The
Express article is a mishmash of inaccurate information. Here are two additional early tabloid-style reports on the latest pronouncements which are more coherent:
https://nation.com.pk/11-Jul-2020/i...-century-old-mystery-of-dyatlov-pass-incident
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rs-skiers-victims-hypothermia-NOT-aliens.html
All three news stories contain inaccurate information about the Dyatlov party's trekking objectives and details of the scenario.
Here are the few things I think I can reliably tell from these journalistic messes ...
The final cause of death for all the trekkers is now claimed to be hypothermia. This was the conclusion in 1959, so that's not new.
The "fear of avalanche as motivation for abandoning the tent" isn't new, either. It was proposed back in 1959. Investigators on the scene back then ruled out an all-out avalanche because there was no evidence of an avalanche at the scene. More recently, several knowledgeable parties (e.g., mountaineers; backcountry experts) proposed a more modest "snow slip" scenario involving a localized "mini-avalanche" at the tent site. It appears to me this snow-slip theory is still in play and may have been adopted by the latest investigation.
The only new element I see in these butchered accounts is the idea that the party evacuated the tent and attempted to shelter against an imminent avalanche at a rocky "ridge" only a few dozen meters from their tent. There are in fact exposed rocky outcroppings and depressions downslope from the tent site, but these aren't high enough to be more than "humps." In any case these humps were buried beneath the snowpack at the time of the incident.
I'm at a loss to figure out where this alleged "ridge" was located.
I can only hope a more lucid account of the latest investigation's findings will be forthcoming. It's difficult to correlate some of the alleged findings with the evidence documented (even with photos) from 1959. For the time being I'm presuming the "disconnects" are the fault of the reporters who assembled these curiously off-the-mark articles.