Krivonischenko and Kolevatov Cut The Tent

[Hunter]

Axelrod, given how they packed their things, it's not surprising that so many things were lost. The mess tin was only found in the 21st century.

And the spoons could simply have had no identifying marks. Unlike the spoons of Thibault and Kolevatov.

[Axelrod]

Five spoons are later missing from the list of unidentified items. They disappeared in the most incomprehensible way!

[Hunter]

Where did Thibo's Finnish knife go?

And why wasn't Kolevatov's knife presented to his relatives for identification in the protocol?

[Missi]

Hunter, unfortunately I don't read Russian. I know most of the letters, but that's it. Yet, what you say is in essence what I learned about the time and the knifes back then as well, so I'll just take it like that.
About the taking stuff as souvenir... It'd be very macabre to take a souvenir from a place, where your fellow students dies. I can imagine something like that with a knife or other rather rare, important and good tools, small enough to just place in ones pocket.
When it comes to other things like the missing spoons and mugs and so on, I'd resort to other causes.

It's a huge chaos, that was found or left by the searchers. There are knifes that should be there, but aren't. The same with ordinary cutlery and dishes and personal items.

The number of the spoons is strange, I give you that. And their disappearance is also not quite ordinary.
*** A story from my experience, going camping with a rather big number of people and everyone bringing their own stuff:
I go camping every summer for more than 10 years now. We usually bring one or two items per person plus some if we get guests. The items for guests only rarely get stocked, because at the end of one week, we end up with more stuff than we brought. Sometimes it's even hard to get everything back to the people that still are with us on the place (meaning not those who came by for a dinner, but who had their tent their with ours). And this is only with people who know what they took, not some friends or family members having to identify what's there.
We also loose things that never show up again.

Having told that: I don't think it strange, that things are missing. Even if we assume nothing was staged (which I'm not sure about), there's a lot of snow, a lot of wind, weeks go by, a group of (sorry) amateurs find the tent and look through what's inside, maybe some of the hikers had some of their stuff in hand and took it down or lost it somewhere on the way. There are so many reasons, why items could have genuinely been lost.
If you take a staging into account, people might still have not looked at the right place...

[Hunter]

Regarding the creepy thing about taking things. Slobtsov and Sharavin took some of the items from the tent. And according to some reports, they even consumed the contents of a flask of alcohol at the camp with other searchers. And according to the criminal investigation file, Dyatlov's flashlight was found in the tent. Look for it in the list of items identified by Yudin and the relatives of the victims. You won't find it. Where did it go?

Regarding the absence of knives from some of the group. I spoke with Askinadzi. He said the girls usually didn't take knives. Plus, judging by the expedition reports, knives were sometimes taken at a ratio of one knife per two or three participants, or they could simply forget. There were precedents. But the investigation didn't bother with it. It's a shame none of the current searchers have used a metal detector from the supposed location of the tent to the helipad and the outliers.