Confirmed: Avalanche is likeliest explanation for tragic Dyatlov Pass incident

Nine young Russian hikers died in 1959 during a cross-country skiing trek through the northern Ural Mountains. All of the hikers were very experienced, so investigators were stumped as to why they fled into the wilderness in the middle of the night. Two scientists published a hypothesis last year that the group had been surprised by a sudden slab slide. In a recent paper published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, scientists address the concerns of their critics.

The Dyatlov Pass incident is named after a radio engineering student who organized the expedition. A mountain pass near the site was named after it. He and his fellow travelers were students at the Ural Polytechnical Institute. On January 27th, one of the members, Yuri Yudin, turned back because of his rheumatism and knee and joint pain. He was one of the original 10.

The hikers moved through the pass on the morning of February 1 according to diaries and cameras recovered from the campsite. They wanted to set up camp on the other side. They lost their bearings because of snowstorms and poor visibility and ended up further west on the eastern slope. The team decided to set up camp in a forested area just under a mile down the road and pitch their tents there for the night. udin speculated that the leader of the team might not want to lose the altitude they had gained.

Friends and family assumed the party had been delayed because the group was expected to return on February 12. As the days went by, relatives requested a search-and-rescue party. Rescuers found the abandoned tent covered in snow on February 26. The belongings and shoes of the hikers were still inside. Nine sets of footprints led to a nearby wood after the tent was ripped open.

A gruesome discovery

The first two bodies were found under a pine. The men were barefoot and in their underwear next to the fire. Three more bodies were found between the pine tree and the campsite, posing in a way to suggest they were trying to get back to the tent. The bodies of the last four team members were buried under 13 feet of snow.

The first five bodies were all found to have died of cold, but Slobodin had a small crack in his skull that was not deemed to have been fatal. The four bodies discovered later seemed to tell a different story. Dubinina and Zolotaryov had major chest injuries that required a force comparable to a car crash, while Thibeaux-Brignolle had major damage to the skull. There were no external wounds that could be linked to the bone fractures.

The faces and heads of these four had some soft tissue damage. The bodies of Zolotaryov, Dubinina, and Kolevatov all had missing parts of their bodies. Post-mortem injuries were gruesome. The victims had died within an hour of their last meal.

Many theories have been proposed to explain the tragedy. The initial suspects were indigenous reindeer herders in the area, called the Mansi, but only the hikers footprints had been found, and the force of the blows was inconsistent with a violent Mansi attack. The group panicked in response to the noise, or there was a secret missile or nuclear weapons test. The original investigation concluded that the hikers deaths were due to a compelling natural force.