The Arctic swallowed them.

Their disappearance without trace — no bodies, no equipment, no evidence of their route — suggests they may have gone through the ice into the water below.

A collapse of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea in January offers no recovery time.

The water temperature is lethal within minutes.

The three men died because they attempted a winter sea ice crossing without the specific knowledge that would have made such a crossing survivable.

The knowledge that might have saved them was exactly what the Iñupiat families on the Nome dock had possessed and had declined to share by declining to go.