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Professor Dr. Johan Gaume, the head of Switzerland's Snow Avalanche Simulation Laboratory, sat before his television screen. But for such a decorated researcher and scientist, the film he was watching may surprise you. It was an animated children’s film. One you’ve definitely heard of. But he wasn’t watching it for fun. He was watching it for science. Dr. Gaume was watching Disney’s Frozen, an animated film about two sisters, one of whom has magical snow and ice powers that she can’t control. And when she loses control of those powers, the entire kingdom becomes covered in snow and ice. And it was that snow that intrigued Dr. Gaume. Because the animation of the way it lay on the slopes and hills, the way it moved, was so realistic, so life-like, he realized that it just might help him crack a 60 year old mystery. Back in 1959, eight experienced hikers died under mysterious circumstances while trying to reach Russia’s Mount Otorten in early February under sub-zero conditions. And you may thinking Russia, February, sub-zero conditions… what’s so mysterious about that? But the peculiar way the bodies were found has led to countless speculation and conspiracy theories ever since, from various natural disasters, to a military cover up of secret weapons testing gone wrong, yetis, and even aliens. So what really happened to the Dyatlov nine? And what can Disney’s Frozen prove or disprove? Let’s fix that.

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I have a mystery for you this week. A real mystery. One that gets more confusing the more you dig in. Very little about this story makes sense and for every plausible theory, there’s at least one detail to seemingly disprove it. But at the heart of this story, conspiracy theories aside, you’ll find nine young lives, taken too soon and their heroic attempts to save themselves, and each other from, something. We’re just not quite sure what that something was.

Our story begins in January of 1959. 23 year old Igor Dyatlov, a 5th year radio engineering student at Russia’s Ural Polytechnic Institute wants to go for a hike, well a ski really, they’re on skis in the Ural Mountains. The Ural mountains are what separate the Europe part of Russia from the Asia part of Russia. But this isn’t just a quick day trip sort of skiing adventure. Igor is an experienced hiker, skier, explorer. He’s planning a trip that spans 200 miles, all the way to Mount Otorten, a trip that will take around 18 days. And of course he wants some of his buddies to go with him. So he gathers a group of fellow students, all experienced hikers and skiers themselves. In all there are 8 men and 2 women in the group. 9 of them are students in their early twenties. There’s Igor Dyatlov, the group leader, Yuri Doroshenko, Alexander Kolevatov, Yuri Krivonischenko, Rustem Slobodin, Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignolle, Yuri Yudin, and then the two girls Lyudmila Dubinina and Zinaida Kolmogorova. And then there’s one more man, Semyon Zolotaryov but he’s not a student. He’s actually an instructor at their school. And he’s quite a bit older than the rest. He’s 38 while the others are like 20, 21, 22, 23 years old. I’m not totally sure why he went with them except that he was supposed to go on another similar ski trip that he didn’t end up being able to go on and so maybe he joined this one just to fill that void. But this is an impressive group. They’re all very athletic, experienced in extreme conditions and they’re also very intelligent. Most of them were studying either physics, engineering, or economics. Semyon Zolotaryov, the instructor, the older guy, had fought in World War II. They know what they’re doing. They’re not just wandering out into the frigid Russian wilderness clueless.

But there are signs of trepidation. Not from the hikers but from their families. Igor’s little sister Tatyana who was 12 years old at the time reports in a BBC article that her mother had tried to stop Igor from going on the trip, arguing that he was about to graduate and he needed to be working on his thesis. Tatyana says quote “But he pleaded with her, just one last time Mama! Just one last time! And indeed it was his last time,” end quote. Zinaida, one of the two girls, sent a letter to her family from a small settlement called Vizhay which was where they were going to be setting out from. She wrote quote “We are going camping, ten of us and it’s a great bunch of people. I have all the warm clothes I need, so don’t worry about me. How are you? Has the cow calved yet? I love her milk!” end quote. She’s clearly not worried. She’s just going on this little three week long camping skiing trip through the Ural Mountains. She’ll be fine.

So their school was in a city called Sverdlovsk at the time but today it’s called Yekaterinburg. So they had hopped on a train in Sverdlovsk that took them north a ways. At some point they get off the train and hop on a bus that takes them to that settlement, Vizhay which has a post office and like some small establishments. They stay for the night, Zinaida and Igor both send letters home. Lyudmila, the other girl, and the youngest member of the group at 20, writes in her journal about that night, January 25th quote “We are extremely lucky! Symphonie in Gold was showing at the village club. The image was a bit fuzzy, but that didn’t spoil our pleasure at all. Yuri Krivonischenko, sitting next to me, was smacking his lips and oohing with delight. This is real happiness, and it is hard to put into words. The music is just fabulous! The film really lifted our spirits. Igor was unrecognisable. He tried to dance, and even started singing: 'O Jackie Joe' [a song from the film],” end quote. And I’m just picturing these, kids, they’re just kids really, college students, in this village club which I imagine is like a restaurant, bar sort of thing, watching this movie, it’s a German movie, and they’re just elated. Lyudmila writes “This is real happiness, and it is hard to put into words.” And I’ve felt this way, I get this. Just, being young, being free, being out on an adventure with your friends. The world is your oyster. I didn’t appreciate these moments as much at the time they were happening though. I appreciate them now, in hindsight so much. But Lyudmila knows even then, this is real happiness. And it seems so simple, right, they’re in this weird backwoods town watching a movie in another language. But you have to understand, this is the Soviet Union. This is communist Russia. These kids have not grown up like American teenagers today. But by 1959, things are much better for them than they were for their parents. Lucy Ash writes in that BBC article quote “Igor Dyatlov and his fellow students belonged to a more optimistic generation than their parents who had suffered so much in the purges of the 1930s and then in WW2. There was a whiff of freedom in the air after decades of repression under Joseph Stalin… What’s known as “the thaw” under Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev opened up the Soviet Union to some economic reforms, international culture and sports competitions. Above all though, it was the golden age of Soviet science,” end quote. And we see that with these students. Physics, engineering, they are aspiring scientists.

Tatyana tells Lucy Ash in that BBC article that her big brother, Igor Dyatlov, the leader of the group, was determined to get into the Ural Polytechnic Institute. Ash reports quote “Competition for a place was fierce, and on a hot summer day Igor was confronted by a three-man selection panel. As sweat trickled down his face, an unimpressed professor turned to Igor: “If you’re so clever,” he snapped, “why don’t you fix our broken fan?” Unperturbed, Igor asked for a screwdriver. “He took it apart, explained it just needed oiling from time to time and switched it on,” laughs Tatyana. “And of course, he got his place.”’ end quote. So these kids are smart and they’re determined and they’re having fun. They are out here for happiness, for freedom.

They spend a night in Vizhay, mail some letters, watch that movie, and then the next day they catch a ride on a truck to a logging base called the 41st settlement. There Zinaida writes in her journal quote “It turns out that this is our last day of civilization and the last chance me and Lyuda had (that’s Lyudmila, the other girl), to sleep in beds. Tonight, we are going to be in a tent,” end quote. From there they hire a horse drawn sled to carry their supplies the last 15 miles to an abandoned mining settlement called North-2. And from there, it’s time to set out on their skis, backpacks loaded down with supplies. But one member of the group, Yuri Yudin, is struggling. He has sciatic nerve issues that are getting in the way of him being able to complete this strenuous 3 week trek. Zinaida writes quote “Yuri Yudin is leaving us today. His sciatic nerves have flared up again and he has decided to go home. Such a pity. We distributed his load in our backpacks,” end quote. And Yudin takes that sled back to civilization. Leaving his friends at the start of their journey.

So we’re down to 9 - 6 male students, 2 female students, and one male teacher. They set out towards Mount Otorten. This area is uninhabited except by the Mansi people who are indigenous reindeer herders who have lived here for at least hundreds of years. There’s also the ruins of an old prison camp. But, for the most part, they’re on their own at this point. In one of her last journal entries, Zinaida writes quote “There was sun in the morning, now it’s very cold. All day long we followed the river. At night we’ll camp on a Mansi trail. I burned my mittens and Yuri’s jacket at the camp fire – he cursed me a lot!” end quote. Lucy Ash reports in her article that Zinaida used to date Yuri Doroshenko but he had broken up with her. She writes quote “a letter to a friend discovered months later, revealed [Zinaida] was nervous about going on the trip with him. [It reads] “I really don’t know how I’ll feel. It’s really hard, because we are together and yet we’re not together." She had fallen in love with him during a previous expedition when he chased off a brown bear with a geologist’s hammer,” end quote. Which like, what? These kids are crazy. But I include that because it’s a reminder that they’re just kids, with crushes and broken hearts, dancing and laughing, watching a film together.

On the night of Februrary 1st, they pitched their tent in kind of a strange place. It’s an odd choice for experienced hikers because it’s not very well protected. According to one of my sources they also put their tent up wrong. Also strange for experienced hikers but, at the same time, these are engineers, whatever, they can put their tent up however they want. But the location was strange because there was a much more protected, wooded area just a little ways down. But, for whatever reason, they stopped sort of on the slope, maybe they didn’t want to lose any altitude, they didn’t want to backtrack and have to reclimb. I don’t know but it’s super cold and super super windy that night. And so, in order to create a windblock, they sort of dig down into the slope and create this little flat space to nestle their tent with like a wall of snow behind it to block it from the wind. And that is the last thing that we know for certain they did. They pitched their tent. There’s a photograph of them doing this as it starts to get dark that day. There’s actually a ton of photographs that they took that have been released to the public. I’m going to link a website to check those out dyatlovpass.com in the description.

They were supposed to return around February 12, but Igor Dyatlov had told Yuri Yudin, the guy who had to head back early because of his sciatica, that he thought it would take them longer than that. The weather was bad. It was going to take longer than expected. So no one was too worried when they didn’t turn back up on February 12th or even for a few days after. But by February 20th, people started to worry. Their families started to worry. They contacted the University, the Polytechnic Institute which sent out a search party of student volunteers. Which seems kind of crazy. “Like 7 students and a professor just disappeared, now y’all get out there and find them.” But that’s, yeah it’s a group of student volunteers and Mikhail Sharavin was one of them. He recalls in Lucy Ash’s BBC article being flown to the area by helicopter along with other student volunteers. Once in the area, they split into small groups and started following ski tracks. The ski tracks ended at the edge of a forest and then footprints could be seen from there climbing up a slope. According to Mikhail quote “We had gone about 500 metres when on the left I saw the tent. Part of the canvas was poking out but the rest was covered in snow. I used an ice pick lying nearby to uncover the entrance,” end quote. Here’s what the search party reported. Inside the tent they found a blanket and some rucksacks lined up neatly and a pile of boots in the corner. They also found a map with the route marked on it, official papers, money, and a small flask of alcohol. Next to that was a plate with salo which is like a white pork fat on it. Salo is a traditional Slavic dish and it’s super high calorie so it’s something hikers would have carried with them to easily get fat and protein. Mikhail says quote “It was sliced up as if they were getting ready to have supper or something and didn’t have time.” They also noticed that the tent had been cut open from the inside with a knife. Perhaps the very knife that someone had just been using to slice up the salo. So they didn’t use the tent entrance, they cut open the canvas side of the tent to get out.

And they must have been in a hurry coming out of the tent because the footprints leading away, and the pile of boots in the corner, show that most left barefoot. They were either barefoot, in socks, or in the case of one set of prints, wearing only one boot. So no one, not a one of them, had proper footwear on to trudge through the snow in sub freezing temperatures. So, they were clearly in some kind of hurry to get out of the tent because they didn’t put their boots on. But, weirdly enough, the footprints also suggested that they were walking away from the tent, not running. So, weird to be in enough of a hurry to not put your boots on but not enough of a hurry to run once you were out. Another weird thing about the footprints to me is that, this discovery is being made 20 some days later and it was windy and it was snowy and they’re on a slope and, just how were the footprints in the snow still there? I don’t get how the footprints didn’t get filled in with snow, covered up, buried. But all of the sources talk about these footprints. Mikhail Sharavin who was there when the tent was discovered talks about these footprints. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about snow can explain that one to me. No one else seems to be questioning it. I find it quite odd. But anyway, their tent is there sort of partially covered in snow. The footprints are there somehow not at all covered in snow. The hikers are not there.

Another inconsistency I found about the finding of the tent. Mikhail reported finding a flashlight sitting on top of the tent that still worked when he switched it on. Another source said the flashlight had been left on, possibly so that they could find their way back to the tent in the dark. But if Mikhail switched it on, then it hadn’t been left on. You can’t switch on something that’s already on. And so I think a lot of the details of the case have gotten confused throughout the years through retelling and people making assumptions, right, like a game of telephone. But anyway, they find the tent on February 26th. That night they sit around a campfire nearby and pass around the small flask of alcohol that had been found in the tent. Mikhail proposes a toast to the health of those in the Dyatlov group. He says quote “We shared it out between us – there were 11 of us, including the guides. We were about to drink it when one guy turned to me and said, ‘Best not drink to their health, but to their eternal peace,” end quote. So it seems some in the group, Mikhail at least, were still suffering under the delusion that they may find the hikers alive while others realized pretty immediately, they don’t have a tent, they don’t have shoes on. It’s been weeks. There’s no way.

And sure enough, the next day, on February 27th, they discover the first of the bodies just a few hundred yards from the tent. Mikhail says quote “We approached a cedar tree and when we were 20 metres away, we saw a brown spot – it was towards the right of the trunk. And when we got closer we saw two corpses lying there. The hands and the feet were reddish-brown,” end quote. This was Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko. They were both wearing only their underwear. Near them was the remains of a campfire and it looked like someone had climbed a nearby tree and broken off the lower branches to use as kindling for the fire. Another source suggested someone climbed the tree to look for the tent and accidentally broke off the branches as they climbed. So, take your pick. One of the weirdest things about this discovery is, not that they’re only wearing underwear that will make more sense later, but one of them, Yuri Krivonischenko, appeared to have bitten off a piece of his own knuckle. And at first I was like, well, I mean maybe an animal did it after he died, but no. The piece of knuckle is in the man’s mouth. And I cannot make sense of why he would do that except that maybe he was freezing to death and had no sensation and was like trying to see if he could feel something by biting his knuckle except he couldn’t so he bit way too hard and accidentally bit off a piece. That’s all I can think of. Because both of these men had died of hypothermia. They froze to death. Krivonischenko also had burns on his body, presumably from the fire. So I think he’s just like hurting himself because he can’t feel anything. He can’t feel the pain so he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.

Next they found Igor Dyatlov. He was dressed. He wasn’t in his underwear but he was shoeless lying face down in the snow holding on to a birch branch. Zinaida’s body was lying in the snow nearby. Ash says quote “from the position of her body it seemed as if she had been desperately trying to scramble back uphill towards the tent,” end quote. So Igor and Zinaida seem to be trying to make their way back to the tent while the other two were over in the tree line by the fire. I don’t know why Igor was clutching a birch branch. Was it firewood? Why was he taking it back to the tent? Had he tried to light it on fire like a torch so he could see? I’d love to know if it had been burnt. Ash notes that there was a bright red bruise on the right side of Zinaida’s torso as if she had been hit with a baton. But both of these two had also died of hypothermia.

On March 5, they find another body not far from Igor and Zinaida’s. Also on his way back up the hill towards the tent they find Rustem Slobodin. He was much better dressed than the others. He had on a long sleeve undershirt and sweater, two pairs of pants, four pairs of socks, and one felt boot on his right foot. Two pairs of pants, four pairs of socks and then the other guys were in their underwear. This leads me to believe that Rustem maybe took clothes off his dead friends and put them on. So it makes me think he died after them, after the two Yuris at least who were found practically naked near the fire. Of note, Rustem also had a fractured skull although his cause of death was ultimately hypothermia like the other four found in this area.

So they’ve found 5 of the missing ski hikers, the two Yuris, Igor Dyatlov the leader, Zinaida, one of the girls, and Rustem Slobodin. But four are still missing: the other girl, Lyudmila, the older teacher guy Semyon Zolotaryov, Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignolle, and Alexander Kolevatov, all still missing. Their bodies wouldn’t be discovered for a few more months. According to a History.com article, in May, when some of the snow began to melt, a Mansi hunter discovered the remains of what appeared to be a snow den. Like a makeshift shelter that someone had dug out of the snow. And inside that snow den, they found the last four bodies. BBC says they were found in a ravine farther into that wooded area than where they found the campfire. So they’re in a ravine full of snow, they try to dig a shelter out of the snow, they end up dying in there. But what’s weird about this group of four is that they didn’t necessarily die of hypothermia like the rest. I mean maybe they did but they also had serious, potentially life threatening injuries. Nicolas had a fractured skull like Rustem but his was so severe that he actually had pieces of his skull embedded in his brain. Like, serious skull fracture. Lyudmila, the other girl, and Semyon, the teacher both had crushed chests with multiple broken ribs and Semyon had an open wound on the right side of skull that exposed the bone. Alexander Kolevatov had a wound behind his ear and what Lucy Ash calls a quote “oddly twisted neck.” Also of note, Lyudmila was missing her eyes and her tongue and part of her lips and Semyon was missing his eyes. And that seems like a crazy detail but it’s really not that crazy. They had been out there for months. It’s very likely that their eyes and Lyudmila’s tongue had been eaten by animals, scavengers. These are soft parts and they’re easier to eat. So it’s not like aliens were harvesting their eyeballs or anything like that. But these guys were beat up. They had been subjected to something very violent. They were also better dressed than the first bodies that were found and farther away from camp. And they were wearing clothing that obviously wasn’t theirs. Lyudmila was wearing Yuri Krivonischenko’s burnt torn pants and she had someone’s torn jacket wrapped around her left foot and shin. So this leads me to believe that this group died later than the others. They were able to remove clothes from the dead and put them on before dying themselves. But this was also the severely injured group.

So, what the heck happened? They launch an investigation into the deaths. At one point they accuse the Mansi, the indigenous group in the area because, why not. They theorize that the Mansi had attacked the hikers for trespassing on their land or something. But here’s where the footprints come in again. There were 8 or 9 sets of orderly, though barefoot, footprints leading away from the tent. There was no sign of a struggle.There were no Mansi attacker footprints anywhere. So they pretty quickly rule this out. But also, the injuries are not consistent with something inflicted by humans. Even humans with weapons. These injuries were caused by something much bigger and stronger than a human. Something comparable only to a car accident. These are car accident injuries. And so the Mansi are ruled out. Attacks by any animals are also ruled out. No footprints, wrong type of injuries.

Some people start to point fingers at the government. Was the government covering something up? We know the Soviet Union did this. If you listened to my episode about Chernobyl, episode 16, then you know all about the secrecy, the iron curtain. Traces of radiation discovered on a couple of the victim’s clothing strengthened these accusations. People started to wonder if maybe the government had been testing nuclear weapons or something in this area and it had gone wrong and now they were trying to cover it up. But the radiation has a rational explanation as well. According to Becky Little writing for History.com quote “This radioactivity on the clothes could be explained by the fact that two years before, there had been a nuclear incident known as the Kyshtym disaster. One of the hikers on the trip had lived in the contaminated zone, and another had helped with the clean-up,” end quote.

Others theorized that the mythical yeti, which is like an arctic big foot, was to blame but once again, the footprints. If there are no Mansi footprints and no bear footprints or wolf footprints or whatever, certainly there are no Yeti footprints either. Some have proposed that maybe something happened with one of the members of the group, he lost his mind somehow, went crazy and they were fleeing from one of their own. There’s not really any evidence of that either. And then there are the orange lights. Lucy Ash interviews 80 year old Sanka, a Mansi woman living in the area at the time. Sanka says about that night quote “We were coming back from the forest and we could see the village ahead of us. This bright, burning object appeared. It was wider at the front, and narrower at the back, with a tail, and there were sparks flying off it,” end quote. Ash goes on quote “Perhaps it was a comet, but Sanka says the village elders, who also witnessed this burning object, warned it was a bad omen - something harmful. So were the mysterious lights in the night sky celestial or man-made?” end quote. And did they have anything to do with what happened to the Dyatlov victims?

Investigators concluded in May of 1959 that there was no crime committed, there was no guilty party and so they ended the investigation and blamed the deaths on quote “a compelling natural force.” But the families of the victims always suspected that the military was somehow to blame. That they were covering something up. Igor’s sister Tatyana tells Ash quote ““What went on up there is hard to say. The families were told, ‘You will never know the truth, so stop asking questions.’ So what could we do? Don’t forget, in those days if they told you to shut up, you would be silent,” end quote.

Another prominent theory that emerged was the slab avalanche theory, a compelling natural force. A slab avalanche happens when a big chunk of snow, like a sheet of snow all stuck together, breaks away from a weaker layer of snow underneath and slides down a hill. It’s different than a traditional avalanche which is just like a bunch of loose snow falling down a hill. It’s also a lot more dangerous because this chunk of snow has force and weight behind it. Now, an avalanche had kind of been ruled out initially. There were a lot of counterarguments against it. First of all, avalanche victims usually die of asphyxiation, they get buried under snow and suffocate, not blunt force trauma. Also, the slope where they put their tent was not believed to be steep enough for an avalanche to happen. It wasn’t in an avalanche prone spot. According to Wikipedia, over 100 expeditions have been made to that area since and none of them have reported conditions that would cause an avalanche. Plus, there was no evidence that an avalanche had occurred. According to Wikipedia quote “An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area. The bodies found within a month of the event were covered with a very shallow layer of snow, and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well; this would have caused more serious and different injuries in the process and would have damaged the tree line,” end quote. And then we also come back to the footprints. They walked away from the tent. They didn’t run like one might expect if they were fleeing from an avalanche. So how could there have been an avalanche without any signs of an avalanche?

Amazingly, Russia reopened the Dyatlov investigation in 2019 and in a report they released in 2020, they lean heavily into the slab avalanche theory. According to a Smithsonian Magazine article by Meilan Solly quote “the official findings suggested that a torrent of snow slabs, or blocky chunks, surprised the sleeping victims and pushed them to seek shelter at a nearby ridge. Unable to see more than 50 feet ahead, the hikers froze to death as they attempted to make their way back to their tent,” end quote. But, obviously that doesn’t answer all the questions. There are still major counterarguments that that report does nothing to quell. If they were sleeping, why had they just cut up that pork fat and left it out on a plate like they were about to eat it? But if they weren’t sleeping, why were they undressed? Did they undress later, after they left the tent? It seems some of them possibly took clothes off the dead to wear. Did some of them fall victim to paradoxical undressing? We know this is a thing that happens when people are freezing to death. They feel a burning sensation and so they start to take off their clothes. You see how you can just go around and around in circles on this. So much of it doesn’t make sense. And like I said, this 2020 report did very little to address the counterarguments to the avalanche theory.

That’s when avalanche researcher Dr. Johan Gaume watches Disney’s Frozen and is impressed with how realistic the animated snow is. So impressed that he actually reaches out to Disney animators to get his hands on the code they used to computer animate the snow. According to Solly quote “they simulated a slab avalanche, drawing on snow friction data and local topography (which revealed that the slope wasn’t actually as shallow as it had seemed) to prove that a small snowslide could have swept through the area while leaving few traces behind,” end quote. But would it have inflicted the type of injuries the victims were found with? Injuries consistent with a car accident? Avalanches typically kill people by asphyxiation. Using the snow animation code from Disney’s Frozen and a study conducted by General Motors in the 1970s, Gaume and fellow researcher Alexander Puzrin sought to find out. Puzrin tells Robin George Andrews in a National Geographic article quote “We discovered that, in the 70s, General Motors (GM) took 100 cadavers and broke their ribs, hitting them with different weights at different velocities,” end quote. So they’re trying to figure out what happens to people's bodies during a car accident and they’re using actual dead bodies to do this. Flash back to the body snatchers episode. Gaume and Puzrin take this study, the numbers they came up with in this study, the figures right, and then they use the Disney code to simulate a small slab avalanche and how much force that would have and could it break ribs and fracture skulls. Puzrin said that, according to their simulation, a quote “16-foot-long block of hefty snow could, in this unique situation, handily break the ribs and skulls of people sleeping on a rigid bed,” end quote. But they also concluded that these injuries would not be immediately fatal. Those who were injured would have been able to get out of the tent, make their way down the slope, and then likely died later of their injuries. Solly says quote “those who had sustained less serious blows likely dragged their injured companions out of the tent in hopes of saving their lives,” end quote. But then what about the footprints? 8 or 9 sets of calmly walking footprints. Where are the drag marks? Wouldn’t there be drag marks?

Jim McElwaine, a geohazards expert at Durham University in England sees holes in it too. He wasn’t involved in the study at all but he tells National Geographic that the research quote “doesn’t explain why these people, after being hit by an avalanche, ran off without their clothes on into the snow. If you’re in that type of harsh environment it’s suicide to leave shelter without your clothes on. For people to do that they must have been terrified by something. I assume that one of the most likely things is that one of them went crazy for some reason. I can’t understand why else they would have behaved in that way unless they were trying to flee from someone who’s been attacking them,” end quote. But then again, the injuries were not consistent with those inflicted by a human. The footsteps were walking, not running. None of it makes sense.

So, here’s me trying to make sense of it, if it were a slab avalanche like Gaume and Puzrin tried to prove. They’re sleeping in their tent. I don’t know why they have food left out. But they’re definitely sleeping because they’re undressed which you would only really do to get into your sleeping bag. Maybe someone woke up early and started to cut up the pork fat, someone who was found better dressed, Igor or Rustem maybe. One or two of them wake up, get out of their sleeping bags, put on their clothes but not their shoes and start to cut up the pork fat for breakfast. The others are still sleeping. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, big chunks of icy snow fall on the tent from above, from the ledge above the tent from where they had cut down into the slope to create a wind block. These chunks hit half of the hikers, the ones who are sleeping on that side of the tent. They sustain fractured skulls and crushed ribs but they’re still alive, dazed but alive. Those who are unhurt, the Yuris, Igor, Zinaida, they spring into action. That was just a few chunks. There might be a full blown avalanche coming. They have to get out of the tent and down the slope to the tree line where they’ll be safe. They help their injured comrades up. They don’t have time to put on clothes or shoes, there’s an avalanche coming. The snow that’s already fallen has covered the opening to the tent so they grab the knife from the plate of sliced pork fat, their uneaten breakfast, and cut their way out the backside of the tent. They walk away from the tent, walk not run, because they’re supporting the injured ones, holding them up. They make their way down the slope and into the relative shelter of the trees. They make a fire. And here's where I sort of lose the trail. Because the mostly uninjured ones were found near the fire, dead from hypothermia. The badly injured ones were together in that snow den farther away. So maybe they weren’t injured in the tent. Maybe none of them were too badly injured when the snow fell on the tent, they all walked away. They started the fire. Three went back to try to find the tent again but died before they reached it. Two of them died at the fire site, I’m not really sure why because they had successfully made a fire. Maybe they couldn’t keep the fire lit. It was really windy and the other four took their clothing and headed off to make that snow shelter. Maybe they got injured after that. Maybe the snow shelter collapsed on them? Is that enough force? Probably not. Maybe a different slab avalanche got them after they separated from the others who had died? How are the injured ones outsurviving the uninjured ones? It just, you see how none of it perfectly adds up? And what about the orange lights in the sky reported by the Mansi people in the area? Is that just a total coincidence?

But Gaume and Puzrin’s Frozen simulated slab avalanche theory does make the most sense. An incident, a compelling force of nature, that induced fear and panic, causing them to flee without adequate clothing or shoes and then once they had fled, they were unable to find their way back to the shelter. It was dark, it was super windy, windblown snow limiting visibility, and they died. Some of hypothermia and some of their injuries. Gaume says in a Live Science article by Brandon Spektor quote “When [the hikers] decided to go to the forest, they took care of their injured friends—no one was left behind. I think it is a great story of courage and friendship in the face of a brutal force of nature,” end quote.

And it really is a great story of courage and friendship. We may never know for sure what happened to the 9 hikers found dead near Dyatlov Pass, named later for the group leader Igor Dyatlov. But we know they were happy to be out there. They were happy to be free. This is something I’ve been thinking about recently. This past spring my indoor outdoor cat of around 10 years disappeared. She went out one night and never came back. I hung up flyers, I canvassed the neighborhood, I posted in Facebook groups. I never found her. I’ve accepted the likelihood that a coyote probably got her, especially after reading that domestic cats make up around 20 percent of an urban coyote’s diet. And coyotes are rampant in my area right now. And that’s rough, you know, I almost felt guilty for letting her go outside, like I allowed something bad to happen to her. But after some thought, I don’t. I don’t feel guilty. She had a great life, the best life. She roamed as she pleased. She caught rats and frogs and proudly drug them up to the doorstep. She laid in the sunshine. She chased butterflies and pounced on clovers. She climbed trees. She knew the neighbor’s cats and they each reigned over their respective domains. And it made me think, you know, is it better to live a long, miserable, unfulfilling, lonely life trapped in relative safety, or a shorter but full and free and happy life with the risk of danger. Tatyana reports to Lucy Ash in that BBC article that her mother never forgave herself for letting Igor go. She says quote “She couldn’t ever come to terms with his loss - especially since it was such a terrible and incomprehensible death,” end quote. But I don’t think she could have stopped him, not really. The Dyaltlov nine were happy to take risks because they were alive. They were young and carefree, smiling and laughing, goofing around together in the final photos they took, singing and dancing as they watched a foreign film, setting off together into the wild white yonder, ready to take on the world. They were truly alive. “This is real happiness,” wrote Lyudmila, “and it is difficult to put into words.”

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode, there are lots, and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.

Information used in this episode was sourced from BBC, Smithsonian Magazine, Live Science, National Geographic, History.com, Wikipedia, Collider, and Business Insider, As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.

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