The Dyatlov Pass Mystery
In the very first issue of Shadows Of Your Mind magazine we asked writer Simon Bradley to take a look at the disappearance of nine experienced Russian hikers in 1959, and draw his conclusions…
In January 1959, ten young experienced hikers left the relative comforts of the town of Sverdlovsk, and headed across snow-covered country to Mount Otorten in the northern Urals. One member had to turn back through illness but the remaining nine never made it and their badly damaged tent was finally found on February 27th. Five bodies in various states of undress were found nearby. The four remaining bodies weren’t found until a thaw two months later. Some of the bodies had unexplainable injuries and despite an increasing number of theories the causes of their death has never satisfactorily been determined despite recent reports that the tragedy was caused by an avalanche.
So what happened on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl on the night of 2nd February 1959? Simon Bradley finds out…
“I didn’t know a single thing about the incident that took place on the eastern slopes of Kholat Syakhl, or the ‘Mountain of the Dead’, in the Northern Russian Urals in early 1959. What happened to nine accomplished winter hikers just 16 km from their Mount Otorten goal, in an area made so notorious by events that it’s subsequently been named after the expedition’s doomed leader Igor Dyatlov?
“Whilst chewing the story over and embarking on some background research I was, perhaps due to the similarly sub-zero nature of the tragic events, drawn to the tale of polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott whose heartbreaking demise in 1912, and that of his team, is eloquently yet harrowingly described in his Sledging Journals liberated from that final camp a year later. The fact that no comparable testimonies from any of the nine victims of Dyatlov Pass were made shows, at the outset, that their deaths were hardly something they expected: they were enthusiastic diarists up to the night of 1st February.
“Let’s just take a minute to establish Mount Otorten’s location. Like anywhere in Siberia the distances involved are awe-inspiring. Situated in the northern province of Sverdlovsk Oblast it’s approximately 2,100km north east of Moscow, 550km or so north of Yekaterinberg, the nearest town of any size, and over 50km into the wilderness from the team’s ultimate starting point, the frozen hamlet of Vizhay. At 1,234m it’s not even as tall as Britain’s loftiest peak, Ben Nevis, but no doubt contributing to the mystery of the unfolding events, ‘otorten’, in the local Mansi people’s language, apparently translates as ‘don’t go there’…
“The daytime temperatures in January wouldn’t have coaxed the mercury much above -25°C; add in the wind chill and you’d be dicing with hypothermia at every turn. That is, unless you know what you’re doing and what’s in little doubt is that all ten of the team, including the magically-fortunate Yuri Yudin who fell ill mere days into the initial trek and returned to civilisation thus avoiding whatever occurred, were well-prepared for, and acclimatised to, such low temperatures. Dyatlov himself was an experienced mountain hiker and he even designed and built his own stove that accompanied him on trips, while another member of the team, Yuri Doroshenko, had made name a name for himself by supposedly chasing a huge brown bear away from a previous camp armed with just a geologists hammer.
“They had suitable clothes and equipment, had prepared for their return by leaving a supply of food behind them and all, save 37 year old Semyon Zolotaryov, were in their early twenties and, presumably, fit and well. Unlike Scott’s fateful trip, though, there are no eye-witness accounts, which has led to all manner of speculation and given the oppressive nature of life in the USSR in the late fifties, this isn’t surprising. This natural paranoia has formed the basis of some of the more fanciful suggestions, that the team had been infiltrated by three KGB agents but were mistaken for CIA operatives by another group and killed there and then; or the KGB agents ensconced within the team did meet individuals from the CIA, only for the Americans to dispatch everyone after their business, whatever it may have been, had been concluded. Alternatively, did the team see something that they couldn’t possibly have expected to, something secret, and been killed outright by forces unknown? Maybe, but what on earth were the authorities trying to protect up there?
THEORIES RANGE FROM THE APPEARANCE OF A UFO, HALLUCINATIONS, OR THE GROUP WAS KILLED BY EITHER THE LOCALS, THE KGB, OR EVEN A YETI!
“What’s certainly true is the condition of the nine bodies, a number of which were discovered on 27th February by a team comprising fellow students and teachers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute. The first two were in states of undress and had died of hypothermia whilst huddled around an inconsequential fire, while another three including Dyatlov, who’d also all succumbed to the cold, were discovered between 300 and 600m from the camp several days later. It’s going to be difficult for anyone to try and understand just what made them leave their shelter in such a fatal state of undress, but evidence points to the fact that their tent had been slashed open from the inside…
“The remaining four were eventually found, three months later, in a hole that had been dug out of the snow at the bottom of a shallow valley 75m from camp. This seems to suggest that the quartet knew what was coming and not only did the bodies bear evidence of significant injury, the clothing of two of them, Lyudmila Dubinina and Alexander Kolevatov, was also found to be radioactive.
A STATE COVER-UP?
“The official version of events as given by the Criminal Prosecutor of Sverdlovsk who led the investigation, a man named Lev Ivanov, begins with the rather damning statement: “The deaths of the expedition members were due to a series of mistakes by Dyatlov…” before going into somewhat greater detail, all the while never failing to miss an opportunity to lay the blame squarely at the team leader’s door. By concluding that “…the cause of their deaths was calamity or an unknown compelling force…”, he actually doesn’t give a definitive answer and the case was closed on 28th May 1959. Funny that…
“Just some of the theories I’ve come across range from the group being scared by the appearance of a UFO, disorientation due to infrasound caused by the unceasing wind being forced through a uniquely-shaped path in the area’s topography forming what’s known as a ‘von Kármán vortex street’, and hallucination thanks to the ingestion, deliberately or otherwise, of the toxic fly agaric mushrooms that were often harvested by the native Mansi people and hung on low tree branches to dry out. And don’t get me started on the Russian yeti. Most have a certain amount of credibility but they also demonstrate that, with the lack of genuine and compelling evidence to the contrary, imagination, when left to run riot, can be an inventive thing.
“So, let me begin to clarify what I think happened and, lest we forget, we’re talking about the untimely deaths of nine people here. The damage to the four bodies found in the snowhole — missing eyes, fractured and broken skulls and bones, and severe damage to the mouth and tongue of one of the team (Lyudmila Dubinina) — is surely down to either falls due to disorientation or the influence of local carnivorous wildlife post mortem. These would also have been disfigured by frost damage and general decay.
“Remember Dyaltov’s homemade stove I mentioned a few paragraphs ago? I do find myself drawn to the theory that it malfunctioned in some way, maybe filling the tent with smoke and embers as a consequence. If this happened to a tent I was in, all snug and warm, I’d certainly panic and, in an effort to escape the choking fumes, can see myself blindly slicing the material open from the inside. Once out in the open, exposed to what has been stated as a -30° chill and bereft of boots, gloves and, in some cases, socks, hypothermia will have begun to set in almost immediately, with death a virtual certainty.
There’s even a surviving shot taken the day before that shows a member of the team sporting a badly burned jacket: caused by the stove, perhaps?
“Another compelling suggestion, and one that could explain the elevated levels of radioactivity on the clothing of two of the foursome found in the snowhole, is that team stumbled upon — or got too close to — some sort of military facility, one that was part of indulging the Soviets’ fascination with nuclear technology. This is certainly plausible considering the aforementioned paranoia that permeated Khruschev’s Russia at this time and, if the commander of this facility felt in any way threatened or that security had been compromised by the team’s sudden appearance, they could conceivably have killed them all and simply made up the reason why.”
IT’S ALL IN THE DETAILS
“I have been able to establish a satisfying explanation for the radioactivity, though. Sources even appear to offer conflicting information as to the identity of the two team members whose clothes showed signs of elevated radioactivity too, naming Lyudmila Dubinina, Yuri Krivonischenko and Alexander Kolevatov. That’s probably cleared up by reports that state that Dubinina was found wearing a sweater owned by Krivonischenko, and several online resources somewhat conveniently suggest that messers Krivonischenko and Kolevatov had had exposure to radioactivity in previous employment. The official explanation is imprecise at best, stating that the cause was ‘…radioactive dust [falling] from the atmosphere…’, so why the vagueness? And dust from what? Well, there was a plutonium-producing facility based in the city of at Kyshtym, albeit one that was sited 150km south of Yekaterinberg, which reportedly suffered some sort of major accident in 1957 causing the contamination of a huge area of the surrounding countryside with radiation. Krivonischenko was apparently part of the clean-up crew, and I feel this is by far the most convincing rationalisation.
“Needless to say, sifting through the swathes of material does mean I had to read or listen to the same increasingly recycled theories over and over. As an introduction to the story I did find Renny Harlin’s Devil’s Pass, starring current Strictly Come Dancing star Gemma Atkinson no less, an acceptable place to start, despite the frankly silly ending and ‘Blair Witch Project On Ice’ vibe, and I should also mention the dissection below from Scandinavian You Tuber Lemmino, who offers, for me at any rate, plausible reasonings that dispel just about all supernatural or confrontational theories. The go-to site dyatlov-pass.com sets out the facts alongside a comprehensive rundown of all circulating theories, including all the images from the search and rescue party, and is the place to begin an online journey.”
“Mountain Of The Dead, first published in 2013 and written by Keith McCloskey, goes into compelling detail about virtually all conceivable theories and even those with a passing interest will find themselves quickly absorbed. I know I was. The book also provides engrossing detail concerning not only the personal lives of the team — the fact that Zolotaryov’s birthday was 2nd February makes the events even more terrible — but also the journey to, first Vizhay, and then onwards out into the wild, thanks in part to the adaptation of entries made in the team’s diaries, both personal and shared.
“Missing negatives, photographs featuring shadowy figures in the trees and blurred smudges in the sky, and Mansi folk tales describing lights above the trees all add fuel to the fire, but I don’t really subscribe to their supposed significance.”
CASE SOLVED?
“I’m sad to say that I’ve concluded that the nine were killed — murdered — by their own people, be they part of the KGB or an even more sinister underground organisation. The team left the tent in a panic, either due to the smoke and embers caused by Dyatlov’s dodgy stove or unsettling booming sounds caused by the wind in a von Kármán vortex street that they mistook for the approach of a marauding avalanche, some cutting their way out through the side material.
“As thoughts of death by either incineration or concussive trauma and asphyxiation by avalanche are hardly pleasant ones, they were probably yelling in fear and this in turn spooked the team of presumably military personnel who’d been tracking them since Vizhay. The team were forced towards nearby woodland and made to sit in the snow, although it seems that their would-be captors were sufficiently humane to build a small fire. As attention wavered due to the chilling temperatures and the dire circumstances, four of the team made a run for it pursued, one assumes, by a number of the soldiers, any one of whom could had had previous contact with radioactive military materials.
“Provoked by this escape attempt these unidentified men undertook unnecessarily vicious actions. They beat the foursome to death and buried their bloodied bodies in a makeshift grave and, after having carried out these murders, returned to the knot of humanity by the fire, made a report, and decided that they would simply leave the remaining five to their frosty fate. Now alone, and with Doroshenko and Krivonischenko already past the point of no return, I’d suggest that Dyatlov, Zinaida Kolmogorova and Rustem Slobodin liberated what clothing they could and made a futile attempt to find a way out. This theory explains why the bodies were found in different areas.
“I don’t believe that any supernatural forces were involved, simply the very familiar evil that resides within man himself. All the available evidence is out there for anyone to make their own crack at solving the riddle, and such is the notoriety that still surrounds the story there’s even a PS4 game, entitled Kholat, to assist the armchair familiarisation with that deadly and impossibly remote environment.
“With whispers suggesting that the Russian government are still trying to throw the many theory-hunters off the scent refusing to go away, we’re unlikely to have heard that last of Dyatlov’s Pass. However, unless some new facts somehow come to light I fear a resolution to the mystery surrounding the team members’ deaths will never be fully known, merely guessed at. So, rest in what peace you can Igor Dyatlov, Yuri Doroshenko, Yuri Krivonischenko, Zinaida Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin, Lyudmila Dubinina, Semyon Zolotaryov, Alexander Kolevatov and Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolles: at least, with the unrelenting furore surrounding your fates, you won’t be forgotten.”
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