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Yuri Yudin hugging Lyudmila Dubinina as he prepares to leave the group because of illness, as Igor Dyatlov looks on
A group was formed for a ski trek across the northern Urals in Sverdlovsk Oblast. The group, led by Igor Dyatlov, consisted of eight men and two women. Most were students or graduates of Ural Polytechnical Institute (Уральский Политехнический Институт, УПИ), now Ural State Technical University:
Igor Alekseievich Dyatlov (Игорь Алексеевич Дятлов), the group's leader, born January 13, 1936
Zinaida Alekseievna Kolmogorova (Зинаида Алексеевна Колмогорова), born January 12, 1937
Ludmila Alexandrovna Dubinina (Людмила Александровна Дубинина), born January 11, 1936
Alexander Sergeievich Kolevatov (Александр Сергеевич Колеватов), born November 16, 1934
Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin (Рустем Владимирович Слободин), born January 11, 1936
Yuri Alexeievich Krivonischenko (Юрий Алексеевич Кривонищенко), born February 7, 1935
Yuri Nikolaievich Doroshenko (Юрий Николаевич Дорошенко), born January 12, 1938
Nicolai Vasilievich (Vladimirovich?) Thibault-Brignol (Николай Васильевич (Владимирович?) Тибо-Бриньоль), born June 5, 1935
Alexander Alexandrovich Zolotariov (Александр Александрович Золотарёв), born February 2, 1921
Yuri Yefimovich Yudin (Юрий Ефимович Юдин), born 1937
The goal of the expedition was to reach Otorten (Отортен), a mountain 10 kilometers north of the site of the incident. This route, at that season, was estimated as "Category III", the most difficult. All members were experienced in long ski tours and mountain expeditions.
The group arrived by train at Ivdel (Ивдель), a city at the center of the northern province of Sverdlovsk Oblast on January 25. They then took a truck to Vizhai (Вижай) - the last inhabited settlement so far north. They started their march toward Otorten from Vizhai on January 27. The next day, one of the members (Yuri Yudin) was forced to go back because of illness.[1] The group now consisted of nine people.
Diaries and cameras found around their last camp made it possible to track the group's route up to the day preceding the incident. On January 31, the group arrived at the edge of a highland area and began to prepare for climbing. In a woody valley they cached surplus food and equipment that would be used for the trip back. The following day (February 1), the hikers started to move through the pass. It seems they planned to get over the pass and make camp for the next night on the opposite side, but because of worsening weather conditions, snowstorms and decreasing visibility, they lost their direction and deviated west, upward towards the top of Kholat Syakhl. When they realized their mistake, the group decided to stop and set up camp there on the slope of the mountain rather than moving 1.5 kilometers downhill to a forrested area which would have offered some shelter from the elements.[4] Yuri Yudin, the lone survivor, postulates that “Dyatlov probably did not want to lose the distance they had covered, or he decided to practice camping on the mountain slope."[5]
[edit] Tags:Ural Mountains,Kholat Syakhl,Mansi,Mountain Pass,Sverdlovsk Oblast,Ural State Technical University,Otorten,Ivdel,Vizhai,Snowstorms,Cedar,Inquest,Hypothermia,R-7,Paranormal,Ufos,Alter Ego,Yekaterinburg,Renny Harlin,Help Page,Corresponding Article,Copyright Compliance,Wikipedia:translation,Categories,Unsolved Deaths Or Murders,1959 In The Soviet Union,Sport Deaths In Russia,Unsolved Murders In Russia,Mysteries,All Articles Lacking Reliable References,Articles Lacking Reliable References From April 2009,Pages With Broken Reference Names,All Articles With Unsourced Statements,Articles With Unsourced Statements From March 2012, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Search and Discovery | 2>
Skiers setting up camp at about 5. p.m. on February 2, 1959. Photo taken from a roll of film found at the camp
It had been agreed beforehand that Dyatlov would send a telegraph to their sports club as soon as the group returned to Vizhai (Вижай). It was expected that this would happen no later than February 12, but Dyatlov had told Yudin that he expected to be longer,and so when this date had passed and no messages had been received, there was no reaction—delays of a few days were common in such expeditions. Only after the relatives of the travelers demanded a rescue operation did the head of the institute send the first rescue groups, consisting of volunteer students and teachers, on February 20.[1] Later, the army and police forces became involved, with planes and helicopters being ordered to join the rescue operation.
On February 26, the searchers found the abandoned and badly damaged tent on Kholat Syakhl. Mikhail Sharavin, the student who found the tent, said “the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the group’s belongings and shoes had been left behind.”[6] Investigators said the tent had been cut open from inside. A chain of eight or nine sets of footprints, left by people who were wearing socks, a single shoe or were barefoot, could be followed and led down toward the edge of nearby woods (on the opposite side of the pass, 1.5 km north-east), but after 500 meters they were covered with snow. At the forest edge, under a large old cedar, the searchers found the remains of a fire, along with the first two bodies, those of Yuri Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko, shoeless and dressed only in their underwear. The branches on the tree were broken up to five meters high, suggesting that a skier had climbed up to look for something, perhaps the camp. Between the cedar and the camp the searchers found three more corpses, Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova and Rustem Slobodin, who seemed to have died in poses suggesting that they were attempting to return to the tent.[1] They were found separately at distances of 300, 480 and 630 meters from the tree.
Searching for the remaining four travelers took more than two months. They were finally found on May 4 under four meters of snow in a ravine 75 meters further into the woods from the cedar tree. These four were better dressed than the others, and there were signs that those who had died first had apparently relinquished their clothes to the others. Zolotaryov was wearing Dubinina’s faux fur coat and hat, while Dubinina’s foot was wrapped in a piece of Krivonishenko’s wool pants.
[edit] | Tags: Investigation | 2>
A view of the tent as the rescuers found it on February 26, 1959. The tent had been cut open from inside, and most of the skiers had fled in socks or barefoot.
A legal inquest had been started immediately after finding the first five bodies. A medical examination found no injuries which might have led to their deaths, and it was concluded that they had all died of hypothermia. Slobodin had a small crack in his skull, but it was not thought to be a fatal wound.
An examination of the four bodies which were found in May changed the picture. Three of them had fatal injuries: the body of Thibeaux-Brignolle had major skull damage, and both Dubunina and Zolotarev had major chest fractures. According to Dr. Boris Vozrozhdenny, the force required to cause such damage would have been extremely high. He compared it to the force of a car crash. Notably, the bodies had no external wounds, as if they were crippled by a high level of pressure. Dubunina was found to be missing her tongue.[1] There had initially been some speculation that the indigenous Mansi people might have attacked and murdered the group for encroaching upon their lands, but investigation indicated that the nature of their deaths did not support this thesis; the hikers' footprints alone were visible, and they showed no sign of hand-to-hand struggle.[1]
Although the temperature was very low (around −25° to −30°C) with a storm blowing, the dead were only partially dressed. Some of them had only one shoe, while others had no shoes or wore only socks.[1] Some were found wrapped in snips of ripped clothes that seemed to have been cut from those who were already dead. However, up to 25 percent of hypothermia deaths are associated with so-called "Paradoxical undressing".[7] This typically occurs during moderate to severe hypothermia, as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss.[citation needed]
Journalists reporting on the available parts of the inquest files claim that it states:
Six of the group members died of hypothermia and three of fatal injuries.
There were no indications of other people nearby apart from the nine travelers on Kholat Syakhl, nor anyone in the surrounding areas.
The tent had been ripped open from within.
The victims had died 6 to 8 hours after their last meal.
Traces from the camp showed that all group members left the camp of their own accord, on foot.
To dispel the theory of an attack by the indigenous Mansi people, Dr. Boris Vozrozhdenny stated that the fatal injuries of the three bodies could not have been caused by another human being, "because the force of the blows had been too strong and no soft tissue had been damaged".[1]
Forensic radiation tests had shown high doses of radioactive contamination on the clothes of a few victims.[1]
Released documents contained no information about the condition of the skiers’ internal organs.
The final verdict was that the group members all died because of a "compelling unknown force". The inquest ceased officially in May 1959 as a result of the "absence of a guilty party". The files were sent to a secret archive, and the photocopies of the case became available only in the 1990s, with some parts missing.[1]
[edit] | Tags: Controversy surrounding investigation | 3>
Some researchers claim some facts were missed, perhaps ignored, by officials:[2][3]
12-year-old Yury Kuntsevich, who would later become head of the Yekaterinburg-based Dyatlov Foundation (see below), attended five of the hikers' funerals and recalls their skin had a "deep brown tan".[1]
The hikers' clothing was found to be highly radioactive.[1]
Another group of hikers (about 50 kilometers south of the incident) reported that they saw strange orange spheres in the night sky to the north (likely in the direction of Kholat Syakhl) on the night of the incident.[1] Similar "spheres" were observed in Ivdel and adjacent areas continually during the period of February to March 1959, by various independent witnesses (including the meteorology service and the military).[1] These were later proven to be launches of R-7 intercontinental missiles by Eugene Buyanov.[8]
Some reports suggest that there was a great deal of scrap metal in the area, leading to speculation that the military had utilized the area secretly and might have been engaged in a cover-up.[1]
[edit] | Tags: Aftermath | 2>
Mysterious snapshot from Yuri Krivonischenko's film
In 1967, Sverdlovsk writer and journalist Yuri Yarovoi (Юрий Яровой) published the novel Of the highest rank of complexity (Высшей категории трудности)[9] which was inspired by this incident. Yarovoi had been involved in the search for Dyatlov's group and at the inquest, including acting as an official photographer for the search campaign and in the initial stage of the investigation, and so had insight into the events. The book was written in the Soviet era when the details of the accident were kept secret, and Yarovoi avoided revealing anything beyond the official position and well-known facts. The book romanticized the accident and had a much more optimistic end than the real events – only the group leader was found deceased. Yarovoi's colleagues say that he had alternative versions of the novel, but both were declined because of censorship. Since Yarovoi's death in 1980 all his archives, including photos, diaries and manuscripts, have been lost.
Some details of the tragedy became publicly available in 1990 following publications and discussions in Sverdlovsk's regional press[citation needed]. One of the first authors was Sverdlovsk journalist Anatoly Guschin (Анатолий Гущин). Guschin reported that police officials gave him special permission to study the original files of the inquest and use these materials in his publications[citation needed]. He noticed that a number of pages were excluded from the files, as was a mysterious "envelope" mentioned in the case materials list. At the same time photocopies of some of the case files started to circulate among other unofficial researchers[citation needed].
Guschin summarized his research in the book The Price of State Secrets is Nine Lives (Цена гостайны - девять жизней).[3] Some researchers criticized it due to its concentration on the speculative theory of a "Soviet secret weapon experiment", but the publication aroused the public discussion, stimulated by interest in the paranormal. Indeed, many of those who remained silent for 30 years reported new facts about the accident. One of them was the former police officer Lev Ivanov (Лев Иванов), who led the official inquest in 1959. In 1990 he published an article[10] along with his admission that the investigation team had no rational explanation of the accident. He also reported that he received direct orders from high-ranking regional officials to dismiss the inquest and keep its materials secret after reporting that the team had seen "flying spheres". Ivanov personally believes in a paranormal explanation - specifically, UFOs.
In 2000, a regional TV company produced the documentary film The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass (Тайна Перевала Дятлова). With the help of the film crew, a Yekaterinburg writer, Anna Matveyeva (Анна Матвеева), published the fiction/documentary novella of the same name.[2] A large part of the book includes broad quotations from the official case, diaries of victims, interviews with searchers and other documentaries collected by the film-makers. The narrative line of the book details the everyday life and thoughts of a modern woman (an alter ego of the author herself) who attempts to resolve the case.
In September 2011, Ancient Aliens ("Aliens and Evil Places"; S03E10) on the History Channel featured a lengthy segment on the Dyatlov Pass incident.
Despite its fictional narrative, Matveyeva's book remains the largest source of documentary materials ever made available to the public regarding the incident. In addition, the pages of the case files and other documentaries (in photocopies and transcripts) are gradually published on a web forum for enthusiastic researchers: [2].
The Dyatlov Foundation has been founded in Yekaterinburg, with the help of Ural State Technical University, led by Yuri Kuntsevitch (Юрий Кунцевич). The foundation's aim is to convince current Russian officials to reopen the investigation of the case, and to maintain the "Dyatlov Museum" to perpetuate the memory of the dead hikers.
[edit] | Tags: Films | 2>
The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass Тайна перевала Дятлова: 2000, TAU (Ural Television Agency) (ТАУ - Телевизионное Агентство Урала, 2000г.)
Renny Harlin is due to make a film based on the incident. [11]
[edit] | Tags: References | 2>
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Svetlana Osadchuk (February 19, 2008). "Mysterious Deaths of 9 Skiers Still Unresolved". St. Petersburg Times. http://www.sptimes.ru/story/25093. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
^ a b c Матвеева Анна: "Перевал Дятлова", "Урал" N12-2000, Екатеринбург (Matveyeva Anna: "Dyatlov pass", "Ural"#12-2000, Ekaterinburg) [1][unreliable source?]
^ a b c Гущин Анатолий: Цена гостайны - девять жизней, изд-во "Уральский рабочий", Свердловск, 1990 (Gushchin Anatoly: The price of state secrets is nine lives, Izdatelstvo "Uralskyi Rabochyi", Sverdlovsk, 1990)[unreliable source?]
^ http://www.sptimes.ru/story/25093
^ http://www.sptimes.ru/story/25093
^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named http:.2F.2Fwww.sptimes.ru.2Fstory.2F25093; see the help page.
^ . PMID 541627.
^ The mystery of "fireballs" resolved (ru)
^ Яровой Юрий: Высшей категории трудности, Средне-Уральское Кн.Изд-во, Свердловск, 1967 (Yarovoi, Yuri: Of the highest rank of complexity, Sredneuralskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo, Sverdlovsk, 1967)[unreliable source?]
^ Иванов Лев: "Тайна огненных шаров", "Ленинский путь", Кустанай, 22-24 ноября 1990 г. (Ivanov, Lev: "Enigma of the fire balls", Leninskyi Put, Kustanai, Nov 22-24 1990)[unreliable source?]
^ http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33751
^ New Scientist (2007). "The word: Paradoxical undressing - being-human". New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19426002.600-the-word-paradoxical-undressing.html. Retrieved 2008-06-18.
^ Wedin B, Vanggaard L, Hirvonen J (July 1979). ""Paradoxical undressing" in fatal hypothermia". J. Forensic Sci. 24 (3): 543–53. PMID 541627.
[edit] | Tags: External links | 2>
Complete photo gallery including search party photos (Russian)
Some photos and text (Russian)
Interview of Anatoly Gushchin for Radio Liberty (Russian)
Mystery at Dyatlov Pass - A look at one of the most bizarre cases in Russian cross country skiing history Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena
The Dyatlov Pass Accident
EErmaktravel.com article on the incident, part of series of "spooky" sites
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Categories: Unsolved deaths or murders1959 in the Soviet UnionSport deaths in RussiaUnsolved murders in RussiaMysteriesHidden categories: All articles lacking reliable referencesArticles lacking reliable references from April 2009Pages with broken reference namesAll articles with unsourced statementsArticles with unsourced statements from March 2012Articles with unsourced statements from April 2012Articles with Russian language external linksArticles to be expanded from December 2011All articles to be expandedArticles needing translation from Russian Wikipedia
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