What Happened To The 9 Russian Hikers? The Dyatlov Pass Mystery

There are thousands of unsolved and mysterious cases from all around the world. When some terrible things happen in the mountain or the woods where nobody leaves it becomes difficult to solve the case/crime but the things that happen in the city are not easy to solve either.

One such mysterious case is the “Dyatlov Pass Incident” This is the top-most mystery in Russian history. Over the years there have been bundles of books, series, papers, and committees formed in order to find what had actually happened.

The deaths of a group of nine young people in the midst of fierce icebergs 62 years ago i.e., in 1959 have become stories reminiscent of suspense and thriller movies. The story has become so mysterious that none of the police or authorities could ever conclude what had actually happened.

On January 23, 1959, when a group of ten friends led by Igor Dyatlov, a 23- year-old radio engineering student at the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk region of the Soviet Union, headed for the snowy mountains.

The group included Igor Alekseyevich Dyatlov. Yuri Nikolayevich Doroshenko, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Dubinin, Georgiy (Yuri) Alexeyevich Krivonischenko, Alexander Sergeyevich Kolevatov, Zinaida Alekseevna Kolmogorova, Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin, Nikolai Vladimirovich Thibeaux-Brignolles, Semyon Alekseevich Zolotaryov, Yuri Yefimovich Yudin were Dyatlov’s accompanies.

All of them were snow trekking experts. Their goal was to reach a ten-kilometer mountain pass which is now infamously named the Dyatlov pass in the memory of the group.

 On January 28, Yuri Yudin who suffered from health issues discontinued his journey and departed away from going the other way. The next day the group of nine others set out in the direction of the Kholat Syakhi mountains.

Before Yudin’s departure, Dyatlov said that the team had to return by February 12 and promised to send a postcard but by February 19 neither the team came back nor did a postcard come their way. Yuri Yudin began to panic but he knew this kind of expedition would take longer than said and when their is bad weather and snowstorms it would take longer than expected.

On February 26^th the family of the team started to pressure the sports club and insisted on sending a rescue team. Accepting their request, the search for the Dyaltov team began. In the beginning, the team consisted of teachers, students, and local guides, but the army and police got involved sooner and helicopters were brought to the field.  after six days of searching, the rescue team found their tent on the mountainside of Kholat Syakhi.

The tent was buried in the snow and it was in a bad shape cut out all over. Nine pairs of footprints were found and the police followed the trail. Under a pine tree at a distance of 5 hundred meters, there were fragments of fire and 2 bodies next to it buried in snow. They were of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko in the freezing cold they were oddly buried in the snow just in their underwear.

 Three more corpses were found in the distance. They were of Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, Slabodin. And this is where Dyatlov’s diary was found among the other scattered objects that revealed many interesting things. The group had carried journals and cameras with them during the journey.

It took another two months of extensive search to find the remaining bodies.

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The earlier found bodies were immediately sent to autopsy and the cause of death was ruled out as hypothermia, but the four corpses that were finally found on May 4 had a different story to tell the skulls were fractured, the bones were broken, and their ribs were bruised the typical injured that would happen to a person who was involved in a car accident. Some had a missing tongue and two bodies had a missing eye. Every body retrieved had worn just a pair of socks and had their clothes torn or were wearing the clothes of the others.

And the speculations started to arouse that why would such professional hikers tear their own tent and run out naked in the middle of the snow mountain. What such incident would have triggered the cause for their run and how did they all die in different places, why were others clothes on their bodies and so much more conspiracies.

Dyatlov’s diary stated that the local tribesmen were had warned them not to go hiking. It all said how they felt someone had been watching them, but they thought it might be some snow leopard and carried on with their expedition.

He also mentioned that there was a large light lit up in the sky one night unsure of what it was.

There were speculations that they had been killed by some Russian missile testing, but this was ruled out of the investigation. There was no possibility of homicide either.

The police officer who was on the case stated in the 90s that he was shushed and the case was abruptly closed not by them but by the government. He said he had taken the wrath of the deceased family but he had not much choice.

He speculated that they might have died due to the fireball of the UFOs. He said the bodies discovered had burnt marks on them besides the surrounding trees had also odd marks on them which was not really common but nobody knows if this theory is real.

But people mostly believe that the Russian government closed the case because there was a secret weapon brewery in the middle of nowhere and the group had stumbled upon it in order to keep it secret, they had killed all of them. The other states that the lights mentioned in Dyatlov’s diary meant missiles. Russia was secretly and illegally testing missiles and it had gone wrong.

Additionally, the clothes that were obtained from the body and the body were oozing radiation and this was not common for people buried in snow to have radiation in their body. The doctors stated that as they were buried for long the radiation levels could be high but no one was ready to accept this theory.

Nevertheless, the Soviet people believe that the Russian government and the police are behind the death of the nine hikers. Even after 62 years, people believe that it was some kind of government conspiracy.

In 2019, a special investigation team was set up by the relatives of the deceased. But the government ruled out all theories stating that it had happened due to natural calamities. However, the families of the deceased did not accept the verdict.

Yuri Yudin‌, who survived the group, lived until 2013, died at the age of 75. Until his death, Yudin lived in survivor’s guilt. “I should not have left them in the middle. Would they have survived if I had been with them?” he said this over and over again to his girlfriend Lyudmila Dubinina. Every year on February 2, he used to pay a tearful tribute to his friends’ monument.

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