...the author of this article didn't make it up. I remember reading about this incident years ago, and although I don't remember all the details of THAT account, they are consistent with the material I saw here.

Still, the evidence we have to examine is all from one source; if not the article you posted, then whatever source(s) its author consulted before writing it, which we have no access to so we are not in a position to confirm or evaluate it critically. Basically, we have only one account available to us. Does this mean its all a pack of lies? Not necessarily, just that we don't know how much of it is true and how much of it has been added later (and dutifully repeated and embellished) to the original story since it was first told. There is all sorts of detail, but we have no corroboration of any of it, except for vague references to alleged classified Soviet reports and secret panels and investigations. In other words, all dead ends. All we really know is what you posted.

I have no idea what happened to these hikers (indeed, if they ever existed at all) but I suspect they were the victims of a crime and that the story has grown and been elaborated to the point where the original events have been spun out to exaggerated proportions. We must remember that the Russian press, even in the Soviet era, has always been eager to report all sorts of conspiracy theories, supernatural mysteries, UFO stories, and the like. Russians love this shit as much as we do.

The whole story shares a lot in common with the recent chupacabra craze, a lot of somber descriptions attributed to anonymous sources. If you want to follow it up, they lead nowhere.

What do I think happened? I don't know any more than you do, but my guess is that these people were attacked, either by a member of their own party, or by others (tribesmen, mutinous soldiers, suspicious security forces, gangsters, bandits?) and in the resulting confusion (and perhaps in an effort to cover up evidence) the victims scattered and dispersed. The resulting crime scene, examined later, leaves lots of unanswered questions and contradictions, as do most crime scenes. The rest is all the speculations and interpretations that the story has gathered along the way, dutifully passed and elaborated from each teller to each listener, until truth and fiction have become inextricably tangled together. Can we rule out Bigfoot, UFOs, secret weapons testing, tribal massacres? No we can't, but we can't rule them in, either. It's all like the Gospels, Area 51, the Jersey Devil, the Kennedy Assassination or the Benghazi embassy attack. The story evolves over the years, as it adapts to the needs of those who repeat it.

As the Rabbis tell us; "First there is the Torah. Then there is the Commentaries. Then there is the Commentary on the Commentaries."