Oregon Man Diary Froze

Oregon Man Diary Froze

When the body of Jerry William McDonald was discovered deep in the Oregon woods on a one-lane dirt road pockmarked with holes, the first hint of what led to his death was the Feb. 14 entry on his calendar: "Snowed in."

It was a Valentine's Day that went unmarked on his otherwise-detailed log, a reused calendar from the 1970s in which he had crossed out bygone dates and filled in the current year.

McDonald noted that he drove his blue 1997 GMC truck into the remote foothills of the Cascade Range on Feb. 7 and made camp, then woke up one day to find himself in the middle of a fast and heavy snowstorm.

If McDonald had been awake, said Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller, he might have been able to see the flakes piling up, made plans to get out, deal with it.

McDonald's body was discovered Thursday by a U.S. Forest Service survey crew, about 60 miles east of the state capital of Salem. An autopsy conducted Friday showed he died of hypothermia and starvation, Mueller said.