The instintive fear of hitting high terrain or some other landmark may lead people to desperatly try to climb away to a safer altitude, so their automatic reaction is to firewall the engines and (wrongly) pull up.
Prior to the upset they were level at the platform altitude for the ILS at 2300'. During the 'recovery' the aircraft initially gained 200' reaching 2500' during the pull up in response to the shaker. They then lost 300' after the pusher fired in the ensuing wing over and recovery to wings level, then lost a further 300' before entering the final wing over - stall - spin from 1900'. An aggregate loss of 400'. Even the poorest of recoveries pushing forward on the yoke from level flight to reduce AOA would not have lost that much altitude. Pulling the nose up and away from the horizon was simply the worst reaction possible.