That's appalling.

Regardless of their questionable decisions, the response to a distress signal in the snow is to count the rental skis and check the cars in the parking lot?

They were out there ten days. The granola bars and lack of water is a red herring, a detail released by the police to emphasize the mistakes of the victims -- it sure as hell didn't kill them. Neither did going out of bounds kill them, directly. What killed them was (a) getting lost and (b) the failure of the authorities to respond to their distress signals.

Everyones covering his ass. I hope there's a coroner's inquest on this one.