“Russian Winter” had saved the cold country during many wars. Entrapping the armies of Napoleon and Hitler within its muddy grip and the cold, exhausting their supplies until they had no way but to run back home. But what if the icy prefecture is to devour its men? The muse of the 2013 Russian horror film “Devil’s Pass”. In the year 1959, a troupe of ten youths wanted to set along the trekking range to reach the northern parts of the Lozva River near the Ural Mountains. There was nothing unusual about it. Every member of the hike troupe was a Grade-II hiker with adequate skiing experience. The path near Sverdlovsk Oblast was chosen and approved by the Sverdlovsk city route commission, and the troupe got going. Many before them had trekked through the same place, and there was indeed no need for panic or discomfort since, after the hike, they were going to become Grade-III hikers—the purpose of their endeavor.
On the 23rd of January 1959, they went on their way with their issued route guide, but before they did, a middle-aged man called Semyon Zolotaryov, who was to join another group, was added to theirs, and the troupe welcomed him as their latest member. The troupe was decided to be led by 23-year-old student Igor Dyatlov, and they began their journey. The journey aimed to traverse Otorten Mountain, a Category-III place, fit for the hiking experience the members had earned so far. After a short climb, one of the trekkers gave up on the journey accusing a sudden onset of health issues; the troupe bid him farewell and continued. Everything was well; nothing was too out of the ordinary until the man who stayed behind did not receive the telegram that Dyatlov had assured him of. First, it was brushed off, but when the 12th of February turned to the 20th, the people on the plains started to worry if they were too late.
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Dreadful Findings
An extensive search was conducted throughout the region after Yudin did not receive the telegram he was promised. Usually determined safe and gentle a range to hike in, people who knew about the news were suspicious about the details of the disappearances. After a month of rummaging through the snowy mountain slopes, a campsite was found on Kholat Syakhl, also known as the “Silent Peak” or the “Dead Mountain”, by Mikhail Sharavin. The tent was wrecked, torn apart from the inside, and empty of people, but the belongings of all the members were left lying, untouched. Nine sets of footprints were found staggering almost barefoot through the snow leading down like madmen rushing towards the opposite end to their destination. After a distance of 1600 feet, the tracks were no more to be found. The search party spread, and further, below the slope, they found a smoldered bonfire.
Lining the dead fire were the remains of two members of the trekking group, Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, dressed in nothing but a pair of underwear. Confused and horrified, the search party also found a broken pine, resulting perhaps from someone climbing it. When the rescuers made their way back to the desolate camp, they encountered three more corpses, almost naked, in poses suggesting their run back to their camp. The bodies belonged to Slobodin, Kolmogorova, and, Captain Dyatlov. The rest of the campers were not found but the search party did not give up hope. They spent two months in the chilly region until they happened upon the remaining four buried 13 feet deep within the snow, donning some of the clothing of the previous naked comrades.
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The Twisted Medical Reports
A medication examination was conducted on the bodies as per the legal procedure. The presiding doctor V. A. Vozrozhdenny ruled the first five deaths were caused by hypothermia, it was the remaining four that had people questioning what had happened in the mountains. Three of the four endured severe trauma, two to their chest and one to the head. What was curious about these fatal wounds is that they were as massive as a car crash but with no physical damage like it was caused by extreme atmospheric pressure. This threw the investigators into a dilemma if the pressure did get so extreme then why were the four the only ones to die of it? Why did the other five die of hypothermia instead of the pressure? To further cause chaos, of the four, Zolotaryov was missing his eyeballs, Aleksander his eyebrows, and Dubinina her tongue, eyes, lips, and fragments of her skull. While the examiner said that it might be because of the location of their bodies in the ravine, what is interesting is that all the missing parts pertain to the head.
Have Scientists Found An Answer?
After a thorough post-mortem and all the shreds of evidence tallied, the scientists came forward to say that a snow slab might have caused the trekkers to panic and flee their camp as they were. As the hike took place in February, the most difficult time to venture amongst the Ural Mountains due to frequent snowstorms and unstable pressures. The decreased visibility with increasing altitude might have digressed them from their path, causing them to lose their way. To aid the survival of at least a few of the comrades, the rest had given up their clothes, succumbing to the extreme cold, while the others, unfortunately, were subject to death by a misadventure that landed them in a stream. A renewed investigation was conducted in 2015, which blamed the young group leader for a lack of experience in harsh conditions.
Most disagree since the pass where the incident takes place has reported no previous avalanches or snow slabs and the site at the time of the incident showed no sign of an avalanche either. Like all good mysteries, the UFOs and the yetis were blamed for the discord but few hold an opinion against the Mansi, the tribe that lives among the mountainous region due to the missing body parts but was quickly brushed off as they were known to be a peaceful tribe. A strange but probable cause was proposed by author Donnie Eichar in his book “Dead Mountain”, stating his belief that the wind conditions along the Kholat Syakal had created a vortex street producing infrared radiation—traces of radiation were found on the clothes of the deceased trekkers—which induced panic attacks amongst the youth leading to their erratic behavior. Some thought there had to be a political motive behind the grisly deaths since the expedition was enrolled for the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. While no amount of investigation might ever solve the mysterious occurrence, after a 2021 recreation of the incident, most have decided to sail with the scientists.
A Mysterious Fact About The Dead
As if the incident itself had not caused enough bedlam. In 2018, one of the members of the expedition, namely Zolotarev’s corpse was exhumed. To everyone’s visible shock, the DNA of the remains did not match that of Zolotarev’s relatives. Furthermore, his name was not registered in the Ivanovskoye cemetery’s records. During a virtual facial reconstruction from the skull, it was revealed that the face matched a postwar Zolotarev’s. The journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian tabloid that initiated the exhumation, believe that a different man was living under Zolotarev’s name since postwar and the man who died in the mysterious incident was not the real Zolotarev. Things keep getting weirder and weirder.
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