In 1959, nine participants of a student expedition died in the mountains of the Urals, in the place that would later be called the Dyatlov Pass. Over the years, many conspiracy theories have arisen around the circumstances of their deaths - from an attack by a local tribe to secret military experiments and the murderous instincts of someone from the group. Research by Swiss scientists sheds new light on the mystery from 60 years ago. The mystery of the tragedy. What happened on the Dyatlov Pass? Anyone who had access to the investigative files would find that the circumstances of the deaths of Dyatlov's group members are very different from the others. However, it was not possible, as the documents were classified by the decision of the party authorities of the USSR.
When in February 2019, on the 60th anniversary of the unexplained events of Dyatlov Pass, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office reported on the progress of the resumed investigation into the case, prosecutor Aleksandr Kuriennoj stressed that some 75 hypotheses had been counted over the years. A year later, an avalanche was recognized as the official cause of the tragedy. Research by experts in Switzerland shows similar findings. Even in them, however, there is a certain "but". Although more than 60 years have passed since the tragic expedition, and the case files have been declassified, many people still do not consider the tragedy on the Dyatlov Pass closed. What actually happened in the Ural mountains and why is the matter so difficult to explain?
When the expected date of the group's return to its starting point has passed, the rescue team set out to search. On February 26, a group tent was found on the slopes of "Mount Death", some 20 km south of the destination, which was badly damaged. Items belonging to the group were left in it. Further down the mountain, under an old Siberian cedar, two bodies wearing only socks and underwear were found. Three other bodies, including Dyatlov's body, were found between the tree and the tent; they probably became hypothermic while trying to return to the camp. Two months later, the remaining four bodies were found in a ravine under a thick layer of snow. Several of the dead had serious injuries such as fractures to the chest and skull. Soviet authorities conducted an investigation to establish the causes of this strange drama, but closed it after three months, concluding that the deaths of the wanderers had been caused by a "force of nature". In the absence of survivors, the sequence of events on the night of February 1-2 is still unclear to this day and has given rise to countless more or less sophisticated theories, ranging from murderous yetis to covert military experiments. The most likely theory was also put forward by the Russian prosecutor's office after the investigation was reopened in 2019 at the request of the victims' relatives. However, the lack of evidence and the existence of strange elements failed to convince a large part of Russian society. According to Gaume and Puzrin, this was exactly what happened in 1959: Hikers made an incision in the snow-covered mountainside to pitch their tent, but the avalanche didn't come until hours later.
In their investigation, published in Communications Earth & Environment - a new journal from Nature Research - on January 28, Gaume and Puzrin try to address these issues. "We use snow friction data and local topography to prove that a small plate avalanche can occur on a gentle slope with few traces behind. On the night of the tragedy, one of the most important factors was the presence of katabatic winds, i.e. they lift the air by gravity down the slope These winds may have carried snow, which then accumulated uphill from the tent, due to a specific terrain feature that the team members did not know about. Two models developed for this study - analytical for estimation time to trigger an avalanche, created by ETH Zurich, and a numerical SLAB for estimating the impact of avalanches on the human body - will be used to better understand natural avalanches and their associated risks.
According to Kuriakoff, new autopsies and analysis of documents confirmed that most of the participants of the expedition died of a cold, and one person died of internal hemorrhage caused by numerous rib fractures. Prosecutors believe that this case is also the same as death as a result of being crushed by snow - Kuriakov described to journalists a tennis ball that breaks on the sides if it is crushed by a huge weight. Shortly after the press conference, Mr. Kuriakow, representatives of the Foundation named after Dyatlov Group, which represents, among others Relatives of the victims revealed that a few days ago, Mikhail Sharavin, a resident of Yekaterinburg, who participated in the search for participants of the Dyatlov expedition in 1959, died at the age of 85. Mikhail Sharavin was the first person to find the first tent of the expedition at the end of February 1959. It was the first trace of the missing people found. A day later, Sharavin was in a search party that found the first five bodies of the participants. Until the end of his life, Szarawin was very actively involved in the Foundation's work and was publicly active in cases related to the tragedy. He was in this group of experts on the subject who believed that the participants of the expedition had died as a result of a failed military experiment, which was conducted at a military base near the expedition's camp. This is one of the most popular conspiracy theories about the events of February 1959. The Dyatlov Pass tragedy is the subject of ongoing journalistic investigations, not only in Russia. There were films about the event from 61 years ago (including the Hollywood film by Renny Harlin from 2013), numerous books, and even a computer game produced in Poland. It is hardly surprising - the circumstances of the incident remain a mystery and may never be fully explained. You know this much: on January 25, 1959, a group of 10 students and graduates of the Polytechnic University in Śverdlovsk (today: Yekaterinburg) left the town of Iwdiel in the northern Urals. It was headed by an experienced participant in many similar expeditions, 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov (who was named after the pass after the crash). The destination was Mount Otorten, which they did not finally reach.
In January 2021, a research paper by Johan Gaume and Alexander M. Puzrin was published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment, in which scientists argue that the death of tourists could have been caused by a plate avalanche. The evidence for this thesis is, among others, the katabatic wind, which could blow a lot of snow on the slope, which was cut by tourists in order to put up a tent. The descent of a small plate avalanche would explain the fatal head and chest injuries in several participants of the expedition and would also explain why the avalanche did not leave any traces and why it did not come down until several hours after the slope was cut. A record avalanche, surprising the students, would also explain why some of them were not fully dressed while escaping from the tent. The unexplained circumstances of the tragedy in the Urals caused a large myth of mystery to arise around the accident and attempts were made to explain it in various ways. One popular hypothesis was that the deaths of students may have been the result of weapons tests carried out in the area by the Russian military. Proponents of more conspiracy hypotheses, however, argued that members of the expedition died because they were suspected of collaborating with intelligence (or counterintelligence). In the depths of YouTube, you can also find films that try to link the tragedy with the prowling ... Yeti - this hypothesis was even the main topic of the documentary "The Riddle of the Russian Yeti" on "Discovery".
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