Alas, the deaths of tourists, and sometimes entire groups, are not uncommon. Going on a hike, people challenge the harsh nature. Winter outings are especially dangerous. If you believe the statistics, then from 1975 to 2004. in such campaigns, one hundred and eleven people died. But here we will talk about an absolutely unique, mysterious and still unsolved case of the death of a group of skiers who went to the Northern Urals. The place of death of all nine people was the Dyatlova Pass. Everyone knows where it is now, but then, in 1959, it was the nameless saddle of Mount Holutchahl. Now she bears the name of the head of the deceased expedition Igor Dyatlov. Despite the fact that more than 50 years have passed since the tragedy, the mysterious death of skiers continues to excite the minds.
Dyatlov Pass: location
Mount Kholat-Syakhil, or Kholutchahl, is located a little away from the Main Range of the Urals. Its height is not very large - one thousand ninety-six meters, but its location at the sixty-first degree of northern latitude makes it difficult for tourists to visit, especially in winter. Recall that the expedition led by Dyatlov went camping in late January. The deaths occurred on the night of the first to second of February. The saddle, where the Dyatlov Pass is located, is a jumper between Kholat-Syakhyl and a nameless peak 905 meters high. The very name Holutchahl is translated from Mansi as "the mountain of the dead." This peak is located in the Ivdelsky district in the northwest of the Sverdlovsk region, near the border with the Komi Republic.
Dyatlov expedition. The idea
The campaign was timed to the 21st Congress of the CPSU. The participants - students and recent graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute - decided to ski 350 kilometers in sixteen days, climbing the peaks of Oiko-Chakur and Otorten. According to the classification of complexity, such a trip belongs to the third category. Initially, there were ten participants in the expedition, and we know about the initial phase of the trip from the words of this surviving tourist - Yuri Yudin. The group left Sverdlovsk on January 23. Two days later, tourists reached the district center Ivdel. Then they moved by bus to the village of Vizhay. January 26, tourists in an open-body truck reached the village of loggers. This trip saved Yudin’s life, because he had a bad cold and had to leave the group. Somehow he got along with the others to an abandoned Gulag camp. But there he said goodbye to the members of the expedition, gave them his warm clothes and returned home. Further, the group was supposed to move along the Lozva riverbed, then overcome the Dyatlov pass, climb Kholatchakhl there, turn to the Auspiya stream ... It was assumed that by February 12, tourists would return to Vizhay.
What rescuers found
When in mid-February, relatives of tourists sounded the alarm, a search was organized. As a result, a tent was discovered with its side cut out (as it later became clear from the inside). There were no people in it, but there were personal belongings in place, a camera and, most importantly, warm clothes and shoes. From the entries in the diaries, you can restore the course of events until the evening of February 1. On the morning of this day, tourists built a storehouse in the valley of the Auspiya stream and began climbing Mount Holachahl. A strong wind prevented them. They went down to the jumper where the Dyatlov pass is located. The photo of the tent, which appears in the investigation, demonstrates that it was set according to all the rules. Skis served as the bottom, supported her poles, she was insulated with the outer clothing of the participants. Opening the side wall of the tent with a knife and the fact that outer clothing and shoes were left suggests that tourists left it in a hurry. What made people get out into the thirty-degree frost?
Body
Only one and a half kilometers down the slope from the place where the Dyatlov Pass is located, two bodies of men were discovered. One gets the impression that the tourists, who left the tent in a panic in half-dressed, decided to make a fire. At this point the forest has already begun. Although there was a lot of brushwood everywhere, tourists chopped a lot of branches from a tall tree. These two were only in their underwear, with burn marks on their bodies. 300 meters from these bodies, but towards the abandoned tent, the body of Igor Dyatlov was discovered. He was warmly dressed, but randomly, for example, in different socks. Even closer to the place where the Dyatlov pass is located, they found the girl’s corpse. She was not wearing shoes, although she was warmly dressed. On the corpse there were traces of nosebleeds. Nearby, they found the body of another man in one boots, wearing four pairs of socks. The location of these three bodies indicates that they died on the way from the campfire to the tent. And only in May, when the snow began to melt, the search team found in the ravine, 75 meters from the fire, the rest of the body. They were dressed better, but in someone else's clothes. With them was a knife and a large number of cut branches of spruce branches.
Mansion kill version
The investigation, opened in the case of death of people, did not discard any assumptions, even the most absurd. The first thing they questioned was three Mansi. But the sacred mountain for the indigenous people of the Northern Urals, Yalping-Nyer, is in a completely different place. And Mount Kholachakhl and the Dyatlov Pass (where it is) are considered to be cursed places near the Mansi, hunters do not go there. Later, the investigation found that the tent was cut from the inside. In this case, no other traces (neither human nor animal) were revealed, and all the things of the expedition members are in place. Forensic experts concluded that, with the exception of three people, all participants in the campaign died of hypothermia.
Avalanche Version
The place where the Dyatlov Pass is located is not dangerous in this sense. In addition, not so much snow fell. The bodies were covered with a layer of 10-20 centimeters. The exception was only those four bodies that were found in the ravine. But there the snow was sweeping with the wind. With this assumption, the fact of the integrity of the tent, as well as why the tourists ran down the hill, instead of, according to the rules, moving away from the avalanche, remains unclear.
Man-made version
Mansi, who testified, said they saw "fireballs" on the night of the deaths. They drew the phenomenon they observed, and also indicated the place where this happened - Dyatlov Pass. The burnt tops of young fir trees near the campfire testified to the alleged phenomenon. But at the same time, the snow did not melt, and the damage to the forest was not of a concentric nature. That is, there was no epicenter of any explosion. But from the investigation, the Mansi drawings disappeared. Nevertheless, it was decided to exhume the corpses and send them for additional research. Numerous rib fractures were found in the bodies found in the ravine. And the clothes of some tourists wore traces of a fairly significant radioactive contamination.
What happened on the night of February 1 to 2
Until the end, it was not possible to establish. Something prompted people in the middle of the night in a hurry, but without panic to leave the tent and the Dyatlov pass. Where the storehouse is located, the leader knew, and therefore he hoped to find everything there needed. The group moved down the slope, stretched into a chain. When the leader realized that he was leading the group in the wrong direction, that they left the Dyatlov pass, where there were stores with a lot of warm clothes, and were moving on another slope, he was probably instructed to light a fire and start building a temporary hut. But a small fire did not allow all members of the group to warm themselves. The fact that some tourists were stripped to underwear, while others were dressed in their pants and jackets, may indicate a fierce struggle for survival. At least three people decided to return to the tent. Why they could not overcome one and a half kilometers? What happened to the people left around the campfire? How has four members of the campaign thrown into a ravine? We will never find an answer to these questions. And the investigation closed the criminal case. The cause of death was recognized as "elemental force."