DYATLOV PASS, RUSSIA — This photo of Russian students cutting a snow shelter in the middle of a howling windstorm, is one of the reasons why a new study says the nine students who died freakishly in the Dyatlov Pass Incident, dug their own grave. Here are the details:

In January 1959, in the middle of the Russian winter, nine students set off on a long ski hike into Siberia and never returned.

When rescue teams later found their bodies strewn about the snow of Dyatlov Pass, their horrific injuries became the seeds of many a conspiracy theory, ranging from an alien attack to a Russian missile strike aimed at killing double agents.

National Geographic reports that a new scientific study found evidence that the nine unlucky students were killed by hypothermia after being crushed by a very unique type of avalanche.

The study postulates that the group sealed their own fate when they cut a shelter into a slope under the shoulder of a hillside.

The last photo of the group showed them cutting the shelter.

Computer models showed that such a position could have become deadly, as katabatic winds coming down the hillside would have deposited a heavy load of hard snow on the slope above them.

Their cut would also have made breaks in the supporting underlying layers of snow, causing a small section of hard snow above them to eventually break off, causing terrible injuries and forcing them to leave the tent in haste.