My first reaction, when I read that one of them was a soldier, was "what the hell are they teaching soldiers these days?" But then it occurred to me that after 12 years in the Canadian army, I still didn't know all that much about survival per se, or even camping/hiking, because the military always supplied us with all our gear. When I got interested in backpacking as a civilian, I realised that I didn't have a clue what I should buy.

Sad - they did exactly the wrong thing, lying there and shivering all night. If they'd got up and run in circles all night, they likely would have stood a much better chance of surviving.

Statements like "we didn't really expect a blizzard" (at 11,000 feet on a glacier they didn't think it was possible to get a blizzard?) make it obvious that they really had no idea what they were doing. Sad.