Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Mar 16

The disappearance of hikers: Dyatlov Pass Incident

Overview: The Dyatlov Pass incident was an event that took the lives of nine hikers in mysterious circumstances on the night of February 2, 1959 in the northern Ural Mountains.

The name Dyatlov Pass refers to the name of the group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov.

The incident involved a group of nine experienced ski hikers from the Ural Polytechnical Institute who had set up camp for the night on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl. Investigators later determined that the skiers had torn their tents from the inside out. They fled the campsite, probably to escape an imminent threat. Some of them were barefoot, under heavy snowfall. The bodies showed signs of struggle; Dyatlov had injuries to his right fist, as if he had been in a fist fight. One victim had a fractured skull and another was found with brain damage without any sign of distress to the skull. One of the skull fractures was so severe it was determined that he would not have been able to move. Additionally, one woman’s tongue was missing. Soviet authorities determined that an “unknown compelling force” had caused the deaths; access to the region was consequently blocked for hikers and adventurers for three years after the incident. Due to the lack of survivors, the chronology of events remains uncertain, although several possible explanations have been put forward, including an avalanche, a military accident, and a hostile encounter with a yeti or other unknown creature.

 
The article Continues:
On January 27th, 1959, nine cross-country skiers from Russia’s Ural Polytechnical Institute set out on a hike from Vizhai in the northern province of Sverdlovsk Oblast to Otorten a name that means “Don’t go there” in the language of the Mansi people indigenous to the area.

On February 1st, 57 years ago today the group moved through a mountain pass near Kholat Syakhl, where a snowstorm picked up and forced the group off their intended path. With temperatures well below zero degrees, the group decided to set up camp on the mountain’s slope, hoping to outlast the storm.

The hikers never reached Otorten. Rescue teams found no trace of the expedition until February 26th, when a band of volunteer searchers found the group’s tent in the snow, collapsed, crumpled, and slit open with razor blades. Five of the bodies were found nearby with the aid of footprints, but the remaining four members of the expedition were nowhere to be found for months.

Finally, on May 4th, over three months after their disappearance, the final four bodies were found, buried under some 10 feet of snow in a ravine well beyond where any of the other bodies were found.

The disappearance of the hikers has become known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, named after Igor Dyatlov, the 23-year-old leader of the expedition. The details uncovered after an investigation of the area and the autopsies of the bodies resulted in more questions than answers.

Most of the group’s equipment and clothes were still inside the tent when rescuers found it. Some of the hikers were found wearing each others’ clothes; others were found in only their underwear. The footprints found near the site were made by people with either bare feet, socks, or one single shoe. Two of the hikers had suffered head injuries, and one woman was found without her tongue. Forensic radiation tests found alpha radiation on the group’s clothes.

The secretive nature of the official reports only added to the mystery. Some of the injuries were caused by blunt force trauma well beyond what a human attacker would be capable of generating—one Soviet doctor compared it to a car crash. The official cause of death was suspiciously noted as a “compelling unknown force.” But without evidence of foul play, the inquest was closed less than a month after the final bodies were found, and the files were made classified until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Further details from witnesses only complicated things further. One witness at the funeral of the deceased hikers noted the bodies had a “strange brown tan” and grayed hair. Another group of hikers near the same area reported seeing “bright orange spheres” to the north, in the general vicinity of the Dyatlov group.

Nine people rushing out of their tent and into sub-zero temperatures and certain death was suspicious enough. The combination of their gruesome injuries, the mystery of the remote mountain range, the unexplained radiation and objects in the sky, and the secrecy of the Soviet investigation have made the Dyatlov Pass Incident the ultimate in imagination fuel. Wild speculation on what really happened.

 

 

Credit: vocativ.com

16 Responses to “The disappearance of hikers: Dyatlov Pass Incident”

  1. SantiamLady

    FIRST!!!!!! ????
    Well….. This is a really confusing mystery! I read the book, “Dead Mountain”, about it, as well as watching several Documentaries about it. What can I say? I love a mystery! ????
    There is evidence for a “snowman”, as the hikers got an eerie photo, wrote they now “know the Snowman is real” and carved “Snowman” into tree bark as they fled for their lives. ???? There’s also the bizarre “high impact” injuries to many of them. But…..then there’s the strange “lights” seen in the area the night it happened, and the fact that the bodies were all radioactive.
    Yeti or Almasty isn’t radioactive, as far as we know. And The last photo a team member snapped the night they died was a blurry image of a light in the sky. ????
    I think the old Soviet Gov was up to something out there, and those poor kids stumbled right into it. Perhaps the Soviet Gov was also “tinkering” with the Almasty, just like we suspect our Gov “tinkers” with Sasquatches and Dogman, trying to weaponize them.

  4. ANGELA B

    One of the creepiest stories you will ever read or watch.There was a documentary recently aired on one of the stations.Patricia forgot to mention one of the female victims was missing her tongue when found.

  8. Joshua J

    I have been interested in this as well. Supposedly the missing tongue was due to decomposition/selective feeding by scavengers (same with the eyes of that same girl). Only a couple of them had radioactive clothing, and only about 3-4 of them had those crushing injuries and the rest died of hypothermia. The fact that some of them tried to climb a tree quickly tells me they were trying to get away from something. I suspect the ones by the creek with the crushing injuries survived longer than the others as they had built a shelter in the snow with a spruce limb bed. It is most certainly weird.

    • kenneth w

      I agree that climbing the tree was to escape something and maybe to offer a better view back to the tent- this is because skin was found embedded into the tree bark;for me it also dissuades from a military cover-up of the scene as does the fact that Rustems body created beneath it an ice-bed showing that he was warm and alive when he fell into his final resting-place as one of the 3 seeming to be making their way back to the tent.I simply dont believe that the Military would have set up this kind of detail to sanitise the site especially as in the USSR at that time had it so wished it could have vanished this group and prevented any inquiry from relatives and friends.
      Its the massive compression injuries on Lyuda and Semyon without external bruising which makes this case so extraordinary especially as no one has any falling injuries to arms,legs and hands and that it has been established that the head injuries to Tibo also found in the ravine den with Kolevator ,S and L would have prevented him moving far afterwards so were likely received where he died and not at the tent which mainly rules out avalanche and snow slide in the tent area when footprints show a comparatively orderly departure many without footware with no one being assisted. Both Doroshenko and Krishony whose corpses were found under the CedarTree although dying from hyperthermia had severe injuries,Doroshenkos foaming suggesting a similar compression injury, suggesting that separate incidents killed these 2 men and the 4 at the ravine which weakens the case for lightening strike or missile test as does a lack of damage to the surrounding area. Svetlana Oss makes a case that they were ritualistically killed by Khanty hunters ( as opposed to Mansi) who jumped on the chest to inflict the compression injuries yet the question has been asked,was the group truly in a Khanty area…? However there are combat injuries to the knuckes and hands of Dyatlov,Rustem,Zina ( with also a possible toothmark) and Krishony – could one hit a Yeti with a fist?Would anyone get near enough? If indeed the group did cut its way from the side of the tent with their long knives it seems incredible they left them behind as well as that Dyatlov left vital clothing outside the tent so it does certainly seem they were held at gunpoint at the tent and made to leave as well as discard clothing though if being hit by infrasound and howling/whistling from a Yeti which Mansi say theyheard the group could have simply left in terror,though still under discipline.

  10. Ruth B

    I looked into this after an episode aired incriminating a yeti attack. It was determined by a committee that these people suffered injuries, esp eye damage, from Soviet missile testing nearby. They were testing when they thought the area was deserted.

    • kenneth w

      i dont thik anything can be discounted but the injuries on Semyon and Lyudas chest area of broken ribs without external bruising when compared to Tibo and LKolevators head injuries made possibly by a rifle but or club are so different that they probably could not have derived from the same bomb; besides , Doro and Krishony were likely injured at the Cedar Tree which they had climbed where they were found strongly inferring that there were 2 attacks or the 2 groups were hit by 2 bombs which caused hugely different injuries…… v v unlikley

  11. Doug S

    If they were attacked by an Almas, the footprints in the snow from the tent to the edge of the forest would have bare feet among them.
    The rescuers, weeks after photographed the remnants of the footprints in the snow. They noted some had socks on and some were bare.
    It is possible that the women attracted the almas, much as a grizzly can be attracted by a woman during her menstral cycle.

  12. Doug S

    Re: the lights.
    This occurred during U2 overflights of Russia.
    Francis Gary Powers was shot down shortly after the Dyatlov Incident.
    The USSR at the time couldn’t get a proper lock on the U2.
    So they Salvo’s Sam missiles in a hope of one of them hitting.
    It is possible the balls of light were Sam missiles.

Leave a Reply