Transcript
All the world is winter. It’s midday in February, and somewhere far away a woman is stretched out on her towel at the beach, half-sitting up to brush the sand off her feet while she watches the waves drag up and down along the shore; children laughing; ice cream cones; paradise. But here, the wind is cold. It’s so cold you can see it. The snow is being blown up from the ground and down off the tree tops so that the continuous gust forms a white linen sheet, tossed over your shoulders and onto your skis. Four friends lead ahead of you and four friends behind, each a black dot in a single file line in the nearly dotless landscape. The pack is heavy, the skis are heavy, and the snow up ahead is growing deeper on the incline of the slope. Someone calls out to stop. Two at the front take off their packs and, through the hip-deep snow, kick and beat a path for five minutes, returning to rest while you and the others lead ahead to better flatten their path, then they pick up their bags to meet you and repeat the process over again. After three hours of this, everyone is tired and all the clothes are wet and no one says they're too cold or too tired or hungry but everyone sets down their packs at the same time, and you stick your ski poles down just as everyone else does to rake the snow and stake the tent.
It’s another two hours before the tent flap is clasped and the sheet is hung over it to keep the wind out. Someone stuffs their sweater into a hole in the canvas that’s whistling in the far corner, probably made from an unnoticed cedar branch or maybe a sharp stone at the edge of camp the night before. No one wants to assemble the camping stove and so cold foods are passed around. The mood is lower than usual so you start a song everyone will know, something like a traveller’s song, and at the chorus they join in, with warm breath giving the air a pleasant feel and a sweet smell which raises everyone’s spirits. But as the song ends the eight stay quiet and though you had another song in mind you don’t start one. All of you are listening to the sound outside, of a groaning wind growing increasingly louder, one that shoves at the walls, that seems to vibrate the very air, and makes the cold cocoa in your cup taste bitter at your lips. Something wicked is out there. It’s coming for all of you. And by 3am, when the crescent moon finally rises, and the storm has all but disappeared, it will shed light on the shredded tarp of the canvas tent, the clothes scattered in the snow, the bare feet and bloodied faces of nine hikers frozen on Holatchahl, better known as Dead Mountain.
Welcome to Stick & Stone.
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Hi, I’m Sydney and today’s story is a mystery that has haunted Russia for over 50 years. You may have heard about it: a group of nine hikers died under mysterious circumstances in the Russian Urals in the winter of 1959. The case was closed soon after the incident although almost nothing had been resolved, including the eerie circumstances in which the hikers were found: with unexplained injuries, evidence of their tent being cut open and fled while they were half-dressed and without shoes, and radiation found on some of their clothing. It’s a really great story of excellent outdoorsmanship and camaraderie in a time and place where both had a lot of value. And because so much of this story relies on history and because I don’t know that much Russian history, I’m going to get us up to speed by summarizing the 30-odd years leading up to 1959. And who doesn’t love a story about Stalin, Czars, and the Secret Police?
The state of Russia is well over a thousand years old and the Czars (or caesars, emperors) ruled from the 1500s until the early 1900s. Over this period of time the Russian Empire expanded in both land and military power but were largely behind in technology, and lapsed in their attention to socio-economic issues which left the people poor, illiterate, and trapped in serfdom. In the late 1800s there were a lot of reforms to the government, which abolished serfdom and freed the people but failed to uplift them from poverty. Meanwhile, the world outside Russia was experiencing the Industrial Revolution and ideas were spreading throughout the world at a new speed—through photos, telegrams, phone calls, trains, and cars. When Czar Nicholas II came to power in 1894 (you’ll know him better as the father of the Grand Dutchess, Anastasia) the people had already been dreaming of revolution for over ten years. One of these movements grew into the Bolsheviks, a radical faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party—which is maybe the most redundant party name I’ve ever heard. If you don’t know what all of those terms mean, to Russians at this time it basically meant: give the power to the people. They were done with the old system, hated the separate ruling class, and wanted to change their destiny after hundreds of years of oppression. Meanwhile, 1900 hits and the Russian Mountaineering Society is founded—this is still a climbing story.
A lot happened in the 1900s but I’m just going to sum it all up as this: although Russia had some key victories in WWI, their army was ill-equipped and unprepared which left the people starving and eventually led to the murder of the Czar’s entire family. So, Russia, 1500 to 1900, not a great place to be a peasant. Wealthy landowner? Awesome. Really cool place to be. Great place to own land, and become an oligarch, and party with Rasputin.
By 1917, the people had had enough. When Czar Nicholas II abdicated, the Duma (or state legislature) put in a Provisional Government. But as we all know, power vacuums lead to power grabs, especially when the people are rioting and dying at the hands of their government. Unfortunately, the power struggles lasted for years and led to many more citizen deaths. Vladimir Lenin led the Bolsheviks to power, but even he struggled to maintain his control over the party especially as the country was plunged into a civil war. And remember, WWI is still happening on their doorstep so Russia is at war from within and without. In 1922, the Soviet Union was officially established by the Russian Communist Party. And if you’re thinking, you have named so many parties already I don’t know who you are talking about, don’t worry it’s a lot of rebranding. The Russian Communist Party were the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks were one of the two radical factions that split the Social Democratic Labour Party. Lenin led all these parties and changed the name as the government and global stage changed so that he could maintain his party’s sex appeal. The Soviet Union—aka the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the USSR—was meant to usher in a new federal system to represent the republic (since the land and cultural makeup of Russia had changed a lot over the last 500 hundred years, and especially so in the 1800s). But realistically, this was Lenin’s move to finally establish his Communist party as the governing force over Russia with him as the head. Fortunately, this era did bring a lot of good changes to the country. The government nationalized almost everything, which means state-owned, making some exceptions for private retail so the economy would be allowed to grow. It was around this time when Lenin died and his body was displayed by his successor, Stalin, in this eerily beautiful open casket that reminds me of the incorruptible saints whose bodies have been protected by the Catholic church—these remains are of nuns, priests, and other sainted figures who died but their bodies never rotted and decayed. So they’re kept in these gorgeously macabre glass coffins like Snow White, and covered in wax, so that they remain untouched by the elements. The wax is added long after this period of non-decay, so if you’re wondering; no, the wax doesn’t have anything to do with them staying preserved, it's just to make sure the bodies don’t deteriorate. The whole “incorruptableness” of these bodies is to do with them not getting smelly, or maggotty, and bloating, but they can still disintegrate and disappear if they’re left out in the sun and air. ANYWAY, that’s what Lenin’s body being displayed makes me think of—although, he was embalmed so, you know, incorruptibly preserved by science.
Back to Stalin, now in power, with a government nationalizing everything. The benefit of this was the industrialization of the Soviet Union and collectivism, the latter being the government-controlled economy which freed the Soviet Union from its reliance on the West. Thinking about it, this is a massive country and the fact they were unable to support themselves on their own for so long is wild. So, while things seemed to be turning around for the better in an economic sense, this restructuring led the government to seize farmlands, displacing farmers who then revolted and many of whom were executed for it. The land seizure also led to what’s called the Holodomor, or Ukrainian Famine. This affected more than Ukraine but they were hit the hardest and it’s sort of assumed that this started out as a bad side effect of collectivism combined with bad weather in the years 1932 to 33—1933 being the year of course that Peak Communism in today’s Tajikistan is ascended by Abalakov, the highest peak in the USSR. Coincidence? But it seems obvious now that the Soviet Union weaponized this famine in order to quash resistance in Ukraine. And we all know what the Ukrainian flag looks like by now—the gold representing their fields of wheat—so them being a huge supplier of grain for the USSR, and at the same time experiencing famine, is a big deal. Oddly though, this affected more economic stimulation because it pushed people from rural homesteads and small towns into the big cities—and increased urbanization makes the money flow.
Stalin introduced Gulags or forced labor camps sometime around 1929, growing them throughout the 1930s to intern 1.5 million people—and they would continue to grow to an estimated 4 million prisoners up to Stalin’s death in 1953. If you don’t fully know what these are, realistically they’re a modern way for a government to legitimize slavery, feudalism, whatever you want to call an economy that benefits from an un-free workforce. America has practiced this since the passing of the 13th amendment which abolishes slavery EXCEPT as a punitive practice for the supposed rehabilitation of convicted people. I hesitate to say criminal here because this has been used as a tool to imprison and enslave what I’d call the “undesirables,” by which I mean the people who are lowest on the socio-economic totem pole at the time—originally used in the U.S. post-Civil War to continue to exploit Black people. I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole here, partly because it’s a whole story unto itself, partly because I want to get back to Russia’s history, and partly because this will eventually be a story about climbing, I swear. But I say all this to point out that the USSR still needed unpaid labor to uphold their economic position. This is an ugly truth throughout the history of the human world: it’s easier to gain and maintain control if there’s a power imbalance.
Some people were put into Gulags as prisoners of war, some on the basis of their national and ethnic identity, and others for crimes (either real or dreamed up, didn’t really matter). In the 30s, a bunch of wars were breaking out: the Spanish Civil War, Soviet-Japan border conflicts, the Second Sino-Japanese War (which was the Imperial Japanese invasion of China), and of course Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 which snowballed into World War II. There’s a lot that went on, obviously, but I’m going to skip ahead to the end of WWII because all you really need to know is that it regressed all of the USSR’s economic progress, led to even more millions of Soviet deaths, and initiated the Cold War.
I’m not really sure what the real reasons are behind U.S. President Harry Truman’s, and Stalin’s disagreement over who and how Eastern Europe was controlled. I’ve always been taught that it’s because the USSR was seen as a threat to the democracy of Europe, but I also know politicians have two reasons for everything they do—plus learning U.S. history means I was taught the favorable view of U.S. history. And on the other side of this, I’ve been told that Russians see the U.S. as a provocateur, goading them into wars in an effort to control Russia. So, whatever the truth is, the basic facts are that our two countries disagreed over the control of Eastern Europe which led to decades of espionage and a race to show dominance as a global superpower. Not the least being the USSR Mountaineering Championships held from 1949 to 1991.
THIS is where our story begins, peak Soviet Union. In today’s Yikaterinboorg, then called Sverdlovsk—a town most known for the infamous murder of the Romanov family and for its heavy industry. It lies to the north of Kazakhstan, sitting between the western most region of Siberia and the eastern edge of the Urals. This is where a group of nine college students, eager to venture into the snow on a mountain expedition, departed on their school break in the winter of 1959, only never to return.
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Igor Dyatlov was a 23 year old student of radio engineering at the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI) in Sverdlovsk. Born in 1936 in Pervouralsk (a large town not far from Sverdlovsk), Igor grew up in a family of engineers who encouraged his early aptitude for technical subjects, and so it’s no surprise, while studying in college, he came to have a capacious knowledge of radio engineering. His family was working-class in a post-WWII era Soviet Union, which may have contributed to his love of hiking. With fewer freedoms afforded to the people, simplicity, frugality, self-reliance, and embracing discomfort were encouraged, and so outdoor sports were a natural fit for many Soviet youth. When he wasn’t assembling his own homemade shortwave radios, Igor was honing his outdoor skills on hiking trips. He participated in his first treks with his brother just after finishing seventh grade and eventually joined his university’s hiking club when he started college. By the end of 1958, Igor had earned a reputation not only for his excellence in wireless technology but for his impressive leadership skills.
In a 2009 article by Valentin Yakimienko for the Russian magazine, Ural Stalker (their word for Pathfinder), it was said of Igor’s leadership, quote, “Once, during a hike, a participant—tempted by the sight of the condensed milk [Igor] was carrying in his backpack—secretly consumed the whole can. Later, plagued by a guilty conscience, he confessed this to Igor. Igor didn't scold him but simply said, "When we get back to Sverdlovsk, you’ll pay the cost of the can into the group fund." This incident was remembered and recounted for years,” end quote. So, likely there were a lot of instances like this where Igor was able to respond to a frustrating or tense moment with a team member with the cool and collected approach of someone very knowledgeable and responsible. And so, it’s not very surprising that, although he was only 23, he was confident about leading his friends on a very difficult hiking expedition into the Ural mountains in the middle of winter. And this isn’t winter like a few snowflakes and a little discomfort, this is Siberian winter. This is snow up to four feet deep, gusts of wind, and temperatures ranging from a high of 18º to -6º F or -8º to -21ºC. There are colder places in the world, of course, but all of these elements combined with remoteness and days of hiking with heavy gear through unmarked terrain makes these conditions incredibly difficult. And that’s exactly why Igor wanted to lead his nine companions on this expedition. They were all Grade II hikers hoping to earn their Grade III certification upon successful completion of this planned trek.
So, because I know you’re gonna ask, what does Grade II and III hiker mean? In the 1950s, outdoor sports classification was new and the idea was to start regimenting the system for trek difficulty as it was becoming more viable for the everyday person to form a group for a big hike. And also as I’ve mentioned, communication technology is improving, ergo Igor’s interest in radios (he’s kind of like a guy in the late 90s tinkering with early smart phone tech before anybody really cared) so more people from around the world are sharing their experiences. The grading system isn’t like what we think of now for climbing and mountaineering. It was based on the skill of the climber, not the difficulty of the route itself. There were a total of three grade levels and each was classified according to these three trek parameters: total distance, total duration, and the duration of fully autonomous transitions in difficult conditions for a certain period—which I think means the amount of time spent in the remote wilderness. The requirements for each grade level were dependent on how many total treks you made and the type of treks. So you could earn the grade for less days out in trade off for a much more intensive type of sport. The sport categories at the time for hiking were associated with the styles of “tourism.” In Russian, the word tourism doesn’t mean stranger in a strange land, it means trekker. Similar to how I just mentioned stalker is not a creepy person but a pathfinder. These misaligned translations seem to be pretty common in Russian, although English has too many words, so, what’re you gonna do? Anyway, there were five recognized styles of tourism, which were: walking, skiing, watering (or modes of water transit), bicycling, and mountaineering. The grade requirements were harder for summer sports like bicycling since they not only couldn’t be done in winter, but overall were much easier to complete given that snow and scarce resources were almost never a factor. And the softest category in terms of requirements, if you’re curious, was for skiing because it was so difficult, which is the type of trek Igor was planning. At the time, earning these different grades could be done as mix-and-match, which in principle makes no sense because a person who completes a Grade I level with winter skiing and then a Grade II with only winter walks is still considered a Grade II overall. But I believe Igor and probably most if not all of his friends had earned their stripes as just winter skiers.
This is a ton of information about the 1950 Russian hiking grades that you don’t need to remember, or reference, or ever think about again, all you need to know is that earning these grades was part of people earning permission to go on harder and harder treks—plus they earned a cool badge they could pin on their jackets to show off their grade. Today, Russia’s scale has changed a lot and now it’s based on the usual things like: crux difficulty, steepness, elevation gain, length of the route from base camp, time required to climb, and something really cool not all other systems include which is altitude. The grades are subdivided into A and B so today it ranges 1A to 6B. For comparison, on the UIAA scale that’s grade I/II to grade VII and on the Alpine Grade it’s an F/PD (that stands for facile / peu difficile, or easy / little hard) to ED3 and up (exceptionelment difficile or extremely difficult). If you don’t know those scales, a quick and dirty way to say it is that the lowest level is a short day hike and the highest is over a week in the wilderness—and these are scales for mountain hiking, of course.
The idea to make an expedition to Otorten Mountain originally came from another group of UPI students, but their lack of organization led them to call off the hike. When Igor caught wind of this abandoned plan, he immediately ran with it and organized his own. To earn his Grade III Classification, he planned to lead an expedition over 186 mi or 300 km in all (62 mi or a 100 km of which was over rough terrain, such as steep uphill climbs and descents, tracing ski tracks, and moving through dense forest undergrowth), over 16 days (8 of which had to be in a remote, unpopulated area—meaning they’d be camping with limited resources in winter conditions using only the equipment they brought—for example, staying in an abandoned house would disqualify them). They would travel far to the north by train in late January and ski deep into the Urals to Otorten. Igor Dyatlov quickly assembled 9 of his friends, eager to join the adventure, who came to be known as the Dyatlov Group, same as the eponymous, and infamous, Dyatlov Pass.
In the last week of January, a month before their next term began, nine UPI students were busy packing for their hike. The dorm, like many school dorms—communal-use, worn, and spartan—itself wasn’t much to look at, and it wasn’t surprising at all that this group of twenty-somethings had imaginations and plans far bigger than the confines of their school. Ok, I’m about to say a bunch of names, so get ready. There are multiple guys named Yuri (very popular Soviet name, I guess) so I’m going to call them by their last names, and a lot of people have nicknames which I’ll use. Igor Dyatlov was their leader, at 23 years old and the most totalitarian of the bunch—noted for things like very strict hiking hygiene, requiring all of his group to wash their feet every night even without heater or hot water in winter.
Zina Kolmogorova (Zina) was 22, charismatic and very sharp. Appointed as the group’s diarist, she documented their journey in notes that would be used for their certification along with the photos they took—to which she and others sometimes added some peanut gallery commentary.
Lyudmila Dubinina (Lyuda) was the youngest at 20, but very serious, industrious, and resilient. On a previous camping trip, she’d been shot in the leg by a friend’s accidental misfiring of a hunting rifle. She was carried out 50 mi (80 km) over rugged terrain but kept her companions in high spirits the whole way home.
Yuri Yudin (the only Yuri of the three Yuri we will call Yuri) was a 21 year old geology student who suffered from several illnesses and pains: rheumatism, a heart condition, and chronic knee and back pain. Hiking gave him more strength than it took, which is why he joined the group despite the greater obstacles he would have to face. He was made keeper of the medicine for obvious reasons.
Yuri Doroshenko (whom we’ll just call Doroshenko) was 21, known for being impulsive and brave after chasing a bear out of camp once holding only a small hammer.
Yuri Krivonischenko (called Georgiy, no idea why, maybe it’s a pop culture reference) was 23, a musician and the class clown. Great at playing mandolin, singing and pulling pranks.
Alexander Kolevatov (called simply Kolevatov), 24, was a private and imposing figure. He was large and had a serious look of concentration when he was focused on the task at hand. But he had a softer side too, enjoying puffs on his antique pipe in quiet moments.
Rustem Slobodin (known as Rustik), 23, was the rich kid—by Soviet standards—but he wasn’t pretentious. He was also musical and shared in playing the Mandolin.
Nikolay Thibeaux-Brignolle (or Kolya), 23, was part French through his great-grandfather. He was a serious young man but always looked for humor in even the darkest of times.
And if you’re counting, you’ll notice that we made it to nine, BUT this group totaled Igor plus nine friends, and that’s because someone dropped out and at the last minute was replaced by another friend, Alexander Zolotaryov (called Sasha). He was a friend of Igor’s, a local hiking instructor, 37 years old, with gold teeth, and tattoos. That was not common back then, having tattoos was usually the mark of a veteran, and that was true because Sasha fought in WWII like many men his age.
With the Dyatlov Group assembled, the ten hikers departed Sverdlovsk on January 23, 1959, traveling 200 mi (322 km) by train to their first stop, Serov—a steel and iron manufacturing town. The next train they needed to catch would take them to another town, Ivdel, but it wouldn’t arrive until evening. At just a little before 8am, the group had little to do while they waited and so they tried to rest in the train station but for some reason travellers weren’t allowed in. But it was cold and they were tired from the train, so they searched for somewhere to lounge in town, eventually arriving at a small school building. Soviet school days at the time were split into a morning session for regular curricula and an afternoon session for alternative activities such as self-guided studies when the students could pick what they’d like to read and make, as well as being reserved for guest speakers. This was kind of like when your parents come to class to talk about where they work. And so the teachers invited them in on the condition that they teach the afternoon session for their seven to nine year old class. After a rest, the hikers joined the class, dumping out their backpacks revealing all their gear to the fascinated children. Sasha sang a rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb, while Zina’s magnetic and empathetic personality captured their little hearts. I imagine she was really tender with the kids and spoke to them with understanding and respect which is why they all followed her, just as the lamb in the song, back to the train station. At 6:30pm the train arrived and she said one last goodbye to the kids who pleaded for her to stay and lead their “Pioneers” troupe (a Russian version of Scouts).
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On the 25th they arrived in Ivdel with another long wait for the bus they would take to Vizhay. Going this far north and deep into the Urals meant lots of days traveling like this from point to point and was a regular part of planning an expedition like this. Luckily, they weren’t travelling alone. Although they already had a large group it was made all the bigger when they met another student hiking party on the first day of the trip, also headed north and led by another Yuri, Yuri Blinov. Though they’d split up for the day in Serov, they stuck together in Ivdel, originally settled as a gold-mining town, later the site of a 1937 Soviet prison camp—a Gulag. These were called “corrective labor camps” which really meant forced labor. This goes back to what I was talking about earlier, the way that human civilizations over time have used slavery in some form to uphold economies, and sadly this existed mainly in secrecy in the U.S.S.R. until the 50s. It wasn’t really fully changed until Gorbachev reformed the prison system in 1989. And remember, these are the actions of political figures, world wars, and the desperation famine had wreaked on the country—it’s not reflective of the individuals. Like anywhere else, there are good people and bad people. I say that because Russia has had a really rough hundred years this past century, so while I don’t empathize with war or politicians, I do empathize with the majority of people who simply wanted to do good and live their lives in peace with everyone else. And I hope you can feel the same, if not for everyone in this story, then at least for the Dyatlov Group.
Fortunately, they weren’t in town long enough to come in contact with the prison site itself, waiting with their friends at the bus station. When their ride eventually showed up, it wasn’t exactly what you’d expect. A GAZ-651, a mass-produced postwar truck made by the manufacturer Gorky, was a common tourist bus but it wasn’t very big. It was more like a large mini-van and seated about 20 people, which was a problem because now there were 25 of them. So with all their gear, the hikers piled in, either choosing to sit with backpacks and skis on their laps or another hiker, because they had to sit double to share a seat. Well kind of, they actually had the second person sitting on top of the seatback. But, as you can imagine, this was not very comfortable but despite being crammed in there Georgy managed to get out and play his mandolin—which I’m sure was mostly enjoyed. By two in the afternoon they were in Vizhay, a woodcutting settlement built by Gulag prisoners. The groups headed off together to a local cafeteria, a common place to get a meal in Soviet Russia. And although it wasn’t warm enough to take off their coats, they enjoyed warm stew and bread, taking advantage of the large tables to spread out their maps and make a final check of their planned hiking route. Zina used her free time to sew some bahily (or boot covers) made of tarpaulin—a waterproof material often used for tents. After their meal the groups parted ways, with the Blinov party headed onward in a truck with locals from the free workers’ camp. Although there was forced labor there were free workers, primarily young Communists, who also worked in camps. I had a lot of trouble finding information on this, so I’m not sure what compensation was offered to them outside room and board, but these workers were free to come and go, unlike the Gulags which were also labor camps but they were strictly prisons. So the Blinov party left with the workers to Sector 105 which was a small camp outside town, close to where they planned to hike.
That night, the Dyatlov Group stayed in town and were treated very well by the local free workers who treated them to stay in their camp’s guesthouse. It was warm, chicly decorated, and luxurious compared to what they’d expected, replete with beds and fresh linens. That night, most of the group went into town to watch a favorite film, Symphony in Gold, playing at the cinema (likely someone’s house with a projector) while a couple of them stayed behind to clean up after dinner—maybe a little bit bitter. Kolevatov wrote in the diary that he and Doroshenko were, quote “left to do housework while the others go to the cinema and return in ‘musical mood’.” The next morning, another work truck was headed out, this time to camp called Sector 41, which turned out to be the same direction they needed to go. Before they headed out, they visited the local forester as was custom for tourists because the forester knew the area really well. He advised the group of the dangers travelling through the Urals in winter: large ravines and pits unseen in the snow and winds so strong they could pick you up and blow you away. Igor was likely only encouraged by these warnings, but also his group was exceedingly well-prepared, more than the locals likely knew. So with the forester’s advice and some additional information he recommended adding to their maps, the friends left the cabin and caught their ride on the woodcutters’ truck to Sector 41. This time they were in a different Gorky, a GAZ-63 which looked like an old army truck or a farmer’s flatbed—whatever you’re picturing, imagine that it’s not enclosed so they’re exposed to the super cold air. Yuri, our poor hiker with all the health conditions, is not feeling great at this point. Everyone is a bit miserable in the truck, but it’s times ten for him. Yuri’s in pain the whole way there but he’s determined to stay strong for his team, so he sucks it up and holds out. Luckily, he had some medicine, but it was probably not very strong, so he was really bullying his way through it.
They spent the night at the woodcutters’ camp, hanging out with the workers around their own age. Trading memorized poems and songs—because this is Soviet Russia and a lot of literature and media are banned, people mainly had to memorize these forms of entertainment and education to share and teach one another. Which, of course sounds harsh, but also seems like a really fun way that the U.S.S.R. accidentally gave everyone something to collaborate on. There were also forms of music, for example, that got passed around in secret. They were called Bone Records or Rock on Ribs because they were gramophone recordings made out of used x-ray film. So you could be listening to bootleg hits from Ella Fitzgerald and The Beatles while looking at the x-ray of a broken finger. These were obviously very lo-fi but they did the trick and brought people a lot of comfort and closeness with the rest of the world.
They stayed up late into the night with their woodsmen poets and talked, not specifically about their crushes, but about love in general. Communism had a hold on their hearts in a way that made them shy to confess their feelings in order to make the whole group feel equal rather than give one or two members special treatment. And probably too, they were still very young and maybe not all of them had been in love yet.
The next day, they met a Lithuanian freelance worker who had previously been imprisoned in another camp at Sector 2, years before and was now on his way to an abandoned site to forage for iron pipes. His past didn’t bother the group a bit, and instead they referred to him as Grandpa Slava. He was bringing a sleigh to carry his haul back, so he offered the hikers to put their backpacks on the sled on the way there—which was great because the packs were heavy. He had arrived late in the day on January 27th so, although they carried less, the hikers had a 15 mi (24 km) trek ahead guided by the light of a ¾ moon—which, it was winter and they mainly skied up a frozen river, so the moonlight actually did make it quite a bit easier than you’d think for a night of trekking since it lit up the white snow and they weren’t hiking under trees. They followed the Lozva River but the ice wasn’t very thick, and because it was covered in snow it was also hard to see just how thick it was. At last, late into the night, they arrived at the village. But there were no people. Whatever happened, something had caused everyone to abandon their homes all at once, but this benefitted the skiers in that one of the houses was still livable, and so they camped there for the night—the girls taking the beds, and the men on the floor in their sleeping bags around the heated stove.
In the morning on January 28th, Yuri was feeling not better but much worse. His leg especially was in great pain, and so it was sadly decided that he should head back with Grandpa Slava and make his way home. And it’s not that the group didn’t believe in him, it’s that travelling deeper into the woods and farther from settlements would mean a very long and arduous trek to carry him out should Yuri be entirely unable to walk, which would in turn put his fellow comrades in danger. He’d still had a great time with his friends, hugged them goodbye, and quickly took rock samples from the area (bits of pyrite and quartz) because he’s still a geeky geology student. Grandpa Slava would’ve offered him a ride back but he’d filled the sleigh with his reclaimed pipes, and so Yuri had to fight through more pain and ski all the 15 miles back, with the small compensation that he could at least put his pack on the sleigh. And although he must’ve been unhappy in the moment, Yuri had no idea that his aching legs and back had just saved his life.
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The rest of the team turned up the Lozva River, heading deeper into the Urals to meet the adjoining Auspiya River which they could follow north to Otorten Mountain, their final destination. The going proved just as difficult as the day before. The snow was soft and stuck to their skis so they had to stop often to scrape it away. The river continued to waver between thick in some places and thinner in others, at times forcing them onto the banks. The banks had their own problems from being too steep to being covered in patches of jagged basalt. Finally, they happened upon a Mansi trail, one made by the local Mansi hunters and their reindeer. Paint on the nearby trees inscribed with the tribal symbols were as magical forest spells to the students who couldn’t decipher them. These symbols were kind of like hobo signs, if you know those, the kind people used to indicate things like “they will feed you dinner here” or “danger, watch for cops”—which people still use I think, but it’s definitely not common. The Mansi signs they saw were hunters’ symbols that told of how large the group was, the family crest, number of dogs, and the year. I watched some videos of the Mansi living day-to-day now and they’re so cool. The group I saw set up their tents in a snow-covered field while their reindeer grazed and these tents, these are not normal. These have many many layers of fabric and thick carpets, it’s so plush, it looks like the inside of a jewelry box. It’s a large space and there’s a stove in the middle and a hole at the top like a teepee. I watched a woman and I think her mother cooking and preparing meals while her kids played in the tent. When they went out they dressed warmly in thick fabric including reindeer hides. And the men mainly wrangled the reindeer in the field. When they were ready to move they packed up the entire settlement they’d made (I think there were three tents plus lots of supplies. And they loaded everything on their sleighs which were pulled by a team of reindeer. They had a baby and he was placed in a carrier draped with three layers of coverings, like a mini-tent. It was really cool to watch, I highly recommend looking up videos and documentaries of Mansi people to see how they live traditionally. And, remember, this is modern day, so they were moving nomadically with their reindeer herd but they’re also travelling next to towns and roads. I’m sure they run into the same issues as other nomads, like the Bedouins, finding less and less land that’s open and usable for their lifestyle.
Not unlike the Mansi, the group had to construct camp each night as they progressed, each with an assigned task to carry out before dinner: locating a safe place to stay the night, digging out the snow, staking the skis as tent poles, erecting the tarpaulin, building the stove, and cooking, and so on. From their group diary:
After dinner, we sit a long time by the fire, singing sincere songs. Zina even tries to learn playing the mandolin under guidance of our chief musician Rustik. Then discussion goes on and on, and almost all our discussions these days deal with love.
The 29th was a smooth day without much event, but the 30th of January became much more difficult as temperatures dropped and snow blew in on a strong southwest wind. The Mansi track disappeared and without the beaten path to follow they had to trudge through deep snow, in some places up to their chests. The tree cover lessened as they climbed through the timberline into groves of birch that grew smaller and more crooked the higher they went. Even though it was cold the ice on the river was still very thin, making for more miserable trekking between the rocky banks as much as they could and the dangerously thin ice. Tensions grew at lunch between Lyuda and Kolya, with Zina noting in the diary:
So they argued for a long time about who should stitch the tent. At last [Kolya] gave up and took a needle. Lyuda remained sitting. And we were fixing holes (so many holes that everyone had plenty to do… The guys are awfully indignant.
I love these entries because it’s exactly everyone’s experience of a long trip with anyone and especially with a large group. I mean, I’ve never had a completely stress-free, no-arguments, all-smiles and laughs trip in my life. And that’s not because I’ve had bad trips or anything, it’s just so natural to have tiny spats. And what I always like to think is that our bonds are made through our struggles more than our joys, because getting through a fight is to truly care about someone enough to make it past the problem and knowing them well enough to see why the problem is bothering them. And besides, we fight because we care. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have anything to fight for.
They settled their squabbles (all but Lyuda who hid in the tent to let off steam) because by evening, when they were all gathered by a fire outside, they celebrated Doroshenko’s 21st birthday. Someone rummaged in their pack and lifted out a small treasure as a gift: a tangerine. They were rare enough in the Soviet Union that they were mainly given out as a holiday present around New Year’s, so they’d saved this one especially for Doroshenko on this trip. He happily accepted and as soon as it was peeled he handed out the slices to share with his friends… except Lyuda, she was still cooling off.
January 31, the last day recorded in the group diary. They set off at 10am into a terrible wind that blew the snow so high off the tree tops it seemed like it was snowing in spite of the clear sky. They made their way off the river and up the slope to Otorten Mountain. Though they were able to find another Mansi track, the snow was still very deep. But being a group of nine engineering students, they came up with a new method to plow their way involving the lead taking off their backpack to clear a path, backtrack to tamp down the way they made and trading off with the next lead to forge ahead. Relaying like this was effective and very slow. By 4pm they were exhausted. Camping in Ausipya valley, they found shelter from the wind and made their dinner, gathering inside the tent for the evening, leading Igor to write what would be the group’s final diary entry:
It’s hard to imagine such a cozy place anywhere at the ridge, under the piercing howls of the wind, and hundreds of km from any settlement.
The next day, February 1st, would be the final day of their lives. What’s known of their whereabouts this day is gathered from their tracks, photos and a hand drawn draft of a satirical newspaper found in their belongings titled “The Evening Otorten,” dated February 1, Issue 1—made over breakfast that morning. The content included headlines reading:
Is it possible to keep nine hikers warm with one stove and one blanket?
A Seminar: Love and Hiking hosted by Dr. Kolya and Lyuda, Candidate of Science.
Sports News: Comrades Doroshenko and Zina set a new world record in competition for stove assembly.
Science Report: The “Snow Man” [Yeti] sited in the northern Urals near Otorten.
Before they could leave they needed to shed most of their weight as the remaining journey would be hard going up steeper terrain than they’d trekked through thus far. And so they made a labaz (their word for a resupply cache) where they could stow food reserves, extra skis and boots, spare first aid kit, and Georgiy’s mandolin, as well as extra firewood they’d collected. With lighter packs, they went on, snapping photos of each other.
A photo from the morning of Rustik shows him wearing the burnt remainder of his jacket—likely left too close to the fire the night before. But rich kid that he was, maybe the loss didn’t bother him much knowing he could buy another back home because it looks like he’s having fun posing proudly in the tattered pieces. Kolevatov and Kolya are snapped laughing as they pack up camp. As morning fades, a shot of Igor, Kolya, and Sasha talking while the group slings on their packs reveals worsening weather ahead.
Kolya poses half buried in the snow as a joke. Someone appears to have captured a photo of the Russian Yeti… or maybe it’s Kolya again. Nikolay smiles broadly, though his hands are tucked into his sleeves, clearly feeling very cold. Zina helpfully offers a handful of ice chips to a comrade seated out of frame.
As the daylight fades we see the hikers become more serious, fighting to make their path through a whipping wind. The world ahead looks white. Skiing in a line, each can only see five friends ahead of them, the rest of the team and the landscape is lost in a fog of windblown snow. By mid-afternoon, sunset was more than an hour away but the sky had already darkened from the heavy cloud cover. Igor led them onto the east-facing slope of a mountain without a name—simply noted on their maps as Height 1079. Later called Kholat Syakhl by the Mansi, translated to Holatchahl by the Russians, and known to us as: Dead Mountain. This was where they made camp and this was the night all nine hikers died.
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The dorms of UPI are re-filling with students returning to school from their winter break. It’s February 13th, the day Igor and the Dyatlov Group are due back. Three days pass without anyone sounding an alarm. Could they have taken an extra day to hike? Was there an issue getting a ride back? Or did something worse happen that slowed them down so they couldn’t get back? The parents of the hikers demand the school investigate but no search party is formed for a week.
On February 20th, a search helicopter is sent from Sverdlovsk with a university professor from UPI named Gordo and a student, Yuri Blinov (he’s the leader of the other hiking party that had been on the train, travelling with the Dyatlov Group). Surprisingly that day, Yuri returns to campus but all too soon he and everyone else realize that the rest of his team is still out there. And this is when the investigation begins. So, there is soooo much information on the case online. People have really gone down the rabbit hole to figure out what happened that night. I am definitely not going to cover all of it. But if you’re interested, I got a lot of information from this—I hate to say fan website, but that gives you a good idea of how deep the notes and theories go on this case—but the website is called Dyatlovpass.com which is run by Teodora Hadjiyska and the late Igor Pavlov. It looks like Teodora even visited Dead Mountain earlier this year. And if you’re really into high drama TV, there is a show in Russian about the case from 2020 called Dead Mountain. There’s a lot of conspiracies surrounding the case on the website and in the show, and while I’d love to entertain the wilder ones, I do think one of the less out there theories is more reasonable. So we’re gonna delve into the investigation first and then come back to the theories.
Just as the helicopter was dispatched, the Ivdel prosecutor’s office opened up an investigation headed by Prosecutor Vasily Tempalov—his home isn’t too far from where the hikers were last seen. On February 23rd, Gordo and Blinov visit the Mansi village and learn the Mansi hunters discovered tracks in the Urals headed toward Otorten. They relay a message via radiogram back to Ivdel and Sverdlovsk (which required heavy equipment at the time but was the only to quickly send a message while they were deep in the mountains) to say a group of 4 Mansi men agreed to join the search. More people join in the effort in the following days, and with nearly 30 people they make their way to Otorten. The weather is awful but the searchers don't give up. They split up into pairs to cover more ground and a couple of UPI students in the search party (one named Mikhail Sharavin) make their way up from the river to get a better view. What they find instead, half-buried on the slope are the still vertical skis and poles from a tent. The snow fall from the west has covered most of the tarpaulin situated on this east-facing slope and collapsed the structure. They call out. No answer. A flashlight lays in the snow as well as an ice axe, just outside the tent. Sharavin takes the ax and brings it down to tear open the tent. There’s no one inside.
This holds a small amount of hope that maybe the Dyatlov Group is still alive. They return to camp and a radiogram is sent out to share their findings with the investigators. But word travels fast and more people arrive the next day to search, which turns into chaos on Height 1079 where the tent was found. Prosecutor Vasily still hasn’t arrived and without organization the teams continue to search for survivors. On February 27th (my birthday), the searchers follow tracks leading away from the tent toward the valley. They follow it up until the tracks become lost in the newly fallen snow.
Meanwhile, Sharavin and another searcher are scouting out a campground for their team in the Lozva River Valley. If you’re thinking, that sounds far away, didn’t the group travel up the Lozva River and then turn off up the Auspiya River? Yes, you’re correct, they did turn up another river and they did this because the Lozva goes the long way around before it reaches the other side of Dead Mountain. So they took the Auspiya to cut across the Urals instead of around them. If they’d made it to Otorten they’d have crossed the Lozva again. Around midday, Sharavin notices something odd below a cedar tree. There are large branches that’ve blackened beneath a cedar tree. It looks as though they were torn from it and burned in a fire pit. And not far from it, sticking out of the snow Sharavin sees something else. When they’re close, they realize what it is. A human knee is sticking out of the snow.
Maybe out of thoughtfulness for the integrity of the scene, or maybe out of horror, the pair leave the snow untouched and quickly rejoin their camp. A larger group returns to excavate the snow and what they find is not one body but two, lying side by side. Closer examination reveals something very odd, neither of them are dressed for winter. They don’t have jackets on, or pants. One is in his checkered shirt, long underwear, with feet bare and snow between the toes. The second man is facedown with arms tucked under his head as if he were sleeping, also in his checkered shirt and long underwear, his left leg torn away, both feet in socks but no shoes. What little they have on is shredded and their skin is discolored from weeks of exposure. Sharavin is asked to identify his friends and he confirms the man on his back is Georgy. The one faced down is Doroshenko.
Hours later, one of the Mansi teams following their dog through the valley, comes upon a disturbed patch of snow where a tree is twisted at an odd angle. They dig just a couple inches when their gloved hands feel something hard, a dark cloth covering a frozen elbow. When the body is resurfaced they see the man is clutching the birch tree. He’s more warmly dressed than the first two in a fur vest, socks and ski trousers but still no gloves, hat or shoes. His left wrist has a watch on it, stopped at 5:31. He’s frozen in a state of distress, desperately clinging to the tree branch, and he’s alone. This, they come to realize, is Igor Dyatlov.
By the end of the day they recover one more body, a woman, dressed in hat, ski jacket and pants, socks, but still no shoes. Something is different about this body though, she’s lying on her side, arms and face to the ground. When they turn her they see her face is dark red from a large abrasion. She’s identified later that day as Zina.
While this search is going on, a man named Yevgeny—a highly experienced outdoorsman who’d originally advised the Dyatlov group on their proposed route and plan—was appointed head of the search operation. He knew all the hikers and was able to confirm their identities, and without Prosecutor Vasily on the scene, he became the de facto investigator. He sent radiograms with his early theories. Quote:
We didn’t have time to examine tent
Probably they were buried under heavy snow
The tent got torn people stood up were swept away downhill by wind.
To which those back in Ivdel responded with:
Why were things left in the tent if people were swept away by wind?
And after all of this activity, at the end of the day—still February 27th, my birthday!—Vasily finally arrived. Without experience in any such previous cases, he first took stock of everything that had happened. His notes are as follows:
The tent was set on the slope of height 1079 meters.
An even spot was made under the tent, with skis laid at the bottom.
The tent was covered with snow.
Urine traces were found where someone had been taking a leak.
The decent-facing side was torn to pieces.
Arrangement of things inside the tent are catalogued.
When he returned to Ivdel on March 1, these notes and everything else he’d gathered for the case were taken off his desk and handed to a higher up with more experience, a man named Lev, the forensic prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor's office.
When word spread around Sverdlovsk of the four bodies and no explanation for their deaths, the people were quick to point fingers, and the first finger was pointed at the Mansi. Their tracks were found in the surrounding forest and some said that the mountain was sacred to them. As it turns out, the tracks were from a hunting group who’d unknowingly passed by the bodies days after they’d died. As for the idea that these were ritual killings, I’m just gonna stamp out that theory right now, because frankly it feels racist, but I think it might also come from a mistranslation. The Mansi name for Height 1079 was Holatchahl which translates to Russian as myórt-vaya ver-shíh-na, in English meaning Dead Mountain. But, in fact, these are mistranslations. It can also be called Bald or Barren Peak, sometimes called “lack of game,” which indicates that the word Dead references the inhospitable nature of the mountain for local hunters and who else is out there, but hunters? So it’s basically a way for them to say, don’t go hunt over there, it sucks.
Lev arrives on scene and takes a second look at the spot where Georgy and Doroshenko were found. He notes that there are more footprints at the sight than the set of two likely made by these men. He also sees the evidence of a small fire and extra twigs beside it, indicating the fire was made but not tended and so it went out. After seeing the tent and the state of dress of the bodies, Lev forms his first theory. Quote:
Maybe someone who was dressed went outside to take a leak and was swept away. His cry made others jump out of the tent and they were swept off too. Tent is set in the most dangerous point with strongest wind. Impossible to go 50 meters back uphill.
On March 2nd the search expands beyond the valley and Lev seems to come up with a new theory, although the meaning isn’t clear in his radiogram.
Would like to ask if any new type of meteorological rocket probe flew over incident place on the evening of February 1.
March 3rd, Lev returns to Sverdlovsk with the bodies. Meanwhile, Yevgeny continues to mull over the theories in his radiograms:
One possible reason is some natural phenomenon or passage of meteorological rocket probe which was seen on Feb. 1 from Ivdel and by Karelin’s group on Feb. 17.
Referring to another group searching the area led by Karelin, who had visited a Manshi village on February 17th and witnessed what he called “a strange celestial phenomenon. I rushed out of my sleeping bag… and saw a large light spot. It grew larger. A small star appeared in its center and also grew bigger.”
So, now we’ve got weird shooting stars or missile rockets or something in the mix. And over the next few days something else weird is discovered. They find Rustik’s body much like the others, frozen and pointed up-slope as if trying to return to the tent. He has all his clothes and several pairs of socks but only one shoe. What’s strange is the discoloration on his head. He looks as though he was struck, hard. The searchers bring his body to an odd formation nearby, a landmark for the search party, called Boot Rock, while they wait for transport to send his body home—or, at least, to the investigator’s office.
Meanwhile in Ivdel, deeper inquiries are made as to the condition of the tent, which had at that point been retrieved from the slope along with the group’s belongings. A science officer and criminal expert determines that the gashes made in the side of the tent—not the one made by Sharavin using an ice axe—but the ones apparently made before the tent was found, were not made by someone or someones outside the tent trying to get in, but the slashes came from inside the tent, as though the Dyatlov Group had been making a quick escape. At the same time, they make their forensic examinations and resolve that all five of the missing hikers found so far had died of hypothermia. This seems obvious given they were all frozen, but there’s still so many questions. Like: Why did they all leave the tent? Why were they not fully dressed? If the wind had something to do with it, why were the tent poles still standing? How did two of them receive blunt force trauma to their heads? And did the strange light in the sky have anything to do with all of this?
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Yuri, who’d returned to Sverdlovsk, and had provided all the information he could, is now called upon to identify the belongings. And what a miserable job that would’ve been. I feel so bad for him. It must’ve felt really weird to dig through his friends’ things and of course utterly numbing, just having to bear through the feelings and offer what he can to help. Some of the objects revealed little histories about his friends he didn’t know, like a photo of Zina tucked into Igor’s notebook. Maybe he’d secretly been in love with her? However, nothing important to the investigation comes out of this and soon the talk of burials becomes a point of contention. The government interferes with the families’ wishes, insisting on a small gathering, burying them together in Ivdel rather than bring them home, to pretend as though nothing has happened. Fortunately, you cannot deter a mama bear, and the families were able to get their children back to bury them at home in Sverdlovsk.
So something you may have been wondering about is about to become very important. What happened to the Dyatlov Group’s cameras? Well, they were found and all of the film is developed and the investigators find something kind of weird at the end of one of the rolls. The last exposure on Georgy’s camera is of a large blur like a smear of light and an orb. I really love taking photos on film and I’ve done a lot of weird things to my photos over the years. Looking at this, I want to pretend it had something to do with the lights seen in the sky on February 17th, although the dates obviously don’t line up. And I know there are UFO and ghost sightings out there, but I really don’t think this is one of them. I know I have a UFO sticker on my laptop here, if you’re watching this, but that’s from a coffee shop, it’s their logo. There is life beyond our planet but I don’t make any assumptions about what it looks like. Only those who’ve truly seen it can know. This is very clearly, to me at least, a photo that was misfired, maybe at some point when they had a fire, or maybe the camera got flipped around in the tent and fired sometime after they’d gotten out. Whatever the circumstances, the shot is out of focus and the shutter speed is too fast which is why the light looks blurred and everything else is in shadow. It is a really strange and beautiful photo but cameras don’t work exactly like our eyes and they can be really misleading despite how much we rely on photos to share real experiences. It’s definitely a theory, but it’s also not super convincing given there’s no other truly supernatural evidence other than this.
It’s not until three months later in May when the last bodies are found as well as a pile of some of their clothing, cut and shredded. Two bodies are found by water and they’ve begun to decay. They’re brought along with the other three they find to boot Rock (so now we’ve accounted for everybody). And they make it clear in a radiogram that these bodies have to be flown out ASAP because they’re on the verge of total decomposition because it’s spring and temperatures, even in Siberia, are warming. The autopsies reveal more injuries on three of the hikers, which they classified as violent. And then they close the case. And that’s the end of the story. Thanks for listening.
No, I’m messing with you. They did close the case at this point, and they ruled it as death by “an unknown compelling force” which means anything could’ve killed them. So, if you had never heard of this case until now, you understand why this has been widely debated across Russia for a long time. Was it UFOs? Did they see something they shouldn’t have and the government did a coverup? Was it wind? Was it a natural phenomenon? Can we rule the Yeti? There is no answer. But, there are a couple compelling theories.
One is that there was an avalanche. That our troupe of mountaineers made their way up Height 1079, staked the tent, got in, started to change out of their wet clothes, someone went to pee and saw the mountain falling, cried out over the roar as the snow plummeted down and those inside slashed the tent, then they all ran down the mountain, only to get stuck. Caught outside in bad weather with strong winds and were unable to make it back to the tent. Some of them had run too far and too hard through the dark—because remember it was night when this happened and also the moonrise wouldn't come until way, way early in the morning—and so they slipped and fell breaking bones and hitting their heads on the rocks.
The other theory is a little more strange. This is the theory I got from the book that inspired me to make this story into an episode. It’s called Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar published in 2013 and I highly recommend reading it because I glossed over some of the interesting details about the investigation, plus there’s a whole other part of this story where Donnie went to Russia and interviewed a lot of people, researched the case files, and tried to solve the mystery. And I didn’t even do the full list or debunking of the other theories, so that alone is worth checking out. He also recounts the story in such an interesting way jumping back and forth between viewpoints. He does a really good job of making you feel like you’re there with the hikers, so I definitely, definitely, definitely think you should read it too. I found it on the used book shelf in this really awesome store in Boulder, CO… called the Boulder Bookstore, when I was visiting my friends earlier this year. I only packed a backpack for the trip and so I couldn’t bring more than a couple books home, but now I want to go back just to stuff a suitcase. Or maybe just move there so I can go to the bookshop every day.
Anyway, Donnie’s theory comes from his interviews with Dr. Bedard who studies Atmospheric Infrasound within the NOAA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s basically sound waves travelling below the audible spectrum, so think of super, super low sounds and it’s beneath that. The thing is, just because we can’t hear these sounds doesn’t mean we don’t sense them at all. And it’s led a lot of scientists to investigate the psychological effects like feeling uneasy or upset, or even nauseous without any discernible source or reason why. Cities emit a lot of these sounds, but don’t get too scared or in your head about this—remember, we live full and happy lives in cities. But these low sounds can be used for good, like detecting early signs of earthquakes. There’s actually a ton of these detection devices around the world now that allow us to study events in new ways. Like when the chilly-a-binsk meteor hit Russia in 2013, there was a shockwave and damage to cities. Depending on the type of infrasound emitted, it can even make objects move like a subwoofer does but you can’t hear it and so it looks really ghostly.
The theory is that the shape of the mountain they were on, which some say is too shallow of an angle to produce avalanche fall, had something to do with it. It’s bald (just as the name Dead Mountain, or more properly Barren Mountain suggests), created a strange wind pattern known as Karmán Vortex Street. It’s when air currents hit a blunt object of a particular nature (like this mountain) and form these beautiful and strange vortices. It looks kind of like the way fern leaves grow back and forth on each side of the stem, so sort of stair-stepped, but on either side. And when this phenomenon occurs around the canary islands, the photos from space make it look like there’s a bunch of hurricanes. But these are just a “street” or line of spinning air going around the blunt-shaped side of the islands. So the idea is that these vortices occurred because at the exact right angle, the exact right time, the exact right temperature and wind speed, all lined up that night when they camped. This produced tornados of snow (if you’ve ever seen a dirt devil, it would be more like that than an actual tornado), plus the wind is still blowing snow around, so it’s hard to see how large these vortices are. And you know what a strong wind sounds like, so if you’ve never heard a tornado, it’s really loud, like a train passing right over you. Whoever was outside the tent taking a leak would’ve called out to the group to run but they were already thinking it’s an avalanche given that they were on a mountain and by the time they were out of the tent it would’ve looked like they were about to be hit by a wall of snow. The vortices would be audibly loud but also emitting infrasound which could’ve caused even more distress and unease, causing the group to freak out instead of think. And they’re all very capable mountaineers but almost all of them are in their early twenties, so I do think that plays a factor in how they reacted. Anybody would be right to run away screaming, that would be my first instinct, but I’ve noticed I have that tendency and over the years I’ve worked on becoming faster at moving past my first instinct and moving on to my second instinct, which is to analyze what’s happening. I’ve been working on that a lot recently in my climbing and it’s helped me so much with improving my technique. I’m not reacting to the holds, I’m actively thinking about where I want to go next. So, that’s my sub-theory, that they were running away as a knee-jerk reaction and it could also be attributed to some group-think, because of course if a couple people run out wildly, ripping a hole just to escape the tent you’re not just gonna sit there and wait for them to come back. So if there’s a takeaway here, it’s to do your best in chaotic and scary situations to think first. I don’t know if that was really possible here, but having the wherewithal to not go running off into the dark without clothes on could’ve saved their lives. Of course, that depends on what you believe. There could be a Yeti out there.
So anyway, that’s the best running theory I’ve heard, and I believe it. I like that it’s a little supernatural but not unreplicated. I am really curious though if anyone has further studied this slope for that phenomenon. I couldn’t find anything about it, but that to me would be the best way to resolve the case. I guess it’s not important to the furthering of society in any spectacular way but it would make ME feel better to know what happened.
Last thing to wrap this up, I didn’t mention it but one of the hiker’s tongues was missing. It seems like animals got to some of the bodies, but if the facts in this case feel familiar, it might be because True Detective: Night Country basically took the elements of this story and some of the theories, mixed them around in a pot, and dropped them in Alaska. I loved that season by the way, contentious opinion. I’ve heard some people thought the ending was lame but I really enjoy stories that resolve without tying up all the loose ends. So I won’t spoil anything but it seems like the supernatural is responsible for some of the events in that show, which I’m always into. I love something that feels both real and surreal at the same time.
Last but not least, quick shout out to my friend Carlos who grew up in Russia and graciously taught me all the correct pronunciations of the Russian names in this story. I told him “it’s not gonna be perfect, but I am gonna to try.” So thank you to Carlos for all your help!
Bye!
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Thanks for listening to Stick & Stone. You can follow along to find out about upcoming episodes at @stickandstonepod on Instagram. Support the show to get all episodes before the main feed on Patreon. If you want to watch the episodes, head to Stick and Stone Pod on YouTube. Follow the podcast wherever you listen, and leave a rating and review if you like the show. I hope you feel inspired to climb, and remember, always check your knots!
