims took a fork to the right onto BLM road 34-8-36. The left fork had a sign warning that Bear Camp Road may be blocked ahead by snowdrifts. Instead, they drove more than 20 miles down the BLM road, got stuck in snow, freed themselves, turned around, and stopped for the night, afraid they would run out of gas.

The family stayed with the car a week, burning tires and wood for warmth. Kati Kim and her two young daughters were found alive Dec. 3 and flown out by a helicopter hired by her family.

Two days earlier, James Kim had struck out on foot to find help, thinking he was only four miles from a town. His body was found Dec. 6 in Big Windy Creek after he had walked more than 16 miles. An autopsy found he had died of hypothermia.