The Dyatlov Pass Incident

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Sponsor Messages

Dyatlov Pass lies on the eastern shoulder of Kholat Syakhi (Mountain of the Dead) in the Ural Mountain range in western Russia. The pass is named after Igor Dyatlov, the leader of a group of hikers who died of mysterious circumstances.

On January 27th 1959, Dyatlov and nine other students from Ural Polytechnical Institute, including Alexander Kolevatov , Alexander Zolotarev , Lyudmila Dubinina, Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle, Rustem Slobodin, Yuri Krivonischenko, Yuri Doroshenko, Yuri Yudin, Zinaida Kolmogorova, began a trek from the settlement of Vizhai to the Otorten Mountain on a trip that was supposed to be no less than sixteen days. It was agreed that Dyatlov would send a telegraph to the institute upon their return to Vizhai. Each member was familiar with these frigid conditions. The next day after their departure, Yuri Yudin had to turn back because of a developing health problem, leaving nine hikers to continue.

Five days into the trip, on February 1st, the group began it's way through the pass, intending to camp on the opposite side. They instead got lost in a developing snowstorm and accidently began to make their way up Kholat Syakhi. Realizing their mistake they decided to make camp. This is what is proven based on diaries and cameras later found at the scene.

There was no panic when their supposed return date of February 12th came and went since delays were common. Rescue operations only started eight days later, on February 20th, after the insistance of the reletives of the missing. The camp was found abandoned on February 26th. The tent was severly damaged and clothes and the before mentioned diaries and cameras, along with left behind luggage and equipment were left at the scene. Footprints from the tent were followed into the woods but were later lost from cover from snow. Yet some distance away, under a large pine tree, was found the remains of a burned out fire. The first two bodies were discovered nearby, those of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, shoeless and dressed only in their underwear. Three more bodies were later found seperately between the pine tree and the abandoned camp, indicating an attempt to return to the camp. They were the bodies of Dyatlov, Kolmogorova and Slobodin. The last four bodies of Dubinina, Kolevatov, Thibeaux-Brignolle and Zolotarev were not discovered for two more months, on May 4th, buried under more than twelve feet of snow.

Upon investigation, there was evidence that the hikers were woken from a deep sleep and were so frightened, they ripped out of their tent and fled in terror. There was no evidence of anyone else apart from the nine victims. None of the bodies were completely clothed, indicating they didn't even have time, or weren't in the right mind, to dress. The first five bodies discovered were determined to have died of hypothermia, although one had a crack on the skull determined to be non-fatal.

It wasn't until the corpses from the May 4th discovery were examined, that the mystery deepened. Dubunina and Zolotarev had major chest fractures and Thibeaux-Brignolle had a crushed skull. The force to cause these wounds was so great that experts said they could not have been caused by another human being and compared them to a car crash. Two more strange discoveries were that the strips of clothes from the victims showed sign of radiation and Lyudmila Dubinina had her tongue removed.

More strange facts about the case are that family of the deceased reported a strange orange color to the victims skin along with a graying of the hair, each of these conditions having developed after the autopsies. Strange orange orbs were also reported near the mountain on the same night of the incident, these reports continued for months after and were seen by meteorologists and members of the military.

The official inquest of the incident states that the victims died from an "unknown compelling force".

[dyingenglish]

Very lovecraftian. thanks for sharing this.

[UglyNRude]

The Theory behind it.

The Obvious Answer:

So there's six things that freak people out about this one:

1. The no-tongued woman

2. A mysterious orange tan on the dead bodies

3. The ripped tents

4. The hikers' lack of clothing

5. The crushing damage done to three of the hikers

6. The traces of radioactivity

The big fact that gets lost in the re-telling of this story is that the bodies weren't found until weeks later. It's not like somebody turned their back, then five minutes later all their friends were dead and half naked.

That makes the missing tongue a lot easier to explain. As disturbing as it may be, the first thing a scavenging animal is going to go for is probably the soft tissue of an open mouth, especially if it still smelled like the burrito the hiker just ate. Laying out in the sun surrounded by white snow for days also accounts for the weird tan.

The trauma and the destroyed tent points to an avalanche. Their state of undress can be explained by paradoxical undressing, a known behavior of hypothermia victims when their brains start to freeze and malfunction. In other words, it's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a group of injured avalanche victims wandering around in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.

What about the radioactivity? Or stranger details that turn up in some accounts, like orange lights in the sky? Well, there's the fact that none of that stuff turns up in the original documents from the incident, and appears to have been added later by people who just can't resist making things spookier than they are.

It's those later accounts that have stuck in the public memory, because so many of the original reports were destroyed (this was the Cold War-era Soviet Union, which treated casserole recipes as state secrets).

So none of the details on their own prove anything other than a tragic hiking accident. The conspiracy-loving public widely reject this, too busy lighting their torches and getting their pitchforks to go hunt down an, "unknown compelling force."

...otherwise known as "snow"

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UNR

There was no evidence of an avalanche. The tent was discovered in a couple feet of fallen snow. The tent was still standing and was determined to be torn apart from the inside, it's in the official report. Also, when Dubinina's tongue was removed, there was blood at the scene, indicating the the tongue was removed while the heart was still pumping. The radiation was discovered during the investigation, that information wasn't released until the 90's.

[CMF]

Source??????????????

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(07-28-2009 11:25 AM)CMF Wrote:  Source??????????????

I have many sources but the easiest one is wikipedia. Most of the stuff stated there is already on here but you're welcome to check it out.

[Shastar]

How strange.. I would love to know the original report too.

Thanks for sharing though Bracket

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UNR

One other thing i forgot to mention is that they didn't take off their clothes after they fled, they left them at the camp in the tent.

[Shastar]

That does not make any sense.. people camping in the cold usually sleep with their clothes on, as it keeps one warmer. I could see a couple people being goofy and not having clothes on but all of them. Makes me wonder if they found some bad water, food or some thing was sprayed in the air to make them go all nutter.

[jadewik]

The three crushed bodies are the same bodies the story indicates were buried under 12-feet of snow. It's highly likely that the crushing happened as a direct result of the dead load of the snow. Water is heavy-- Mathematically, take the 62.4 lb/ft-sq that is the density of water. Multiply that by the gravitational force (32.2 ft/s-sq) and then again by the area (in sq-ft) above the body (Say... 12-sq-ft)... and multiply that by the 12-foot depth of the snow above the body and you should get something close to the force/pressure, in lb-ft/s-sq (the SI equivalent of metric's "Newtons"), exerted on the body (convert to metric to get an answer in Newtons of force). It's not a small number. Divide that answer by gravity to get a little less than 9000 lbs of pressure.... (I LOVE engineering...)

I'd be surprised if the bodies could be buried under 12-feet of snow and still maintain little damage. So... it's highly likely the damage occurred postmortem.

Temperature in the tundra can also experience drastic freezing points that hit rapidly. If there were no avalanches in the area, it's likely the wind picked up, damaging the tents, and caused drastic drop in temperature...which would have sent them into a state of exposure and hypothermia... causing them to remove their clothing, irrationally leave their tents, and die exposed in the woods.

I think UNR did well with the rest of his points-- animals do target soft tissue first. It's also known that snow reflects sunlight and can cause sunburns. Etc... etc.