You make many excellent points, Art. He may indeed have gone up there to die. I'm not sure why you'd mark off the days on a calender but who's to say what his thought process was?

While it may not help if you're in a remote enough spot and no one is looking for you, I always wonder why anyone goes over a month, assuming they have the means to start a fire, without burning their tires. You get an immense amount of smoke, visible for a long ways.

The sad fact is, if no one is looking for you and you're in a remote enough spot, a months worth of food and water might not be enough.