I fully agree with the auto-rotation. I should have used a better choice of words. In that terrain I’ll take a guess that the pilot was looking at that small gravel bar just to the right of the crash site as a possible landing site.
(Lost a very good friend in RVN when he had to go into the tree canopy when that was it. RIP brother!)
Sympathy for your loss, and I guess we’ll just have to wait for the NTSB accident report to find out.