I would say -- it depends. Depends a lot on the individuals and their experience and the thought process they used to make that decision. It sounds to me that they made some logical choices along the way and covered the likely scenarios. If the weather had been poor or they lacked enough clothing they might have made a different choice. The fact that they are alive and well and able to tell the story means the choice did not have any negative consequences. To say the end justifies the means is not a good excuse but they could have just as easily stayed put and had to wait 2 or 3 days to be located. People can also make stupid decisions when they are "BORED" and need to "SOLVE" the situation.

The whole scenario reminds me of a exercise our company did for a team building thing. Except that it was just a paper fantasy airplane crash, the location was northern Quebec (near the polar region) and we knew we were not going to be missed for at least a week. [Hey, I didn't say it was a realistic scenario!] I was the one with the most outdoor experience and capability and yet I'm the one who said stay put - everybody else wanted to walk out... In the end, I HAD to join my team because nobody could be left behind. In the scenario I think most of our team ended up dead because we couldn't walk out or navigate properly so I was doing the "i told you so!"

They said it was a team building exercise, my team was a bunch of idiots.