What Really Caused the Horrific Dyatlov Pass Incident?
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On January 27th, 1959, ten hikers set out from the village of Vizhai on a hiking expedition across the northern Ural Mountains within the Soviet Union. The group was experienced, equipped, and healthy. While a winter trek across the snow-covered Urals would be challenging to any who attempted the journey, the Dyatlov group was well-provisioned and energetic.

They didn't expect much trouble following their official route through the range that would end at Otorten Mountain, but none of the group made it to Otorten. Sometime during the night of February 1st, nine of the ten expedition members died, six perished from hypothermia. They'd gone out into the harsh mountain cold barely dressed, some not even wearing shoes.

It was as if something had caused the group to flee their tent in the middle of the night in a panic, not allowing them to get fully dressed for the snow and the wind. The other three members of the expedition who died that night were not taken by the cold. Instead, their body showed signs of extraordinary violence, crushed bones, skulls, rib cages.

It was as if they'd been on board a derailed train that crashed with unbelievable force. Not only that, all three who died from trauma also displayed other gruesome injuries, missing eyes, torn out tongues, shredded lips. The official investigation launched in 1959 was notoriously secretive and inconclusive.

Theories for the deaths at the time ranged from an avalanche to murderers to military testing or a more paranormal explanation in the form of an unknown beast or strange orange lights spotted in the sky near the site of the massacre. The cause behind the fatal Dyatlov Pass incident continues to spawn new mysteries even as the official reports close.

So what caused the deaths of nine experienced hikers on the slopes of a formation that the Soviet government referred to as "Height 1079" and local Mansi tribes called Holat Siakl, which translates to "Dead Mountain"? To understand the expedition's tragic end, it's useful to examine its benign beginning. Part 1: First Steps, First Casualty

Igor Dyatlov was a handsome and charismatic radio engineering student at the Ural Polytechnical Institute in the winter of 1959. He was also an experienced hiker and skier, a lover of nature and the jagged mountain ranges of the Northern Soviet Union. A natural leader, Dyatlov decided to put together a team of his friends and fellow students for a tough but exciting trek across the Ural Mountains.

All 10 members of the team had Grade 2 hiking certifications with ski experience. The path they chose through the range, which would follow Route #5, was considered challenging enough that the expedition members would all receive Grade 3 hiking certifications upon the journey's completion. This was the highest hiking certification available in the nation.

Igor's final crew consisted of eight men and two women, all aged 20 to 24 years old. That is, except for the 38-year-old Semyon Zolotaryov, a friend of Dyatlov's who had more experience than anyone else in the group and was considered a wise addition to the young team.

The hikers spent several days in late January traveling by rail and truck through the small skiing towns at the base of the Ural Mountains. As young adults on an adventure, they enjoyed their stops, but once they reached the beginning of their hike, they were the image of professionalism.

Igor allowed no recreational drugs on the expedition, and the only alcohol they brought was medical for treating wounds. Dyatlov didn't even allow cigarettes, as the men and women would need to keep their lungs strong while trudging through thin, frozen air. When the team finally began their climb on January 27th, they made fantastic time. However, there were two early spots of trouble. The first was the final weather reports they heard while still in town.

The initial days looked cold but clear. However, snowstorms seemed to be crawling across the Urals directly in their path. Dyatlov wasn't overly concerned. Everyone on his team knew full well the severity of northern winters and the way snow and wind could become like predators once you encountered them in the mountains. They had more than enough food, skis, winter gear, and tenting to shelter through even a blizzard.

In addition to their supplies, nine members of the expedition were fit and in fantastic health. However, 21-year-old Yuri Yudin was plagued by chronic health and heart conditions. He desperately wished to make the journey up Route No. 5 with his university friends, but by the second day of the hike, it was apparent that he would not be able to keep up. That was the second spot of trouble.

Luckily, Yuri was close enough to the base of the mountain that he could turn back on his own. All the time, he hated feeling weak, fragile. But turning around saved Yuri's life. He was the only member of the Dyatlov expedition to survive. Yuri died peacefully in his bed in 2013 at the age of 75. Like the rest of the world, Yuri died not knowing what killed his friends at their camp on Dead Mountain.

Part Two: Buried Supplies, Dyatlov Pass, and Going Off Course After making sure that Yuri was safely on his way back to the town of Vizhai, Igor led the remaining members of the expedition onward. Their route was exhausting but clean.

It was even reviewed and approved by the Sverdlovsk Committee of Physical Culture and Sport prior to the group starting. As a category 3 route, the trek required extreme winter gear: thick parkas, boots, face wraps, and, of course, skis.

The skis allowed the hikers to move across deep snow. It was a slow and physically demanding way to climb mountains, but it was the only realistic option at the time for Igor and his friends.

Due to their youth and excellent fitness, the Dyatlov group fell into an efficient rhythm as they hiked, moving single file in narrow or difficult passages. They took frequent rests and many members kept diaries or took pictures of their trip, some of which are available online.

On January 31st, three days after Yuri headed back, the team began burying food and other excess supplies in a wooded area below some of the first significant slopes. The plan was to retrace the route back after reaching Otorten, then pick up the cached supplies. This would make climbing easier since they would be carrying lighter loads but not actually abandoning any food.

Dyatlov's group set up camp in a forest valley after they buried the supplies. The true test for the hikers would come the next day as they began a hard climb. But spirits were high that night. Their legs felt good from the climb and their lungs felt good from the air, and food tasted better after a day of exercise. It was cold in the valley, but the team had plenty of wood and space for fire.

They sat together around a large communal blaze and stretched their muscles and ate and laughed and told stories. There was singing too, and it was a fine night. Everything smelled like fresh pine and smoke. Large gray mountain clouds drifted above the hikers, but whenever a gap opened and the sky came through, the stars above seemed brighter and cleaner than nearly anywhere else on earth.

The nine hikers went to bed that night with full bellies, sleeping together in a communal tent for warmth. They woke up early the next morning, not knowing that all of them would be dead before sunrise the next day. Part 3: What We Know Happened That Night

It was common, even expected, for a group to run behind schedule when hiking the Urals. But as mid-February approached with no word from Dyatlov's team, concern began to grow. Igor had promised his sporting club he'd telegram them when the expedition returned to Viz High. This message was anticipated around February 12th, but not guaranteed. By February 20th, however, it was clear that something significant had gone wrong with the group's route.

At the urging of family members of the team, a volunteer force of mostly students set out to try to track Dyatlov. The volunteers were soon joined by government officials and first responders. The searchers located the missing group's ruined tent on February 26th. The canvas was cut from the inside.

Tracks leading away from the structure indicated that the nine members of Dyatlov's team had fled their campsite, likely in the middle of the night for some unknown reason.

The first two bodies were found soon after the discovery of the tent. The pair, a 21-year-old male and a 23-year-old female, were found huddled around the remains of a dead fire at the tree line below the camp, dressed only in their underwear. They were barefoot despite the snow. Additional tracks leading away from the tent showed that other members of the group had fled into the night barefoot or in socks, wearing little or no winter gear.

three more bodies were found in the snow between the edge of the forest and the campsite, including Dyatlov. Like the first two, these new bodies were only partially clothed and not at all prepared to be outside on a mountain in the middle of a Soviet winter. All five deaths were from hypothermia. It took several months and a spring thaw for searchers to find the final four bodies.

These were located in a cluster near the woods, next to a stream. One of the four was ruled a hypothermia fatality like the other hikers.

However, the final three bodies were ravaged, broken like toys, smashed against rocks. Nikolai Thibault-Bregnolis, a 23-year-old male, had his skull nearly caved in, while Lyudmila Dubinina, the youngest member of the group, and Semyon, the oldest, had suffered such severe chest trauma that investigators were completely baffled at what could generate enough force to kill the hikers in this way.

Dubonina also had vicious damage to her face. Her eyes and tongue were torn off, along with part of her lip. Semyon's eyes were missing as well. Even the hiker who died of hypothermia near the stream had his eyebrows ripped out. All of the bodies were found on the slopes of Dead Mountain, off route from where the Dyatlov group should have traveled.

Investigators guessed that the hikers were attempting to move through a passage in the mountains during the daylight hours of February 1st, when a storm rolled in and plunged into the valley. With visibility limited by snow and gale force winds, the team could easily have lost their way. If the weather continued to worsen, Dyatlov may have decided to set up camp on Holatsiako to try to wait out the blizzard. They could then try the passage again fresh in the morning.

The pass that the group was trying to navigate was eventually named after the expedition, which is why the story is most commonly known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident. While a sudden storm could explain how the group ended up on Dead Mountain,

there was still no practical reason for the hikers to flee their shelter in the middle of the night, some without their clothes. Nor could any of the investigators agree on what could have possibly caused such vicious, overwhelming damage to three of the team, but none of the others.

Under those circumstances, it's no surprise that one of the earliest theories about what happened to Dyatlov's group involved foul play, while another popular theory was based on the supernatural. Part 4: An Unknown Compelling Force The Mansi people have lived in the Ural Ranges for generations. The people are mostly traders and herders of animals, particularly reindeer.

They are responsible for naming the slope where the Dyatlov group was found "Dead Mountain" due to the total lack of plant or animal life in the area, as well as the dangerous conditions of the terrain. The weather can change in a blink of an eye on the mountain, with fast winter storms climbing over the horizon like soldiers spilling over a trench. But it wasn't the weather that investigators blamed for the deaths of the nine hikers initially. It was the man-sea.

The unexplainable damage to three of the bodies, the crushed bones and the removal of facial features struck officials as the most depraved form of murder. Several Mansi were interrogated and the Soviet Union in 1959 was not known for its respect for prisoners. However, it quickly became obvious that no human was responsible for the fate of the students.

There was no evidence of combat or conflict at the campsite, no scuffed tracks, no weapons or marks from weapons. Investigators also determined that no human would be powerful enough to cause the damage seen on the three victims. There's simply not enough strength in a man or woman to pulverize bone so completely. Once the Mansi were ruled out,

Government investigators began to focus on an avalanche as the cause of the deaths. Such an event would explain why the group left their tent in the middle of the night. But there were holes in the theory. It was unlikely that such an experienced group of mountain climbers would panic in the event of an avalanche, or that Dyatlov would allow his camp to be set up in a potential avalanche zone.

Likewise, when rescuers finally located the camp in late February, there were no obvious signs of an avalanche or obvious conditions that might have led to one. And even if the weather forced the team from their shelter, the extreme injuries found on three members were not consistent with an avalanche. Additionally, why were only the three hikers so hurt while the other six barely had a scratch prior to dying from the cold?

The Soviet Union of the 50s had a reputation for clandestine operation and a violent aversion to transparency. While the official investigation was still underway, members of the press, the skiing community, and relatives of the deceased were chasing their own theories. Many investigators focused on the cracked skulls and caved-in chests of Nikolai, Dubonina, and Semyon.

Everyone agreed that something had caused the hikers to cut their way out of their own tent to flee into the freezing night without taking the time to dress properly. A popular theory was that local wildlife attacked the group, scattering them into smaller clusters during a chase and ultimately mauling three of them. Just like the avalanche theory, there were contradictions to the idea that Dyatlov and crew were attacked.

For one thing, Dead Mountain was famous for being so inhospitable that no animals would live there. Some guessed that a roaming bear or a few wolves might have encountered the sleeping hikers that stormy night. The largest population of Eurasian brown bears in the world currently live east of the Ural mountain range throughout the forests of Siberia. Males can reach up to just over eight feet tall and 1,000 pounds in weight.

If such a beast attacked the Dyatlov group, they certainly would not have had time to dress appropriately before fleeing. However, a brown bear roaming the slopes of Dead Mountain in the middle of a snowstorm would be unlikely. And while human footprints from the hikers were still visible despite new snow,

there were no bear tracks, nor were the wounds on the three injured individuals consistent with the ursine teeth or claws. Instead, the wounds seemed to come from a crushing or collision variety of force. That detail fueled another wildlife attack theory of a more supernatural angle. Perhaps instead of a common bear or wolves, the Dyatlov group encountered a local legend, the Yeti.

Commonly described as ape-like creatures covered in brown or white fur, the yetis of Ural mountain tails are towering beasts 12 to 15 feet tall, weighing more than the Eurasian brown bear and possessing double or triple its strength. Such a creature would easily be capable of generating enough force to burst skulls and crumple humans like they were tin cans. If, of course, such a creature existed.

While no evidence of Yetis was found at the Dyatlov campsite or anywhere conclusively in the world, another unexplained occurrence lent support to a paranormal explanation for the nine deaths.

Another group of hikers south of Dyatlov's team reported seeing strange, glowing orange spheres in the northern sky on the night of February 1st. Such sightings of hovering amber lights continued in the region through March of 1959. The phenomenon was witnessed by multiple unrelated groups. Some officials attributed the orange spheres to a weather occurrence or other meteorological basis.

But the arrival of the lights around the same time as the Dyatlov Pass incident seems too unusual for many to label it a coincidence. Everything from aliens to military testing has been tied to the lights and connected to the dead hikers. The Soviet Union was ramping up its foundation as a nuclear power in 1959. A popular theory is that nuclear weapons were being tested in remote valleys in the Ural mountain range.

The force from an atomic blast could have caused unfathomable injuries to any humans caught in the impact zone. Or the detonation might have started an avalanche that moved faster than any natural occurrence. This theory is discounted by most historians, since keeping testing of that type of weapon secret despite all of the media attention around Dyatlov Pass would have been a titanic undertaking. However,

There were reports of mild radiation on the clothing of at least one hiker. Witnesses who attended funerals for the group have also commented on the condition of their skin and an unseasonable tan. If not large-scale nuclear weapons, then smaller, more conventional munitions could, in theory, have caused the disturbance that drove the hikers from their tent. Soviet parachute mines are a popular culprit.

the bombs are dropped from airplanes and detonate while still in the air. That could explain the glowing orange spheres seen in the sky, as well as the explosion scaring the Dyatlov group and causing them to run out into the snow in confusion. The Soviet Union denied any weapons testing in the area of Dead Mountain during the winter of '59.

Historically though, the Soviet government did not have much international credibility for the transparency of their internal investigations. In fact, the official investigators made several unusual decisions while examining Dyatlov Pass, including the lead prosecutor being extensively involved in the first autopsies, a follow-up investigation being closed without explanation by order of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Prosecution Office.

and the immediate sealing of files and records related to the Dyatlov Pass incident. The final official ruling of the Soviet Union when they closed their first inquiry was simply that the nine hikers were driven from their shelter on the mountain and killed by a compelling natural force. Part five, modern examination of the incident. In the decades following the official end of this Soviet investigation into the Dyatlov Pass deaths,

Dozens of informal and amateur teams have tried to find a better explanation for the tragedy. Hundreds of theories have been floated, each usually tied to one or more of the indisputable facts of the case. But from those factual foundations, some truly fantastical ideas have grown.

Everything from infrasound testing driving the hikers insane to doors open to parallel dimensions to more human explanations, such as the group turning inexplicably violent towards each other.

Russia officially reopened the investigation in 2015 and, in 2019, announced that they could conclusively rule that the incident was caused by an avalanche. There was disagreement about that finding in both the scientific community and from the public. The government never revealed how the avalanche took place despite unfavorable conditions of the night of February 1, 1959.

They also failed to explain why there were no obvious signs of an avalanche when the first investigators found the campsite. A joint Swedish-Russian expedition, also launched in 2019, explicitly disagreed with the government findings. The expedition advanced the theory that katabatic winds caused the hikers to leave their tent and resulted in the deaths.

While many agree that severe weather was likely on Dead Mountain that night, katabatic winds are a unique phenomenon where the peaks and valleys of a mountain range channel already powerful winds into essentially a narrow downslope hurricane, also known as descending winds. Katabatics are uncommon but have been observed. The winds move fast and are exceptionally destructive.

If such a curtain of air fell over the mountain and swept over the Dyatlov group, the experience would have been horrifying. It would have sounded like a train crashing over the ridge or a bomb going off directly over the tent.

An independent investigation released in 2021 combines elements of the official Russian avalanche theory with the possibility of katabatic winds proposed by the Swedish-Russian expedition. In this latest investigation, a slab avalanche limited in scope and directed right at the Dyatlov camp could have caused enough snow to move in a violent manner to explain the sudden departure of the hikers from their tent.

They'd cut a shelf into the snow to serve as a windbreak for the structure earlier in the night. If that shelf was unstable and a katabatic wind pushed more and more snow onto the ridge, it could have collapsed directly on the tent. The hikers might have fled, terrified of being trapped or worried a larger avalanche was incoming.

Cold, confused, and poorly dressed, the team may have gotten lost in the snow and intense winds. Some went to make a fire in the woods. Others tried to make it back to the tent. And perhaps the final group of four created a natural enclosure to try to wait out the wind.

If that enclosure collapsed or they fell off a ravine or found a sinkhole in the snow, that could explain the crushing injuries of three of the hikers. As for the more gruesome wounds, the plucked eyes and torn tongues, the 2021 investigation chalked that up to natural scavengers from the forest below the mountain. Part six, what remains.

While the 2021 conclusion of a slab avalanche driven by a katabatic wind is the most complete and widely accepted, questions remain. If the destroyed faces of several hikers was the work of scavengers, why did they stop after three bodies? And what were scavengers even doing on the desolate slopes of Dead Mountain, a place famous for its lack of wildlife?

And what about the orange light seen in the northern sky by so many hikers? Or the radiation on some of the Dyatlov gear? And could a fall or snow collapse truly cause the disfiguring injuries seen on Nikolai, Dubonina, and Semyon? While the official modern investigations into the Dyatlov Pass incident are once again closed, non-government sources continue to review, to wonder, and to search.

Whether the original Soviet examination was botched intentionally or through incompetence, it created far more questions than it did provide answers. Sealing the files for decades was typical enough at that time, but the way the investigation was rushed, wrapped, and hamstrung was not. Files may have been lost to history, witness reports, photographs of the scene. It all might be destroyed or

or it could still be locked away somewhere in a Soviet-era vault in the basement of a mundane government building. The first official explanation of an overwhelming natural force being responsible for the deaths of the nine students has always rung false for many skeptics. Whatever the cause of their fate, the nine hikers involved in the Dyatlov Pass incident are remembered to this day for exemplifying the spirit of young adventure that calls so many to the wild places left in the world.

Though the nine met a tragic end, they lived bravely and confidently. They were as prepared as they could be for the expedition, and their deaths serve as a reminder that even when you do everything right, your life's on the line when you journey into the deep, frozen corners of nature.