Inside the trailer, he found the body of Ted Weiher. Search and rescue teams then began combing the area around the trailer.

The day after Weiher's body was discovered, searchers found the remains of Madruga and Sterling. They lay on opposite sides of the road to the trailer, 11.4 miles from the car. Madruga had been partially eaten by animals and dragged about 10 feet to a stream: he lay face up, his right hand curled around his watch. Sterling was in a wooded area, scattered over about 50 feet. There was nothing left of him but bones.

Two days later, just off the same road but much closer to the trailer, Jackie Huett's father found his son's backbone along with a pair of Levis and ripple-soled "Get There’s" shoes. An assistant sheriff from Plumas County found a skull the next day, about 100 yards downhill from the rest of the bones which the family dentist used to identify the remains.

Huett's remains were located northeast of the trailer, like Sterling's and Madruga's. Northwest of the trailer, about a quarter mile away, searchers found three wool forest service blankets and a two-cell flashlight lying by the side of the road. The flashlight was slightly rusted and had been turned off. It was impossible to tell just how long it had been there.

They found no sign of Gary Mathias. His tennis shoes were inside the forest service trailer, which suggested to investigators that he might have taken them off to put on Weiher's leather shoes - particularly since Weiher had bigger feet, and Mathias' feet might have swollen with frostbite.

Although the men’s bodies were heavily decomposed, autopsy results determined that they had likely died from exposure.

It appeared that Ted had lived 8-13 weeks after his disappearance based on the length of his beard and around 100 pound weight loss. He weighed just 120 pounds at the time of his death. Several bed sheets in a shroud were tightly tucked over his body, indicating that someone else had been with him in the trailer as he could not have bundled himself up in this manner. His leather shoes were off and missing. A table by the bed held his nickel ring with "Ted" engraved on it, his gold necklace, his wallet (with cash inside) and a gold Waltham watch, its crystal missing, which the families say had not belonged to any of the five men. Ted's feet were also badly frostbitten.

But then the story takes an even stranger turn. Inside the trailer, authorities found heavy clothing, matches, playing cards, books, wooden furniture, and other materials which could have easily been used to start a fire. But there had been no apparent attempt to start a fire despite the freezing temperature on the mountain. A propane tank connected to the trailer, which could have provided a ready source of heat and cooking fuel, was untouched. "All they had to do was turn that gas on," says Yuba County Lt. Lance Ayers, "and they'd have had gas to the trailer, and heat."

In a storage shed outside, there was a year’s supply of c-rations. These were individual canned, pre-cooked, and prepared meals issued to the U.S. military. The men consumed 36 of the meals but left the majority of them untouched. In addition, there was a huge supply of freeze-dried meals. One of the c-ration cans had been opened with an Army P38 can opener.

"Bizarre," says John Thompson, the special agent from the California Department of Justice who had joined the investigation. "And no explanations. And a thousand leads. Every day you've got a thousand leads."

"There was some force that made em go up there." Jack Madruga's mother Mabel says firmly. "They wouldn't have fled off in the wood like a bunch of quail. We know good and well that somebody made them do it. We can't visualize someone getting the upper hand on those five men, but we know it must have been." "They seen something at that game, at the parking lot," says Ted Weiher's sister-in-law. "They might have seen it and didn't even realize they seen it."

There are many questions about this weird case.

Why did the men get lost that night and end up on the mountain?

Chico to Yuba City is a straight down Highway 70 through the Central Valley in low lying land with no snow at this time of the year. A 46 mile drive, around one hour. The car was found several thousand feet up in an area above the snow line in a completely different direction. Why did they abandon the trip to Yuba? Were the forced to go up the Bucks Lane on the way to Palmetto City, did they decide themselves to take a detour or someone did they take a wrong turn?

What happened around the car?

The group's car was left open, with gas in the tank and in working order. Did they somehow leave the car and lose the keys. This could explain the strange story told by Joseph Schons where he said he saw flashlights around a car. Could they have been searching in the snow and been freaked out by his cars for help in this isolated area?

How did the group end up around a trailer 19 miles from the car?

Ted Weiher was found in a trailer 19 miles from the car and Madruga, Sterling, and Huett was found in the locality but several miles away. How did they walk in normal shoes without outdoor clothing so far in snow several feet thick? Were the group together and then decided to separate after Ted's death to try and find help?

Why did Ted Weiher apparently starve to death?

Some of the rations in and around the trailer were eaten but much of it was untouched. Ted apparently had a slow and agonising death from starvation having lost over half his body weight. With so much food close by why wasn't he eating. Had the group been abducted and the perpetrator was preventing access to food or was Ted suffering from gangrene caused by frostbite.

Read more strange stories from California

Paul Miller

George Penca

Michael Ficery

Randy Morgenson

Harold Drake

Arvin Nelson

Katherine Wong

Evelyn Consuela Rosemann

Jared Negrete

Timothy Nolan

Stephen Michael Morris

Thomas Heng

Larry Conn

Matthew Greene

Chet Hanson

Mike Herdman

Michael Madden

Stacey Arras

Jeannie Hesselschwerdt

Rosemary Kunst

Carl Landers

Nita Mayo

Patty Tolhurst

Breck Phelps

Jerry Lee McKoen

Thomas Mullarkey

Barbara Thomas

Sree Mokkapati

Bill Ewasko

Laura Bradbury

Maximillian "Max" L. Schweitzer

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/07/06/5-boys-who-never-come-back/f8b30b11-baeb-4351-89f3-26456a76a4fb/?utm_term=.51968ec259af

https://www.newspapers.com

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/mathias_gary.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/6ni625/the_american_dyatlov_pass_five_young_men_abandon/

https://charleyross.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/lets-talk-about-it-gary-mathias-and-his-four-friends/#comments

Further analysis

A good video by John Lordan Brain Scratch published Jan 5th 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjRT1AqntLc