If they had car trouble near Willow Springs then it may have looked like a temptingly short horizontal distance from the car to the highway below. They may have been able to see cars passing by. The walk back to Greenwater Road may have seemed a long, tedious slog for many miles across bleak terrain. We may never know why they took the route they did.
I have many times had to fight off the temptation to 'just head over to that point', or to 'drop down into this valley and pop up the other side'.
But then I learned early, beginning as an early teen on a deer hunting trip in the Wasatch Mountains, how quickly and easily you can make an error and get into impassable terrain. Fortunately I was able to back track, wind around, come out onto a dirt track and eventually, just after sunset, come onto a gravel road, which I followed downhill. I was in a completely different drainage. Got a ride a few minutes later.
Since that experience, and a couple of others, I remain extremely respectful of even short stretches of difficult, possibly impassable terrain, no matter how close I am to 'where I want to be'. I have turned around at times when only a hundred feet or so from a well trodden path due to hazardous obstacles. A friend of mine had a saying, which seems true: "Don't let a moment's courage screw you up!"
How to convey this sort of respect and caution to younger folks is difficult without seeming like a whinging old grandpappy.
Foy is right. A knowledge of your topographical and 3-D situation is all important. Flat maps are no substitute for reading the terrain.