Regarding sticks and poles

[GlennM]

Yet on the face of it, it is straight forward. A hiking group of college kids got caught up in bad weather and didn't survive. All else is just details.

[sarapuk]

Yet on the face of it, it is straight forward. A hiking group of college kids got caught up in bad weather and didn't survive. All else is just details.

But on the face of it, it is mysterious, because they knew that there could be bad weather. They expected that bad weather was possible. Thats what you get in that part of the World in winter time. They had the means to survive but something extraordinary happened.

[GlennM]

Put another way, they were informed and warned about conditions by forester Pashin. They took it under advisement and elected to complete their hike. This is all mundane if they had survived; easily forgotten.  It should have been straight forward. We would not be here if it were.

Instead of the extraordinary, perhaps an ordinary sprain caused Igor to abandon his boots, abort crossing the ridge. It is the endless what if's that tease at the why of it, as much as the how of it.

[sarapuk]

Put another way, they were informed and warned about conditions by forester Pashin. They took it under advisement and elected to complete their hike. This is all mundane if they had survived; easily forgotten.  It should have been straight forward. We would not be here if it were.

Instead of the extraordinary, perhaps an ordinary sprain caused Igor to abandon his boots, abort crossing the ridge. It is the endless what if's that tease at the why of it, as much as the how of it.

Well Im not so sure about an ordinary sprain being a cause of any part of this incident / mystery. But there are certainly plenty of what iff's.