Time of Cell hit was 1:30, which strongly indicates to me that they tried to take the Merlin to Galice to Gold Beach route and got lost in the woods west of Galice. Also possible is that they took the Wolf Creek route to Galice or (I think very unlikely) would be that they tried Powers and wound up heading east rather than south.
It appears the search of that Galice area will be completed by tonight, and hopefully they’ll be found holed up in the car, hungry but safe. There are hundreds if not thousands of miles of logging roads up there but I’m assuming the choppers can cover all that territory quickly.
—– earlier today —-
Here’s a new report of the Glendale cell hit, which means they were within 26 miles of Glendale which is off I-5 and north of Galice. The time would give a lot of insight into the route they took over to the coast. They left Roseburg at about 9pm and would have been within range of Glendale along I-5 at about 9:30-10pm. If the hit came much later, around midnight or so, it would seem to strongly indicate they took the Merlin Galice Road and probably missed the BLM turnoff to Agness and are in the area west of Galice.
It appears they are now searching extensively over there but I’m going to call and see if they need more people. The report above indicates they’ll have that area completed by tonight.
Update: Yikes, it’s not easy to contact the search to volunteer to help. State Police sent me to dispatch who took number and said they’ll find the right contact over at Josephine Search and Rescue. I left my name with them Saturday I think and still no word.
I’m not knocking them though – it may be that they can cover the area with professionals and don’t want to complicate things with a bunch of people driving around up there getting lost themselves. That’s understandable though it should be stated and all the info about this case should be posted at a centralized web place.
Joe Duck 
In texas here and our news just barely covers the case. Whats the best wedsite to get updates?
It is also possible that if the guy in Winston is correct that he saw them at the gas station, they may have headed down 42. I think that by air there is a part of 42 that is within the 26 mile range of the Glendale cell tower. That may not be possible though because of the terrain. However, if they headed down the Powers highway and went wrong off of FR33, that would put them high up in the Mt. Bolivar area and closer once again to Glendale. A late cell phone tower hit could provide some weight to this theory as well.
Okay. I used google earth to follow the merlin-galice route. Im not from oregon (i just love to visit and have stayed in gold beach area)and I wanted to try to understand the difficulties of this route so I followed the road by satelite and WOW, I got off on three wrong roads AND I HAD AN ARIAL VEIW!! lower grave creek road threw me off, BLM 33-8-26,blm33-8-13, I have yet to make it all the way. I even mapquested and tried to follow that route down merlin-galice road (making all the turns as they say…)lost as a goose.
hi – i hit your site from a google search… something about this incident is resonating very strongly with me. i want to help, and am thinking of driving down (from portland) to volunteer, specifically because after looking at maps i came to the same conclusion as you. i was raised in grants pass/merlin and am very familiar with a lot of the logging trails that stretch between galice, the illinois valley and the coast. do you know someone i can contact specifically to join a search crew? please email me if you know of any way i can help. thank you!
Hi Raechel,
You can also go to the site set up for the family for additional contact info. It is http://www.jamesandkati.com
Strange, if they used the cellphone at 130AM, who did they call, and why was it not 911?
Tara – always check the family site at jamesandkati.com, but for the latest news there is no good source online at this time that I can find. In fact many reports are confusing things because they were written on December 1 when Highway 38 was thought to be the likely route and the last contact was in Portland. It’s now fairly clear they were within 26 miles of Glendale Sunday, Nov 26th, at 1:30 am. Unfortunately that area contains hundreds of miles of logging roads and some of it is in snow that has fallen since then.
Tristan I think it was just a ping on the tower. No messaging or voice reported. The area has virtually no cell phone coverage.
For what it’s worth, Josephine County Search and Rescue is always stretched pretty thin here. I think they have just about everyone who’s a SAR team member out looking right now, meaning their phones are unmanned.
Since I’m local (Grants Pass), I’ll see if there’s a good contact I can find for people wanting to volunteer.
-K
They found Katie Penelope and Sabine. James went out on foot 2 days ago and they are still looking for him. Katie Sabine and Penelope have been airlifted to the hospital.