'I've got him! And he's alive!' Rainier rescue has a happy ending

Blaine Horner looked behind big rocks and under hundreds of trees Monday on Mount Rainier, hoping to find a miracle but knowing full well he was more likely to find an unhappy ending.

Suddenly, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Ten feet away, a slim 66-year-old man was standing in a tree well.

“Mr. Kim?” Horner said.

Yong Chun Kim looked up with a jolt. Kim, a Tacoma resident, had defied the odds and survived two nights in blizzard conditions with minimal gear and was found just hours before searchers planned to scale back the hunt.

“I’ve got him!” Horner yelled to the other members of his team. “And he’s alive!”

Kim had burned leaves, his socks and $1 and $5 bills to stay warm and to heat water, according to The Associated Press. He rationed chocolate and rice, hunkered down in the hole in the snow around a large tree and waited for help, rescuers said. He walked in place to stay warm and to stay awake, but at times “the snow was so deep, I couldn’t breathe,” Kim told The Associated Press.

Kim had been missing since Saturday afternoon, when he slipped and fell down a steep slope while leading a snowshoeing hike. Unable to climb back up the slope, he told the group of 16 novice hikers he would take a different route and meet them back at Paradise. He lost his bearings as the weather worsened.  

When rescuers found him two days later, not only was Kim alert and ambulatory, he was dry. Horner gave him some Cadbury mini chocolate eggs he’d bought that morning; Kim accepted them gratefully.

Rescuers said there was a bit of a language barrier between them and Kim, a member of the South Korean military during the Vietnam War, but he had no trouble communicating one request: Coffee. A member of the Portland Mountain Rescue arrived with a Thermos a short time later.

 “Once we got coffee on board, he was really happy,” Horner said.

Monday night, Kim’s family issued a statement calling his survival and rescue “a miracle from God, but clearly a miracle assisted by his good people.”

Those people numbered about 90 on Monday, and four of those instrumental in the rescue where members of the Crystal Mountain Ski Patrol who’d helped pull off another rescue Friday night in the ski area’s backcountry.

“I told (Rainier rescue workers) I’m sending you four scalpels; don’t use them like cleavers,” Paul Baugher, director of the ski patrol, said of the rescuers.

The patrollers were Horner, Leah Fisher, Patrick Fleming and Everett Phillips; they were assigned to search teams 1 and 2 with three Mount Rainier rescue rangers, including Jordan Mammel.

They’d left Crystal Mountain at 3:15 a.m. Monday and by the time they got home, it was 4 a.m. Tuesday. They already were tired from a weekend of patrolling that included saving a lost and hypothermic skier in what they called “heinous” terrain around Crystal Lakes.

As they rescued the skier, who they say would not have survived the night, on Saturday morning, Rainier rangers were there to help them avoid a dangerous cliff band.

“That was huge,” Horner said. So, tired as they were, they were eager to repay the favor Monday.

Stefan Lofgren, the incident commander for Mount Rainier National Park, said the search likely would have been scaled back had Kim not been found Monday because of severe weather. The weather might have even made it unsafe to search at all.

While all the rescuers were in potentially dangerous terrain, the Crystal crew was in terrain prone to avalanche.

They were searching the flanks of a large bowl at about 6,400 feet above sea level on Rainier’s south side for hours when Phillips spotted tracks.

He also was the one who found the tracks that led to the skier rescue Friday night at Crystal.

“I was just in the right place at the right time,” Phillips said. “These were team efforts.”

Even though the tracks looked too fresh to belong to Kim, they decided to follow them.

As far as they knew, they were searching for a man with a decade of snowshoeing experience but no backcountry survival experience. But apparently those reports didn’t take into account Kim’s time in the South Korean military. Kim said the skills he learned as a soldier helped him survive, according to The Associated Press.

Horner began talking to Kim while Phillips examined him. Phillips found a digital camera in Kim’s pocket and flipped through a couple of pictures looking for signs of how Kim managed to survive. He found pictures of the creek and the fire.

“We were blown away,” Phillips said.

A toboggan was brought in, no easy task in itself, and Kim was wrapped in two down sleeping bags. Horner pulled the toboggan like a sled dog, postholing up to his chest at times, Phillips said. Fleming and Phillips helped control the toboggan and help with the arduous task of pulling it up hill. Fisher helped, too, and handled the route finding, Phillips said. People with other from search-and-rescue groups from around the state, as well as all three of Washington’s National Parks, also helped with the rescue.

Kim was found about 1:40 p.m.; it took until about 10 to lower him to the Stevens Canyon road where a Sno-Cat was waiting to deliver him to his family just below Paradise. He was reunited with his family by 11 p.m.

During the rescue Kim, a U.S. citizen for 30 years, warmed up and recovered to the point where he didn’t even need to visit a hospital.

“There was a bit of a language barrier, but he had a really great, positive attitude,” Phillips said. “He was in good spirits.”

By Tuesday morning, the Crystal patrols were tired but back on the slopes to get in some powder runs – a nice reward for a tough weekend of work. But even powder runs paled in comparison to seeing Kim reunited with his family, the patrollers said.

“That’s why we do this,” Horner said of the two-rescue weekend. “That’s why we eat right and stay fit so when it comes time to literally drag somebody uphill for two hours we are ready.”

Craig Hill: 253-597-8497

craig.hill@thenewstribune.com

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