That's tragic--but let's keep it in context. It happened before WWII. Some of these young boys were wearing shorts and sandals (without hats) in a blizzard, climbing up a mountain slope with a 70% gradient (black diamond ski slopes start at 40%), without any sort of topological or detailed map, no lights, no ability to communicate with the outside world and one adult to supervise 27 students. I can't imagine any of those things are true for Gumby's trip.
Lack of preparation and lack of looking ahead causes most problems. Of the three times I have come close to dying in the backcountry (all of them due to stupidity on my part!) two of them were due to failure to look ahead. Both times I was saved by my dog.
Thinking you know what to do is a recipe for disaster. Its the same thing that causes you not to check the return value from a system call "hey, this can't fail".
I teach adults how to be out there safely and how to train and look after kids who of course don't yet have appropriate judgement.
