... EG: If you entered a time machine and travelled back to the February 1959 Ural Mountains to watch events play out, my money says it wouldn't be that intriguing; save to explain the mysteries that we ourselves created.
An excellent and eloquent summary, in my opinion!
Humans screw up, and screw-ups executed in risky / dangerous circumstances can get you killed. This potential is compounded when the situation involves a group of people, owing to the influence of interpersonal and social dynamics.
As I've noted elsewhere the cases I find most fascinating are the ones in which some chain of events and / or inexplicable decisions led to outcomes that no one can explain without invoking some paranormal / supernatural influence.
This is not to say I dismiss paranormal / supernatural effects out of hand. I've seen or experienced enough situations where I (sometimes with others) could have ended up dead in inexplicable circumstances to understand that self-made catastrophe can be even more mysterious than catastrophe forced upon one by external agencies.
The deeper I dug into the Dyatlov case the more it became apparent the trekkers attempted to save themselves (building a fire; digging a snow den). At least some of them were acting rationally after leaving the group's tent. The primary problem is figuring out why they abandoned the tent in the first place. Most folks have concentrated on this problem to the exclusion of other issues, and I think that's a mistake.
There are many secondary problems that complicate the scenario - many of which are caused by assuming the canonical storyline* must be the way events played out.
* By 'canonical storyline' I mean the plot reflecting certain assumptions such as:
- the group always acted together as a group during the final / fatal course of events;
- the group remained "one big happy family" after pitching the tent on the mountainside;
- they all abandoned the tent at the same time;
- the tent had partially or wholly collapsed prior to their abandoning it;
- they all arrived in the valley below together;
- the three sets of bodies represented three sub-groups that emerged only after the whole group arrived in the valley; and
- all this happened in a short burst of activity on the first night after pitching the tent.
IMHO none of these presumptions represent clear-cut and definite facts.