I can't think of a more difficult situation to investigate than something like this. A couple of mistakes and everything gets fucked up. Investigators come, try to figure it out, and probably put some of the pieces together in the wrong place. I'm going with Occam's razor here though.
If I were to guess, I'd say that something went wrong at some point. I'm pretty sure I've told the story of when I had to be rescued by a helicopter. Two things led to that situation, somewhat minor in themselves, but they compounded and left us pretty fucked. First, the topographic map we were using was slightly wrong. That's not all that huge by itself, because cartographers are generally pretty good at what they do, and it shouldn't be off by that much. The problem is when your secondary compass is slightly fucked because of mechanical damage. You look at the map, think you're totally not where you should be because it's slightly off, check the compass, check the compass to another (broken) compass, realize it's bit off and figure that the problem has compounded upon itself and you totally don't know where you are anymore. Human error kicks in, you don't know the map's wrong and you make the mistake of thinking that the two erroneous products are right because the evidence (you're not where you should be) lines up between them. Next thing you know you're a few days behind schedule, you're rationing food, and you realize you just went nowhere for the last little while. Now imagine something like that happening in the 50's and someone fell of something, broke a bone and went into shock. Everyone could easily die because of it.
I'd imagine that's what actually happened here. Some error occurred, someone got hurt, hypothermia somehow came into play mixed with shock and you have a ripped tent. Hypothermia, group panic, and low visibility winter environments are a horrible combination. Someone freaked out, ripped a tent open to get out fast enough, got chased or whatever, people couldn't find the way back, some people fell off some shit or got caught in an avalanche, some just got lost and died.
Sure, there are pieces missing, but a lot of the 'out' there things are most likely just legends (orange tinge, tongue missing, that kind of stuff). The more down to earth stuff (missing shoes) is a bit weird, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was hypothermia or panic related in the least. How much did the Russians actually know about hypothermia in the '50's?
