But wasn’t the group probably awake when whatever happened happened? E.g. there was a partial meal and half-drunk beverage still arranged on the table as if the crisis went down mid-meal.
Personally, my hypothesis is a combination of human error/corruption, and then tragedy.
The parachute mines that were plausibly falling in the area at the time: maybe some rookie military pilot didn’t notice, or thought it’d be funny to detonate near a tent to spook campers. Maybe the shockwaves caused internal injuries to someone on that side of the tent, and everyone panicked thinking they were under attack by human forces (much scarier than an animal). They ripped out of the tent and ran as far away from what they thought the planes were ‘targeting’ (their tent) as they could. The person with internal injuries was assisted to walk by two others – but at night, stumbling against each other and one of them already injured, that trio tripped and fell down the gorge. The uninjured ones who made it all the way to the treeline (to hide from their aerial ‘attacker’) waited too long before trying to return to the tent, but it makes sense that they’d have risked almost certain death by the elements, if they thought more certain death awaited them by concentrated human attacker with intent to kill.
Then either right away or after the youth were reported missing, the Russian military realized what happened and covered it up to avoid the terrible PR of accidentally (if indirectly) killing so many of its own country’s bright, vibrant young people. (Removing debris from the parachute mine; covering up any footprints to mask that they’d been there.) Back then was not an era for Russian government transparency, I don’t think. And maybe those involved never wrote (or later destroyed) relevant records of the incident so as not to be exposed when there was an eventual move toward transparency.
This has been my conspiracy theory. Good morning.