In the absence of survivors, the sequence of events on the night of February 1 and 2 is unclear to this day, and has led to countless more or less fanciful theories, from murderous Yeti to secret military experiments. The Soviet authorities investigated to determine the causes of the Dyatlov Pass Incident, but closed it after three months, concluding that a “compelling natural force” had caused the death of the hikers. Several of the deceased had serious injuries, such as fractures to the chest and skull. Two months later, the remaining four bodies were discovered in a ravine beneath a thick layer of snow. Three other bodies, including that of Dyatlov, were subsequently found between the tree and the tent site presumably, they had succumbed to hypothermia while attempting to return to the camp. The group’s belongings had been left behind.įurther down the mountain, beneath an old Siberian cedar tree, they found two bodies clad only in socks and underwear.
On February 26, they found the group’s tent, badly damaged, on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl-translated as “Death Mountain”-some 20 km (12.4 miles) south of the group’s destination. When the group’s expected return date to the departure point, the village of Vizhay, came and went, a rescue team set out to search for them. On January 28, one member of the expedition, Yuri Yudin, decided to turn back. On January 27, 1959, a 10-member group consisting mostly of students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute, led by 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov-all seasoned cross-country and downhill skiers-set off on a 14-day expedition to the Gora Otorten mountain, in the northern part of the Soviet Sverdlovsk Oblast.Īt that time of the year, a route of this kind was classified Category III-the riskiest category-with temperatures falling as low as -30☌ (-22☏). (Credit: Dyatlov Memorial Foundation) The rescue group responding to the Dyatlov Pass Incident discovered the tent on February 26, 1959. What I learned intrigued me.” Dyatlov group preparing the tent for their last night alive. “I asked the journalist to call me back the following day so that I could gather more information. Gaume, professor and head of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory (SLAB) and visiting fellow at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, had never heard of the case, which the Russian Public Prosecutor’s Office had recently resurrected from Soviet archives. In early October 2019, when an unknown caller rang Johan Gaume’s cell phone, he could hardly have imagined that he was about to confront one of the greatest mysteries in Soviet history.Īt the other end of the line, a journalist from The New York Times asked for his expert insight into a tragedy that had occurred 60 years earlier in Russia’s northern Ural Mountains-one that has since come to be known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident.
New research offers a plausible explanation for the Dyatlov Pass Incident, the mysterious 1959 death of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in what was then the Soviet Union.
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