He got off trail ... if he’d stayed on trail, he still would have died ... headed for a section where he needed an ice axe & crampons to get through it & he had neither & he would not have turned back. That ice/steep section was the first SAR checked, just ‘knew’ that’s where they’d find him, at the bottom of a cliff off of that trail section, but he wasn’t there.
Most of the people I’m following this year about maybe 350-400 miles into the hike, they will be getting to Kennedy Meadows and the High Sierras by the first week in June, even in the middle of summer at those altitudes, the snow will be treacherous at best and downright dangerous for your average hiker who isn’t prepared to hike in the snow.