Footprints to the Cedar
Ivdel prosecutor V. I. Tempalov, 26 February 1959 (case file vol. 1, page 1). Public domain (Russian official document, not an object of copyright under article 1259 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). Picture source
The nine walk together for about a kilometer and a half down to a large cedar at the edge of the forest, light a fire, and some of them try to go back up.
Night of 1 to 2 February 1959
The story
They go down in a loose line. The footprints show eight or nine people, some in one sock, some in felt boots. The tracks come together and spread apart, as if people were keeping close in the dark.
At the edge of the forest, about 1.5 km from the tent, there is a big cedar. Under it, in a hollow, they make a fire from broken branches. Branches are snapped off the tree itself.
Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko stay by the fire. Both are later found there in their underwear. They die of the cold.
Igor Dyatlov, Rustem Slobodin and Zinaida Kolmogorova set off back up the slope, toward the tent and the clothes inside it. They are found one after another on a straight line between the fire and the tent. Dyatlov lies about 300 meters from the fire, holding a small birch. Kolmogorova is the farthest up.
In this story they turn back to fetch clothes, boots and blankets. That is the prosecutors' reading too. None of them left a note to say so.
What the record says
Below the tent, for up to 500 meters in the snow, traces of people walking from the tent to the valley and into the forest have been preserved.
Resolution to close the case, 28 May 1959, sheet 386
Half burnt branches in a hole under the cedar are indicating a makeshift fire.
Protocol of inspection of the scene, 27 February 1959, sheet 3
The last three bodies were located on a straight line from the fire to the tent.
Resolution to close the case, 28 May 1959, sheet 386
The tracks, the fire, the cedar and the positions of the five bodies are in the February 1959 protocols and the closing resolution. The investigator found that Dyatlov, Doroshenko, Krivonischenko and Kolmogorova died of the cold, and that Slobodin had a skull fracture but also died of freezing. Slobodin's watch had stopped at 8:45 and Dyatlov's at 5:31, which does not fix the time of death. Why the three were going uphill is an inference, and the documents disagree on their posture: the closing resolution says Slobodin's and Kolmogorova's poses showed they were crawling to the tent, while the February scene protocol says Kolmogorova seemed to be holding her place rather than climbing.