A Late Start and a Cut in the Snow
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On 1 February the group leaves a food cache, starts climbing at three in the afternoon, and digs a flat place for the tent on the open slope of height 1079.
1 February 1959, afternoon and early evening
The story
On 1 February someone in the group writes a joke newspaper called "Evening Otorten". It has a lecture series on love and hiking, a record time for putting the stove together, and a science item saying the Yeti lives near Mount Otorten.
They build a cache, called a labaz, in the upper Auspiya. They leave food and everything they do not need for the push to Otorten. The packs are lighter now.
At about three in the afternoon they start up toward the ridge. The 1959 investigator later called this late start a mistake. The wind on the open slope is strong and the cold is around 25 to 30 degrees below zero.
They stop on the east slope of height 1079, the mountain the Mansi call Kholat Syakhl. The plan, as the investigator read it, is to stay high and go along the ridge to Otorten the next morning without losing height. Otorten is about 10 km away in a straight line.
They dig into the snow to make a flat shelf for the long tent. One of them takes a photograph while the others dig. It is the last frame on that camera. In this story they choose the spot because the slope above breaks the wind, which is what the 2021 study suggests.
What the record says
According to recent reports, Yeti lives in the Northern Ural, near Mount Otorten.
"Evening Otorten" No. 1, the group's joke leaflet, 1 February 1959, case file sheet 31
Dyatlov, as the leader of the group, made a gross mistake allowing the group to begin the ascent on 1.II.59, only at 15-00.
Resolution to close the case, 28 May 1959, sheet 384
In one of the cameras the last frame shows the moment of excavation of snow for the installation of the tent.
Resolution to close the case, 28 May 1959, sheet 385
The leaflet, the cache, the 15:00 start and the last photograph of the digging are all in the case file. The investigator estimated from that photo's exposure that the tent went up around 5 pm. The 1959 discovery protocol gives the slope at the tent as 30 degrees; Gaume and Puzrin give an average snow slope of about 23 degrees, with the ground near the tent locally steeper. That the group picked the spot for shelter from wind is a reasoned guess by Gaume and Puzrin and by the 2020 prosecutors, not something the hikers wrote down.