Reply #38: He probably left the road to escape the snow.

[Xithras]

That particular road winds along the top of the ridges and therefore gets quite a bit of snow. By leaving the road and moving downhill, he was able to get beneath the snow line and out of the ice. Unfortunately for him, that's some of the most treacherous land in the country. I've been hiking for over twenty years now, and I've hiked the Rogue River area in the past. That is NOT a place you want to be off-trail. Steep hillsides and cliffs, dense undergrowth, little cover from the weather...if you're not properly equipped and don't have accurate topo's, it's a place that offers a thousand ways to kill you.