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.
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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