The Dyatlov Pass Incident
The mysterious events surrounding the Dyatlov Pass incident have captivated audiences for decades, as nine experienced hikers faced an unexplained and tragic fate in the Ural Mountains of Russia in 1959. As they embarked on their journey to prove their strength against the harsh Russian winter, their expedition took a dark turn when they failed to return by the expected date. Search parties discovered their tent abandoned and partially collapsed, with signs of a frantic escape, leading to a series of puzzling discoveries about their bodies, many of which showed severe injuries without clear external causes. The episode explores various theories ranging from avalanches and secret military tests to supernatural forces, ultimately suggesting that a combination of harsh environmental conditions and human error contributed to their demise. Through a detailed examination of the hikers' backgrounds and the timeline of their expedition, the story delves into the haunting legacy of their tragic adventure and the enduring questions that remain unanswered.
https://linktr.ee/remedialscholar
Remember to Follow, Rate and Share everywhere possible!!
Visit our:
Website: https://the-remedial-scholar.captivate.fm/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/RemedialScholar
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theremedialscholarpodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/remedial_scholar/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/remedialscholar
Merch Store: https://www.remedialmerch.art/
Support our friends:
West of Knowhere: https://open.spotify.com/show/1p7Lc7kOaFyXeCfeGVnFPK?si=19c44b96e5694025
Macabre Emporium: https://open.spotify.com/show/6jb0W9zgb23V0RKjvU5UOx?si=5991c6e0c7804fde
A Real Creature Feature: https://open.spotify.com/show/3rEwRTfTNIdBxJ3ZAqbQ4F?si=932aec3893784eaa
Dark Windows Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4AhkiNYlhjSJlOlNjIfN2N?si=5cac1cdf276f49a0
Transcript
There are very few things more terrifying than a Russian winter.
Speaker A:Just ask Napoleon or Adolf.
Speaker A:I'd argue that Russian mountains in winter might take the top spot.
Speaker A:Despite this, Soviet youths for the 20th century weren't deterred.
Speaker A:For them, sports tourism was a way to prove their strength and resilience as champions of the Soviet Union.
Speaker A:It wasn't just about adventure.
Speaker A:It was about enduring the harshest elements as a contrast to the perceived softness capitalist nations.
Speaker A: ndset of a group of hikers in: Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Only one of them survived.
Speaker A:The remaining nine were expected back by February 15.
Speaker A:When they didn't arrive, search parties were dispatched, and what they found was a grim and puzzling scene.
Speaker A:The group's tent was discovered partially collapsed, covered in snow, marks on it, tracks leading away from the tent, then disappearing mixed of booted and barefoot footprints.
Speaker A:Nearly a mile away, two bodies were found near the remnants of a fire, both missing most of their clothing.
Speaker A:Others were found spaced out in a line a few hundred meters apart.
Speaker A:After that, four more bodies were found.
Speaker A:Severe injuries on the inside, but no visible external wounds.
Speaker A:And more disturbingly, two of these victims were missing their eyes and one missing their tongue.
Speaker A:What happened to these hikers?
Speaker A:These experienced hikers who had previously braved Russian winters and mountains?
Speaker A:Why did they abandon their tent, their only lifeline?
Speaker A:And what drove them to attempt to return?
Speaker A:We're going to be looking at the evidence and possibilities of that and some theories as to what went wrong.
Speaker A:On another episode of the Remedial Scotland.
Speaker A:That's ancient history.
Speaker A:I feel I was denied.
Speaker A:Need to know information belongs to the museum.
Speaker A:Stop skipping your remedial class.
Speaker A:Welcome everyone to the Remedial Scholar.
Speaker A:I am your Levi.
Speaker A:You have any others?
Speaker A:Get rid of them.
Speaker A:No, that's.
Speaker A:That's crazy.
Speaker A:That's some worship.
Speaker A:No other Levi's except me talk and I don't think I'm there yet, but please find your seats.
Speaker A:You'll notice I took the liberty of rearranging the seating chart to prevent any more distractions.
Speaker A:If you're new here, sorry you have to listen to my lame jokes right away, but they're fun to me, so you have to pay that price.
Speaker A:Also, this episode is going to get pretty depressing, so I'm going to try to steal some laughs as much as I possibly can before we get into the nitty gritty.
Speaker A:Couple of reminders.
Speaker A:Thank you to everyone who has shared the show wherever possible.
Speaker A:Also thank you to anybody who has bought any merch lately.
Speaker A:That is super awesome and it helps pay the bills around here since my dog refuses to get a job.
Speaker A:If you want to help the show out, remember you can also rate and review the show wherever possible.
Speaker A:Apple Podcasts and Spotify are the two main ones, but I'm sure there are more.
Speaker A:That's super helpful.
Speaker A:Also, just interacting with the posts I make on Facebook and on Instagram.
Speaker A:And then the video.
Speaker A:You can leave comments on the video on YouTube and then you could also leave comments on Spotify.
Speaker A:I don't know if everybody knows that, but you can all right, it's enough of me passing around the donation basket now what you want All Came here for vacation.
Speaker A:It's winter.
Speaker A:Who doesn't love a good hiking, skiing, escape from the humdrum life that working every day creates?
Speaker A:Nature calls to many people love adventure and even more, they love a good mystery.
Speaker A:And this story has it both in spades.
Speaker A:If you're new to the show and this episode caught your attention, just shows how gripping this story really is, with theories ranging from the plausible to wildly intense.
Speaker A:Often labeled unexplained, this mystery feels almost overexplained to me, but the sheer numbers of theories surrounding it.
Speaker A:Here's what we do know for sure.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:And they all vanished.
Speaker A:Except for one.
Speaker A:Nearly a month after their journey began, rescue party found their bodies under bizarre circumstances.
Speaker A:The tent slashed open from the inside, a line of tracks leading away that disappeared after around 500 meters.
Speaker A:Hikers discovered in varying states of undress and injuries, some, as I mentioned, missing their eyes or tongue.
Speaker A:The official cause of death?
Speaker A:Quote an unknown compelling force.
Speaker A:Theories range from avalanches to secret weapons testing to wind induced hysteria and yes, even yetis.
Speaker A:That's right, supernatural.
Speaker A:Supernatural drink cooler mascots.
Speaker A:Which it's really funny because I happen to have a yeti water bottle right here.
Speaker A:I'm going to keep one eye on it this whole episode because it's looking pretty suspicious.
Speaker A:Right about now we're going to be diving into these theories, much like I did with the Inter Kaifec murders Episode, for those of you who aren't familiar with that one, basically started out outlining the people involved, the timeline of events, the investigation, and then the theories that followed.
Speaker A:So yeah.
Speaker A:And while the truth, you know, for both of these, the Hinter Kaifeck and now the Dyatlov Pass remains pretty elusive, some guesses are better than others.
Speaker A:So being said, let's get into it.
Speaker A:To set the scene, we're traveling back to Cold War era Russia.
Speaker A: the late waning stages of the: Speaker A:It was a time when Soviet ideals were still fervently upheld and part of.
Speaker A:And the hikers on this trip were part of a generation educated under these Stalinist principles.
Speaker A:You got to think they're all born in like the mid-30s.
Speaker A:Well, most of them born in the mid-30s.
Speaker A:So that's like one of the first generations to really get the Stalinist education from beginning all the way through their adulthood.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:All the hikers, except for one before, born before the onset of World War II, just barely.
Speaker A:So they grew up during some of the harshest years of Soviet history.
Speaker A:And one of them actually served in World War II.
Speaker A:So a little more on that later.
Speaker A: For Soviet youth in the: Speaker A:This mindset shaped their activities with hobbies often centering around physically demanding endeavors.
Speaker A:Example is sports tourism which we're talking about today.
Speaker A:This involved intense goal oriented activities like cross country skiing, major trekking expeditions, long distance hiking, and lot of these.
Speaker A:You had to meet certain requirements.
Speaker A:You sometimes couldn't use fire every day.
Speaker A:You had to like limit how much you were going to use fire and things like that.
Speaker A:These treks weren't just for fun.
Speaker A:I know they sound super fun.
Speaker A:But they also required certification to ensure participants could survive and be self sufficient in these harsh conditions.
Speaker A:Certification levels weren't tied to difficulty at first anyway, but instead based on meeting specific parameters like total distance, duration and autonomy in the wilderness.
Speaker A:To achieve higher levels, hikers needed to complet several successful expeditions of increasing complexity.
Speaker A:This culture of proving oneself and pushing limits was the very foundation of the ill fated Dyatlov trip.
Speaker A:Just some college kids wanted to prove to Mother Russia that they are strong like orcs, travel many distances in thick Russian winter.
Speaker A:Also, fair warning, I am going to do a cheesy Russian accent for a lot of this.
Speaker A:Well, not a lot of it, but I'm going to.
Speaker A:I'm going to do.
Speaker A:I'm just giving you a heads up.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I might do it just to break up the depressing parts.
Speaker A:You know, I'm trying not to.
Speaker A:I'm trying to make this not as sad as it already is.
Speaker A:Anyway, all of them had plenty of hiking experience and were excited for the trip and the challenge.
Speaker A:I should also mention, like I say, college kids, but these aren't like UC Berkeley kids.
Speaker A:You know the types.
Speaker A:Most of these hikers were students at the Yuro Polytechnic Institute, which I mentioned.
Speaker A:It's an institute that was training, like, mechanical engineers, civil engineering, chemical engineers, you know, super smart and important people.
Speaker A:These are intense communist students striving to learn as much as they can to help the motherland.
Speaker A:This particular institute benefited from the German invasion during World War II, primarily because the Soviets elected to move industrial production into the Ural Mountains because of its remoteness compared to fighting on the western edge.
Speaker A:This actually set the stage for major growth in the Siberian region in which the institute is located.
Speaker A:The city of Yekaterinburg.
Speaker A:It's Yekaterinburg now.
Speaker A:It used to be called Sverdlosk.
Speaker A:It grew really quickly in the 30s and 40s, becoming a key location for factories, which then in turn promoted the growth of the university to feed the burley minds into the workforce.
Speaker A:Kettering Berg is also the city in which the Romanov dynasty came to a bloody end in the Bolshevik Revolution.
Speaker A:And now I have Rasputin by bony M stuck in my head, which, I mean, really isn't a bad thing.
Speaker A:But anyway, while the city was nestled in the Ural Mountains in Siberia, the students wanted to escape, do some adventuring on their own to a even more remote and even more frozen part of Siberia.
Speaker A:Because why wouldn't you?
Speaker A:All right, let's meet the members of this hiking party.
Speaker A:Start with the unfortunate namesake of this expedition and also the.
Speaker A:The past in the mountains now as well.
Speaker A:Igor foreshadowing.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:How funny would that be, though?
Speaker A:Before I get serious, Jin, you know, his name's Diatlov.
Speaker A:He's going to the place that is now called Diatlov Pass.
Speaker A:But what if he was filling out his paperwork in, like, a similar Donner Party Donner Pass situation, and he's like, submitting his hiking trip to the governing body, and they're like, traveling to the outlaw pass.
Speaker A:How remarkably treacherous.
Speaker A:And he's like, what?
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:You said the Olive Pass.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:What does mean.
Speaker A:I would not worry about.
Speaker A:I'm sure it's nothing stupid.
Speaker A:Okay, I had to get that out, sorry.
Speaker A:We will find out that the area they were traveling did have some scary names, like actual names, but more on that later.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Happy birthday, buddy.
Speaker A:That would put him at 23 at the time of the incident, which is pretty common actually amongst the hikers.
Speaker A:Igor was a passionate outdoorsman.
Speaker A:He was the brainchild behind this exped condition.
Speaker A:And important to note that he had done a very similar trail the the year prior.
Speaker A:Not the exact same, but same end goal, roughly a very similar path.
Speaker A:Anyway, by all accounts he was a good, solid guy.
Speaker A:People enjoyed spending time with him.
Speaker A:They found him to be very smart.
Speaker A:He was strong, confident and also very passionate about his interests.
Speaker A:Total leader material, which makes sense why he was the leader of this trip.
Speaker A:Igor was a radio engineering student at the UPI and he also formed an outdoorsman's club there.
Speaker A:He was crafty, designed a few different radios that he had used on previous hiking trips in the years prior and also would like essentially rent them out to other people who are going hiking.
Speaker A:He also designed a stove that they brought with them, which is pretty cool.
Speaker A:Yeah, so I mentioned he had done some hiking before.
Speaker A:According to several sources, he had entertained taken nine significant hikes, three of each level category.
Speaker A:So he's pretty well versed in all sorts of expeditions.
Speaker A:Also important to note that the UPI actually wanted him to stay on after he graduated as a tour instructor.
Speaker A:So, you know, it's a guy who know, knew what he was doing.
Speaker A:Also from all the pictures that I found thanks to the wonderful efforts of the Dyatlov Pass website, he seems to be happy strapping young ladies.
Speaker A:Outside of hiking, he also enjoyed photography and most of the group's cameras and film have been found, which, you know, showcases some of these like nice shots that he had made.
Speaker A:So I went out of alphabetical order for that.
Speaker A:Just him.
Speaker A:You know, you got to start with the guy, right?
Speaker A:Since it was his idea and fault also.
Speaker A:No, but he is the namesake and that's just kind of just a good jumping off point.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Also happy early birthday to you.
Speaker A:Puts him at 21 when he died.
Speaker A:When the story starts, I'm going to be discussing them by their last names also because you're going to find out there's several, several Yuri.
Speaker A:So it's going to get confusing unless I do that.
Speaker A:This Yuri also studied at UPI and was a radio engineering student as well.
Speaker A:Dorothenko was a reserved and timid individual, described as quiet and unassuming and previously dated one of the female members of the.
Speaker A:And that relationship actually started in a previous hike that they were on together.
Speaker A:They would spend a lot of time talking and exploring different places by themselves and even like at night they might choose to lay next to each other in the tent also.
Speaker A:Big, big moment on that for her was that there was a bear and he chased it with a geologist hammer and scared it off.
Speaker A:And she was like, that's my man.
Speaker A:That's, that's him.
Speaker A:I want him.
Speaker A:They did end up breaking up, but they remained pretty amicable.
Speaker A:Doroshenko came from a very poor family, lacked proper cold weather gear for the trek, couldn't afford heavier jackets.
Speaker A:His hiking experience was less extensive than some of his companions.
Speaker A:The mix of unofficial and a few category 2 hikes registered through the college sports club.
Speaker A:Despite his challenges, he was remembered for his quiet strength and bravery.
Speaker A:Next we have Laodmila or Yuda or Lyuda Dubanina, the youngest member of the group.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Her upbringing was decent.
Speaker A:She had a decent quality of life.
Speaker A:Her father was the director of a logging factory and her mother was a school teacher.
Speaker A:She was highly active, excelling in sports like distance running.
Speaker A:And then she joined the university's sporting club when she enrolled.
Speaker A:She also loved singing and photography.
Speaker A:She was studying engineering and economics and known for her intelligence and determination.
Speaker A:She's also very outspoken.
Speaker A:She would get into arguments and like challenge people, like if they were communist enough.
Speaker A:She is very intense.
Speaker A:She had a lot of hiking experience as well.
Speaker A: trek in the summer before the: Speaker A:She also showed how resilient she could be because she was accidentally shot in the leg by a hunter during a hiking trip.
Speaker A:Accidentally.
Speaker A:He's cleaning his gun.
Speaker A:I'm sorry, my gun just accidentally shot you.
Speaker A:Silly me.
Speaker A:Forgot to take out all bullets.
Speaker A:She continued.
Speaker A:She didn't let anybody carry her bags after she got shot and she was upset that people were worried about her.
Speaker A:Basically, she's like, I'm sorry that you have to worry about me, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker A:She was wise, firm, thoughtful and a fair leader by all her contemporary accounts.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Alexander Sasha Kov.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:24 at the time of his death.
Speaker A:His family was initially well off as his father worked as a Financial officer.
Speaker A:However, During World War II, his father was killed by a train rough and the family lost their privileges tied to the this.
Speaker A:He was also working at a gulag at the time, so they were living in the gulag with him, which is not great.
Speaker A:Like if you're going to get abandoned by your dad because he died and you have to stay kind of where he was working.
Speaker A:He kind of hope it wasn't out of gulag, like literally anybody anywhere else except for like maybe the Western Front.
Speaker A:His mother eventually found work as a teacher after the war and despite struggling in school, Alexander eventually was able to get into the UPI and study nuclear physics, which is pretty challenging.
Speaker A:He struggled with.
Speaker A:His grades were not great.
Speaker A:Kind of understand why your grades aren't great.
Speaker A:Nuclear physics turns out kind of hard.
Speaker A:Turning point during his college career was when he joined the K SO Mall.
Speaker A:It's a like a Youth Communist League thing.
Speaker A:He networked in here and was able to secure a prestigious work study position at the Ministry of Medium Machine building.
Speaker A:This provided him with a higher than average wage and free housing in a prominent Moscow neighborhood that a lot of scientists lived in.
Speaker A:That has also consequently fueled conspiracies about the hike because he's got this crazy nice scholarship, why is he doing out there?
Speaker A:Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:So we're going to get that, we're going to get to that later.
Speaker A:Alexander also had pretty solid hiking experience, completing three Category 1 hikes and two of each of Category 2 and 3.
Speaker A:He's also highly social, active in various clubs for hiking, shooting, other pursuits and you know, as I mentioned before, really committed to the youth Communist Party thing.
Speaker A: Kolmogorova, born on January: Speaker A:Happy birthday.
Speaker A:She was 22 when she died.
Speaker A:Radio engineering major Xena was known for her kind and social empathetic nature.
Speaker A:She was likely influenced in these things by her upbringing as she cared for her disabled parents from an early age.
Speaker A:She was described by a fellow hiker as someone who, quote, filled the place with the pleasant breath of her soul.
Speaker A:Might be the nicest thing you could probably say about anybody.
Speaker A:That's, that's like a crazy nice compliment.
Speaker A:Cena was close friends with Igor Dyatlov and there are some speculations that they might have been like some romantic feelings.
Speaker A:But there's no definitive proof on her side, at least from any written records.
Speaker A:But you know, who knows?
Speaker A:Igor did have a picture of her in one of his notebooks that they found at the campsites.
Speaker A:Maybe he had Hot hots for her.
Speaker A:And I don't know.
Speaker A:Xena had a lot of super duper extensive hiking experience as well.
Speaker A:Recorded 1 category 1, 5 category twos and 1 category 3.
Speaker A:Determination was evident during a previous hike when luck would have it, she was bitten by a viper.
Speaker A:This.
Speaker A:I'm starting to think that this whole trip was doomed just by bringing both of these ladies on.
Speaker A:They feel like bad luck.
Speaker A:Not because they're women, but because they are like super danger prone.
Speaker A:One got shot, one bitten by a viper.
Speaker A:I mean like feel like that's just dangerous at a certain point.
Speaker A:Gotta get a question.
Speaker A:Did they inspire the yeti to attack them?
Speaker A:Probably.
Speaker A:Anyway, after she was bitten by the viper, she refused to let anybody carry her stuff.
Speaker A:Similar thing to Lauda and that's pretty intense, I guess.
Speaker A:She was very strong and her warmth made her a beloved member of the group.
Speaker A:And all her friends really cherished her.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:He's about to celebrate his 24th birthday when he died.
Speaker A:Well, maybe, maybe not celebrate this, you know, probably at that point, probably just wanting to survive.
Speaker A:Might not even been thinking about it.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:And anyway, Krivinoshenko seems to be the life of the party.
Speaker A:He's described as being the jokester, always in a good mood, making people laugh.
Speaker A:He was super entertaining.
Speaker A:He was also one of the.
Speaker A:There's two people in the group that could play the mandolin and he was one of them also.
Speaker A:If you see pictures of him, let's all post pictures in the video obviously.
Speaker A:But he's got these real like wide set ears and he just seems like he's a lot of fun.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:Yeah, so Kirvin Ashenko, his father was a chief construction engineer at a hydroelectric plant and definitely influenced his son because Krivodashenko, Yuri, little Yuri went to the UPI to study hydraulic engineering.
Speaker A:So apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.
Speaker A: had graduated from the UPI in: Speaker A:He was working in Chile.
Speaker A:Chill.
Speaker A:Chelyabinsk.
Speaker A:Chelyabinsk.
Speaker A:When the nuclear power plant there had a leak also.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about that later.
Speaker A:But pretty smart guy, you know, if he was able to get a job at a secret nuclear power plant after college.
Speaker A:Krivinoshenko also had a fair amount of experience in hiking, even being a qualified junior hiking instructor and holding a category two certificate.
Speaker A:Pretty impressive.
Speaker A: January: Speaker A:Happy birthday.
Speaker A:23 at the time of his death.
Speaker A:He's also.
Speaker A:This is the other mandolin player.
Speaker A:I wonder if they.
Speaker A:If they play Freebird.
Speaker A:I am coincidentally, just coincidentally, wearing my Play Freebird a shirt which you can get at the merch store in the description.
Speaker A:Anyway, his parents were both professors at a university and he had studied mechanical engineering.
Speaker A:He's very soft spoken, which makes me feel like he's kind of one of those mandolin players that takes it a little too serious, you know.
Speaker A:He's also very athletic, being a long distance runner as well as an avid hiker, which, you know, at this point I feel like, goes without saying, they all loved hiking.
Speaker A:I guess the point I'm trying to make is that one, they're pretty good at hiking.
Speaker A:Two, they're also just regular people who loved outdoors and love to do these, like, long excursions.
Speaker A:They knew what they're doing for the most part and had done it plenty of times before.
Speaker A:But I digress.
Speaker A:He had six official hikes on his record.
Speaker A:Two category ones, three twos and one three.
Speaker A:All right, that leads us to Nikolai Thibault Brignol and Good Ears.
Speaker A:That is a French name.
Speaker A:Nikolai has.
Speaker A:He was often referred to as Thibault.
Speaker A: th of June,: Speaker A:Now this is often mis described as him having been born in the gulag.
Speaker A:This is not the case.
Speaker A:His father was arrested for allegedly participating in an opposing political party for which he was given 10 years in a mining camp.
Speaker A:So that's pretty fun.
Speaker A:He was granted visitation with his family, and that is how little tibos are made.
Speaker A:It's also probably why people thought he was born in a gulag.
Speaker A: ctually did die in a Gulag in: Speaker A:Pretty formative year for little Thibault.
Speaker A:He also started school that year.
Speaker A:So, man, how is your guys's summer vacation?
Speaker A:Good?
Speaker A:Not good.
Speaker A:Oh, Nikolai, what happened?
Speaker A:Well, my dad died and then my brother died also.
Speaker A:Like, okay, you know what, kids, I think it's time for recess.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:His family had also been repressed in many ways during the reign of Stalin because of their French heritage.
Speaker A:You're not the Russian enough.
Speaker A: Once Stalin died in: Speaker A:People were like, well, you're communist, it's okay.
Speaker A:Who cares if you're French?
Speaker A:Nobody's perfect.
Speaker A:In particular, this led to him being able to go and be admitted into the Ural Polytechnic Institute.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A: engineering and graduated in: Speaker A:He also held six official hikes at the time of his death.
Speaker A:Three category ones, two twos and one three.
Speaker A:All right, last but certainly not least but most interesting, perhaps Simeon or Simon Zolotariov was an outlier in the group.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:He was raised in a very remote area, which is why it's either March 1st or March 2nd or February 2nd, because it had taken them such a long time to go to where they had to register him that he was born, that he was probably born on February 2, but they listed it that day or whatever.
Speaker A:So just a kind of weird circumstance.
Speaker A:He served in World War II and throughout the entire conflict.
Speaker A:He earned four awards, but his official record, very sparse, can't find a whole lot about it.
Speaker A:After the war he pursued an engineering program through the military.
Speaker A:But these schools that they were allowing veterans to go to started closing systematically after the war because we don't need all these schools open.
Speaker A:And that led him to graduate with a physical education degree from Minsk, which is kind of a big drop off from engineering, but you know, still important and keep Soviet youth and fighting shape.
Speaker A:In the words of Jack Black, in the School of Rock, those that can't do, teach and those that can't teach, teach gym.
Speaker A:He was obviously very physically fit despite his advanced age.
Speaker A:Basically, basically an old man.
Speaker A:He was also senior tourism.
Speaker A:Emphasis on the senior.
Speaker A:No, he was senior tourism instructor, so definitely not a rookie by any means.
Speaker A:He also had 24 hikes in his record, but none of them were through the university.
Speaker A:So there's not a breakdown of how many complicate or what the complication levels were.
Speaker A:And I said last but not least, but that's technically true.
Speaker A:Lastly, we have a man named Mr.
Speaker A:Lucky.
Speaker A:He was actually 75 when he died, which is pretty crazy.
Speaker A:Way too old to go hiking.
Speaker A:It's probably why they called him Mr.
Speaker A:Lucky now that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A: July: Speaker A:Yuri Yudin, the only surviving member, which is why he died when he was 75.
Speaker A:Just imagine they were like also amongst these college kids there's a 75 year old man and an only slightly younger 38.
Speaker A:So he left the expedition early due to a lingering injury.
Speaker A:Most accounts that I found describe it as a sciatic nerve issue, but there's also some other, like, rheumatoid kind of thing.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:But it was a nerve complication that worsened by a truck ride during the journey.
Speaker A:So Yidden himself stated that unlike a previous summer hike with Dyatlov, where sunlight had eased his discomfort on his nerves, the harsh winter cold made the pain unbearable.
Speaker A:He left the group four to five days before their estimated deaths, which, you know, haunted him for the rest of his life.
Speaker A:Yudin would also visit the cemeteries that they were buried in on every year on February 2nd to honor his friends.
Speaker A:A student like the others, you feel the study, depending on source to source, is either engineering, geology, or economics.
Speaker A:Imagine it.
Speaker A:Would it?
Speaker A:You know, it probably was engineering at first, maybe geology, maybe a combo, but then maybe switched after the trek.
Speaker A:Say, I don't want to be around any more engineers.
Speaker A:Last time I was around them, they all died.
Speaker A:An experienced hiker himself, he had six official hikes.
Speaker A:Three category ones, two twos and one three.
Speaker A:He's also personally requested to this trip by Igor Dyatlov.
Speaker A:His organizational skills and dependability made him an invaluable member of the team.
Speaker A:While with the group, he was tasked with managing the medicine, which is pretty important.
Speaker A:That's kind of gives you an idea how highly Igor thought of him.
Speaker A:All right, so I know that's a lot of setup, but I wanted to make a few points.
Speaker A:Number one, most of what I've seen online video podcasts present, this journey is just kind of doomed from the start.
Speaker A:There's also sometimes an undertone suggesting that the hikers were kind of foolish for attempting such a trek in Siberia, as if they should have known better.
Speaker A:There's some sources that kind of, like, have this Cold War bias, like, of course.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:Couldn't figure out.
Speaker A:Hike is silly guys.
Speaker A:A lot of them paint them as, like, just kids.
Speaker A:Like, just, oh, we're just a bunch of kids who just decided to go hiking one day, which is also not true.
Speaker A:They had done this stuff a lot.
Speaker A:So I also wanted to emphasize that, you know, these are real people.
Speaker A:This is a real story.
Speaker A:This actually happened.
Speaker A:People knew them.
Speaker A:People loved them.
Speaker A:They had families, hobbies, dreams.
Speaker A:They were friends going on this adventure.
Speaker A:They had hiked.
Speaker A:Some of them had hiked together before.
Speaker A:I think all of them had hiked with one another before, except for Simon.
Speaker A:I think he will because he will get into it later.
Speaker A:But he was a late addition, so they were.
Speaker A:There are a lot of really good friends though.
Speaker A:You know, a lot of the pictures that I found capture this raw and beautiful energy.
Speaker A:A lot of real Kodak moments.
Speaker A:What do they call it when that's candid?
Speaker A:You know, a lot of letter, candid camera stuff and it's easy to imagine yourself in their shoes.
Speaker A:There's a lot of colorized photos on this website that I leaned heavily on for this one.
Speaker A:And you know, you see them standing in this like snowy forest, vivid greens on the white ground.
Speaker A:Put it into a more real perspective because all the other pictures, they're all black and white and it's like seeing somebody had gone through and colorized these.
Speaker A:It makes it way more real.
Speaker A:It pulls you in.
Speaker A:So, yeah, anyway, for those pictures, going to share those on social media and in the video it'll be.
Speaker A:I recommend at least going to social media just to see the pictures.
Speaker A:It'll kind of help you visualize things, but also, like I said, see them as people.
Speaker A:Anyway, we set the stage, now we're going to get on the trip itself.
Speaker A:Igor had applied for this trip to take roughly 18 days with a eight or nine day estimate for either way.
Speaker A:They'd be traveling for from Yekaterinburg, then Sverdlosk, which is roughly 900 miles east of Moscow.
Speaker A:They take a train from Kettering Burke to Serov and then another train to Ivdale and then a truck to a town called Vijay.
Speaker A:And that's just to travel to their hiking area.
Speaker A:From Vijay they would cross country ski to the northern Ural Mountains to a mountain called Otorten.
Speaker A:And this mountain in a lot of sources is referred to the Mountain of the Dead as translated from its name, from the name that the local indigenous people, the Manzi, had given it actually a mix up though because Otorten in the Manzi language is called don't go there, which is way better.
Speaker A:There's also an issue with just the translation, not just from Russian English, but now you have the Manzi language to Russian and then to English.
Speaker A:Mountain of the Dead, which is actually where the hikers camped for the last time.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:I can't remember the actual name right now, I'll say it in a little bit.
Speaker A:But on this mountain it's called Dead Mountain because there's not a lot of hunting game up there because you know it's dead.
Speaker A:It's a literal, like it's dead as in there's no action, not dead.
Speaker A:As in only dead people go there.
Speaker A:Ominously named.
Speaker A:No, ominously translated, yes.
Speaker A:Because the Manzi language is not, you know, straight across, like one for one.
Speaker A:There's context, I guess better, more apt name might be Silent or Quiet Mountain.
Speaker A:But you know, also, if you're like me and didn't grow up around mountains, want to let you know that this mountain is not like a very pokey, rocky mountain.
Speaker A:At least not in the winter.
Speaker A:It's very smooth and round, it's very steep.
Speaker A:But not.
Speaker A:I don't know, maybe it's because I grew up in Nebraska with like zero mountains.
Speaker A:And I'm like, that's not a mountain.
Speaker A:That's just a big hill, you know.
Speaker A:So if you're like me, don't think that way.
Speaker A: rd January: Speaker A:They were amassing their rat that they had been given from the UPI head of provisions, which included oatmeal, salt, boots, some extra clothes, a bunch of different things that they were going to need.
Speaker A:They got a thousand rubles, which was actually not, not enough to cover everything.
Speaker A:So they had to put their own money into it.
Speaker A:They were hanging out on the train, looking over their supplies.
Speaker A:And at this time, the first journal is being made.
Speaker A:They had a group journal and everybody would kind of contribute to it.
Speaker A:Xena was the first one to make a note, talking about the odds and ends that they were packing, reorganizing, talking about the things that the head of provisions actually had given them, which included canned foods as well as other things, you know, that they would meet some.
Speaker A:Some meats, some salted meats.
Speaker A:She also notes that they were struggling to fit everything together and that they were missing scales.
Speaker A:Which scales are important because if you're going to divide food up evenly, got to know how much it weighs, but also got to know how heavy your packs are going to be.
Speaker A:You don't want to overfill things.
Speaker A:You want to.
Speaker A:You have a nice even supply.
Speaker A:You want to overfill it.
Speaker A:You don't underfill it.
Speaker A:But yeah, so she had made a comment that kind of made me think of the Challenger episode, which is.
Speaker A:This is the.
Speaker A:This is what she wrote.
Speaker A:Quote, I wonder what awaits us in this trip.
Speaker A:What will we encounter?
Speaker A:The boys solemnly swore not to smoke the entire trip.
Speaker A:I wonder how much power they will have to get by without cigarettes.
Speaker A:Everybody's falling asleep.
Speaker A:And behind the window, euro taiga is spread in all directions.
Speaker A:Excitement and wonder about what will happen and what they're going to encounter.
Speaker A:It reminds me of the transmission of the astronauts at the beginning of the flight.
Speaker A:You know, the anticipation.
Speaker A:Anyway, the group takes their overnight train to Sarov.
Speaker A:When they arrive at the train station, they talk to another group that was going to a similar location.
Speaker A:Kind of hung around.
Speaker A:Everybody's just.
Speaker A:Just kind of chitchat and whatever.
Speaker A:And then they noticed that the cops were staring at them, which is always a fun, fun time, even if you're not doing anything wrong.
Speaker A:I can, I can.
Speaker A:I can imagine that everybody feels this way if a cop is just staring at you.
Speaker A:Or, like, put it into perspective.
Speaker A:If you're just driving, going the speed limit, you're not doing anything crazy, there's a cop behind you.
Speaker A:It always tenses you.
Speaker A:You could be doing literally nothing wrong.
Speaker A:And just their mere presence makes you anxious.
Speaker A:And I imagine that's extra, like, super the case in Russia.
Speaker A:It's like, I don't even.
Speaker A:I don't even want to imagine how they probably felt.
Speaker A:Now, I mentioned that this trip was government sanctioned, but also, that doesn't mean that the entire government knows.
Speaker A:Like, it's not like they sent out a massive letter.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:By the way, Gordy Love and all his friends, they're going hiking, so don't bother them.
Speaker A:Like, that would be crazy.
Speaker A:Also, you know how many criminals would just start taking trips?
Speaker A:Guess we have free rhino.
Speaker A:Do whatever we want.
Speaker A:Sorry, we're hiking.
Speaker A:Leave us alone.
Speaker A:Anyway, the guards are mean, mugging them across the train station.
Speaker A:And then the old goofball of the group, Yuri Krivinoshenko, began to sing.
Speaker A:And then he got arrested real quick.
Speaker A:So things are going pretty good so far.
Speaker A:He was released, but Yuriyudin noted in the journal of the 24th of January that they must have been at the only train station where singing was prohibited that day.
Speaker A:They also had a layover kind of.
Speaker A:Of sorts.
Speaker A:They spent a lot of the time kind of preparing their gear as best they could.
Speaker A:They were talking also to some nearby school children, which apparently Xena Kolmogorova was excellent at.
Speaker A:Actually, that's not even really surprising to me because, you know, she was described as being the most compassionate person ever, apparently so super personable.
Speaker A:Kids loved her.
Speaker A:She was asking them all sorts of questions and just being like, you've hung out with people like that, where, like, they just are, like, kids love them, you know, Maybe you had, like a teacher that was like that.
Speaker A:And a lot of these kids were obsessed with this lady.
Speaker A:They were, like, hugging her as they're trying to leave and you know, unfortunately she did have to leave.
Speaker A:And now I'm kind of wondering if any of those kids grew up and like, you know, were told about that or like, put the dots together.
Speaker A:That's gotta be all right.
Speaker A:Moving on from that thought.
Speaker A:After boarding the train from Serov to either a drunk also accused them of stealing his alcohol.
Speaker A:So in less than 24 hours the cops have been called against the group twice.
Speaker A:Now this one was also resolved without further incidents, but also they might have lived had they been locked.
Speaker A:I'm just saying sometimes breaking the law is good.
Speaker A:No, don't do that.
Speaker A:Don't follow us for legal advice.
Speaker A:Following that, they sang some more songs legally.
Speaker A:Xena brought up the subject of love, which she does from time to time.
Speaker A:And when the ticket checker came laud Miller had under hid under the seat seats because they saved money by not buying her a ticket.
Speaker A:In total they traveled around 340 miles by trains from Sfordlosk.
Speaker A:Now they arrived in Ivedale at midnight and then they had to wait until the morning for a bus to take them on the next stretch.
Speaker A:On the morning of the 25th they were loaded up onto the bus.
Speaker A:They Woke up at 6am this bus over capacity I'm gonna say there's a picture of them just stuffed in there.
Speaker A:They were sitting on all their luggage on top of it like just to make room is crazy.
Speaker A:The bus made a small pit stop and according to the Daily Journal written by Alexander Kolevatov, they had been given the opportunity to get out.
Speaker A:Stretch your legs, you know, bus is a little cramped, felt good.
Speaker A:Some of them got out, meandered around.
Speaker A:Some of them went walking to see a power stairs power station that was nearby.
Speaker A:And then the bus took off without them.
Speaker A:Which is kind of hilarious to me because this bus is described as being insanely full.
Speaker A:How you not notice like a bunch of people getting off.
Speaker A:Now it didn't say that all of them got off, but like still you, you're gonna know if people are missing because of how cramped it is or maybe that's how cramped it was.
Speaker A:Like, I don't know, there might be.
Speaker A:There's 25 people on this bus.
Speaker A:I haven't seen 23 of them, you know.
Speaker A:But they lucked out.
Speaker A:A woman had hailed the bus and stopped it it as the people who were almost left were chasing after it.
Speaker A:And now once again on the bus riding toward Vigil makes a note that they were not nearly as fast as the 50 horsepower engine.
Speaker A: for a bus seems low, but was: Speaker A:So they arrived in Vizier after 2pm traveling around 50 miles.
Speaker A:They were able to secure transport to their next destination, which was by way of truck.
Speaker A:They also said goodbye to the other hiking group who was taking a slightly different path, going to a slightly different destination.
Speaker A:But they said their farewells.
Speaker A:They also found a place to stay which was a very small, very small building.
Speaker A:And they were forced to sleep two to a bed and then two in between the beds.
Speaker A:They noted that the temperature at this time was -17 degree Celsius.
Speaker A:And they're not even in the mountains yet.
Speaker A:Yet.
Speaker A:The morning of the 26th, they ate breakfast, drank tea, which was noted as being room temperature.
Speaker A:And since they left the window open, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that that iced tea was ice.
Speaker A:Igor Dyatlov apparently made a comment which is noted by Krivinoshenko in the journal, saying, quote, if the tea is cold, then go outside and drink it.
Speaker A:It will be hot.
Speaker A:So you kind of get an idea how their sense of humor is, as well as how cold it was outside.
Speaker A:And you're drinking room temp tea outside and it feels hot, you got a problem.
Speaker A:Before leaving, they all mailed off some sort of communications to loved ones, let them know they were beginning their journey.
Speaker A:When do you expect them to write again?
Speaker A:Dyatlov wrote his father saying, quote, hello everyone.
Speaker A:Today 26 we will leave on the route we arrived.
Speaker A:Well, on February 12th or 15th I will visit Sirdlosk.
Speaker A:I will probably not go home.
Speaker A:So let Rufa bring Lynn into our room for a trip to Penza.
Speaker A:From there I will return March 5 to 7.
Speaker A:Greetings, Igor.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I mean, pretty ambitious.
Speaker A:I'm going to be back in Sverlosk February 12th.
Speaker A:I mean, that's.
Speaker A:They got to be booking it the whole time to make that anyway.
Speaker A:Maybe hiking up the mountain might take a little bit longer, but they get to ski down, so maybe that's where he's going to get his time.
Speaker A:Also rustic Slobodin wrote, some people say stating, hello, sedentary citizens of Sverdlosk.
Speaker A:Yesterday we safely reached the village of Jose.
Speaker A:Now we are taking a truck to the starting point.
Speaker A:Second, northern weather here is nice warm, around 10 to 15 degrees.
Speaker A:Everything is good.
Speaker A:I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye, got carried away.
Speaker A:All the best, our Slobodin.
Speaker A:So yeah, I did.
Speaker A:I love the sedentary citizens.
Speaker A:It's pretty Funny.
Speaker A:They left around 1pm, arriving around 4:30.
Speaker A:Riding in the back of the truck, enduring the weather for around 25 miles or 40 kilometers is during this ride that Yuriyudin's nerve issues started to get aggravated, which will force him to turn back two days later.
Speaker A:There's a note in the, in the sources that I found that said that this truck, it's a logging truck, had broken springs.
Speaker A:So yeah, that truck ride probably was not great, especially it probably wasn't great for everybody, let alone this guy who's got like nerve issues.
Speaker A:Anyway, in the back of the truck they sang songs, tried to play the mandolin, discussed a bunch of different topics, including love again, and talked about how to cure cancer.
Speaker A:You know, random stuff, but mostly just kind of froze.
Speaker A:In the back of this truck.
Speaker A:There's a sweet picture taken by Krivinoshenko with everyone in the back of the truck before he had hopped on.
Speaker A:They arrived in the lovely named Settlement 41, where they were greeted warmly by the workers.
Speaker A:There is unknown if some of the group had stopped there before, but one comment in the journal makes me feel like they had or some of them had.
Speaker A:There's a worker there named Agnev who was described as an old friend and that lion miller knew him.
Speaker A:So anyway, during their stay at settlement 41, they watched three movies, prepared, prepared for their next leg, sang songs, had long philosophical discussions.
Speaker A:They thought about continuing their traveling, but it was too dark, so they decided not to.
Speaker A:They stayed the night.
Speaker A:The morning of the 27th, they ate breakfast with their hosts, enjoying their last little bit of interaction with civilization, and received some tips from Agnev, who was somewhat of an expert of the northern Urals.
Speaker A:They also were given some shorthand of Manzi words in case they had encountered the local indigenous people.
Speaker A:As they were hiking in known Manzi hunting territory, they took some group photos with their hosts and then, you know, different landscapes.
Speaker A:As they departed, they received further assistance from a horse drawn sled which carried their backpacks to the next area and they followed behind it.
Speaker A:It weather was actually kind of bearable at this point, around 5 degrees Celsius or 41 degrees Fahrenheit, heat wave, but also not super helpful because then it in turn caused the snow under the skis to give way and become slushy, making it take longer to get to their next destination.
Speaker A:Yuriyuden's nerve issue also intensifying and the group decided that he would continue to their next stop, collect some rocks and stuff, and then if he wasn't feeling any better, he was Going to leave.
Speaker A:He was going to go back with the horse and the sled.
Speaker A:Now the aid of the sled carrying their backpacks was a relief, but also did slow them down because it also would get stuck.
Speaker A:It was dark when they arrived at this abandonment settlement called Second Northern and they tried to find a suitable place to sleep amongst 20 plus abandoned buildings.
Speaker A:But only one building was actually good enough to sleep in.
Speaker A:January 28th, following breakfast, some of the hikers joined Yuriyuden and going to look for some rocks, but only found some pyrite, which is fool's gold.
Speaker A:The temperature on this day was around negative 8 degrees Celsius or 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
Speaker A:Not super warm, not compared to the previous day as you may or may not have put together because I mentioned it several times.
Speaker A:But the sole survivor, Yuriyudin, was not feeling any better and at this point left with the horse and sled.
Speaker A:He had given the group the rations of his supplies he wouldn't be needing on his trip home.
Speaker A:They dispersed it amongst themselves.
Speaker A:Their pictures of this depart and you can kind of tell just how close some of these people were.
Speaker A:They're hugging tightly, you know, smiling super wide.
Speaker A:I can't imagine how he must have felt when here when he heard, ah, that's gotta be rough.
Speaker A:They all made their final preparations as well, waxing their skis, packing everything they were gonna need.
Speaker A: eparted the settlement around: Speaker A:Stopped for lunch around 4pm but then only traveled around 10km total that day before deciding to stop once again at 5:30pm The Journal for the day said that they discussed their sadness about your leaving, particularly Lauda.
Speaker A:She says Yuriyuden goes back home today.
Speaker A:It is a pity, of course, that he leaves us especially for me and Xena.
Speaker A:But nothing can be done about it.
Speaker A:No telling why specifically the girls were gonna be the most upset.
Speaker A:But yeah.
Speaker A:She also wrote that they had more discussions around that fire later that night about love once again.
Speaker A:And that Xena attempted to learn some mandolin.
Speaker A:There's also first a little bit of angst amongst them.
Speaker A:Apparently an argument of sorts broke out.
Speaker A:Issue involved the custom stove that Igor Dyatlov had designed.
Speaker A:Apparently even after it was shut off, the heat it gave off was far too much to sleep near.
Speaker A:And since it was inside a tent, you know, know, kind of hard to avoid.
Speaker A:The arguments did settle and everyone went to bed without further incident.
Speaker A:The next day, January 29, they made it to their first major waypoint, the Alspaya River.
Speaker A:The temperature dipped again this day, measuring around negative 13 Celsius, or 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Speaker A:But the group was pleased with the lack of the strong winds.
Speaker A:The Ospaya river feeds into the Luvsa and the Lavza is actually fed from Otorten.
Speaker A:It's a tributary, which was their goal.
Speaker A:Reasoning why they chose to trek up the mountains by way of this first river is probably because it's less of a steep climb up.
Speaker A:And the trek from the mountain they were climbing to Otorten was a lot smoother than if they were just going to take the river all the way up.
Speaker A:They also found a trail used by the Manzi, which was marked by some of their symbols on trees.
Speaker A:They did not mention it in any of the journals, but Nikolai Thibault Brignon fell down on this.
Speaker A:On this day in their track, there's photos of him in the snow, collapsed with this, you know, skis up in the air.
Speaker A:Captions on the website describe him as falling into a creek under the snow.
Speaker A:Whether he rolled down or what, I don't know.
Speaker A:But this is also some unfortunate foreshadowing for him.
Speaker A:A photo of this series of events stuck in the snow has actually caused quite a bit of conspiracy on its own because there's out of focus and hard to see image.
Speaker A:But there's a figure hitting the iconic like Bigfoot walk thing as seen as seen in the famous Patterson Gimlin footage.
Speaker A:Be another eight years before that footage is taken.
Speaker A:Capture supposedly capturing Sasquatch walking through in California somewhere.
Speaker A:Northern California.
Speaker A:So not likely that they were mimicking that walk.
Speaker A:Well, I mean, likely what they.
Speaker A:There's no way they could have been.
Speaker A:But anyway, it's far more likely that the fallen Thibaut Br was now catching up to the others after finally standing up.
Speaker A:The next photo in the series shows him in a similar stance, but it zoomed like way in on his face.
Speaker A:And so it feels like this is just a case of having the focus right but the zoom wrong in the first picture.
Speaker A:Regardless, this blurry photo has fueled the yeti conspiracies in regards to what happened to the hikers.
Speaker A:Also birthed like one of those crappy Discovery Channel shows.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Which is hilarious because it's like, look at all the pictures.
Speaker A:And then there's just this one of a yeti and then the next picture is of the same guy that was in the first or the picture before that one.
Speaker A:Like, all right.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, people.
Speaker A:Then again, it's not really the critical thinking crowd that is thinking these things.
Speaker A:But of course, why wouldn't it be Yeti?
Speaker A:I mean it was, it was out of focus and everybody knows that Bigfoot is blurry.
Speaker A:It's not the photographer's fault.
Speaker A:It's extra scary to me.
Speaker A:It's a Mitch Hedberg joke.
Speaker A:If you don't know who that is, then you need to go do some research.
Speaker A:Anyway, they cover about the same amount of distance this next day around 10km January 30th.
Speaker A:They started their day with some brekkie, brek, some breakfast.
Speaker A:Then they set off pretty quick around 8:39, 30ish.
Speaker A:Weather cools down even more.
Speaker A:Very cold in the morning, manageable during the day and then very cold at night.
Speaker A:Negative 17 degrees Celsius in the morning, which is 1 degree Fahrenheit and then negative 13 Celsius or 8 Fahrenheit during the day and then negative 26 Celsius, negative 14.
Speaker A:The wind super severe on this day compared to the others.
Speaker A:It was also snowing and then there was.
Speaker A:They described it as heavy clouds overhead.
Speaker A:So yeah, it's just a real rough day.
Speaker A:They saw more Manzi carvings in the trees which then in turn inspired the conversations that they were having about indigenous people.
Speaker A:They also discussed building a storage cache to lighten their packs and struggled with the trail.
Speaker A:Starting to disappear into the snow and unable to follow the river because now they're where they're walking, there's very, very deep snow drifts next to it.
Speaker A:They travel around 10km like I mentioned, but now they're also climbing up the mountain.
Speaker A:So while they might not be making a lot of headway, distance wise they are climbing upwards, which is hard for lunch around 2pm Eating a succulent Chinese?
Speaker A:No, it's a succulent meal of dried meat, crackers, sugar, garlic and coffee that was made the day prior.
Speaker A:Hope it was warmer.
Speaker A:As they climbed in the elevation on the mountain, they took note that the trees were thinning in density as well as size.
Speaker A:Ultimately stopped for the day around 5pm near the river in a location that had some dead trees that they could harvest to make some fire with.
Speaker A:Also want to mention because I don't think I put it in the notes, but I did look up an estimated sunrise sunset time frame for this, this point, like this coordinates near where they were and the sun was setting around 4:30 ish PM for them.
Speaker A:So them stopping at like 4 or 5 is not completely weird.
Speaker A:I just wanted to make a note of that before I kept going because I Feel like it might be good information just to have.
Speaker A:Anyway, that night they had some disagreements specifically around the duty of repairing some small holes in the tent.
Speaker A:And then again, when got tired of everything and chose to rest by the fire, people got mad because this went against the group rules.
Speaker A:Nobody's supposed to rest by the fire until the work is done for the day.
Speaker A:She then stormed off into the tent and stayed until dinner.
Speaker A:They also celebrated Alexander Levitov's birthday, which, if you're paying attention earlier, is weird because he was born in November and I have no idea why they did that.
Speaker A:This does come from a journal entry from a journal that the author, nobody knows who it is.
Speaker A:So anyway, they.
Speaker A:Maybe it's his half birthday.
Speaker A:No, that doesn't make sense either.
Speaker A:I don't know, maybe they got mixed up.
Speaker A:Who knows?
Speaker A:I can't read Russian otherwise.
Speaker A:And here's the other problem is the website I found has these journals, but they're not the written journal, it's.
Speaker A:Somebody had typed them up.
Speaker A:So it's like, okay, yeah, so anyway, they celebrated his fake birthday and give him a tangerine and then he does the good communist thing and divides it amongst his friends.
Speaker A:So January 31st, they continued their hike upwards.
Speaker A:Around hiked until around PM, covering around four to six kilometers, two and a half to three and a half miles.
Speaker A:Snow starting to deepen now.
Speaker A:The higher they go, they struggled to make a lot of meaningful progress.
Speaker A:Might note that that distance is significantly shorter than what they went the day prior.
Speaker A:The wind strengthened, their visibility would drop significantly.
Speaker A:Photos from this day actually show how bad the wind is.
Speaker A:You can see these trees behind them just like bent over.
Speaker A:And then also you can see like the hood of their, you know, their coats, like, pressed up against their face in the same direction that the, the wind's blowing.
Speaker A:Dyatlov himself made the notes in the journal for this day, which he describes as having passed a Manzi hunter with a dead deer and following the hunter's path and from the direction that he had come from.
Speaker A:This is also a day they decide to make a supply cache to come back for, you know, on their return trip, lighten their backpacks.
Speaker A:You know, we're only going to need a little bit because they're, I mean, they're, they're not super far away from where they're trying to get, but they're not also like, you know, right next to it either.
Speaker A:At this point.
Speaker A:They also do some scouting, try to figure out their next route.
Speaker A:The mountain that they're about to climb is called Kolat Sekal.
Speaker A:And that's the mountain I was talking about earlier.
Speaker A:The quote, dead Mountain Scouts return.
Speaker A:And the plan was to make camp for the night, then hike up in the morning.
Speaker A:They camp in the wooded area near the I Spire River.
Speaker A:And then there's no more written records from the trip after this moment.
Speaker A:Only a few pictures and that's it.
Speaker A:Final thing written in the record is by Dyatlov himself stating, quote, it's nearly four.
Speaker A:Have to start looking for a place to pitch a tent.
Speaker A:We go south in the Ospaya Valley.
Speaker A:Seems this place has the deepest snow.
Speaker A:Wind, not strong snow.
Speaker A:1.2 to 2 meters, 3 to 4ft deep.
Speaker A:We're exhausted, but starting to set up for the night.
Speaker A:Firewood is scarce, mostly damp furs.
Speaker A:We build the campfire on the logs.
Speaker A:Too tired to dig a fire pit.
Speaker A:Dinner's in the tent, nice and warm.
Speaker A:Can't imagine such comfort on the ridge with howling winds outside, hundreds of kilometers away from human settlement.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Also want to make a point.
Speaker A:He knows how windy it is up on these mountains.
Speaker A:Okay, Make a decision to camp in the trees.
Speaker A:All right, Moving forward.
Speaker A:The morning of the 1st, February 1st, they set off again.
Speaker A:Their goal was probably to make it to Otorton, if not within the next day, probably the day after the.
Speaker A:You know, they were wanting to make it in a pretty brisk pace and then ski back and make their trip home.
Speaker A:They traveled roughly four to five kilometers this day, two and a half to three miles total.
Speaker A:But also were climbing up more steep areas.
Speaker A:I looked at a topographical map, and from where they camped to where they ended up, making it roughly 200 meters vertical.
Speaker A:But then they also went about a kilometer, well, not a kilometer, four to five kilometers.
Speaker A:So, you know, it's pretty substantial.
Speaker A:5,800ft upward plus, you know, forward.
Speaker A:And then combining that with how much snow there was, I mean, it's super difficult.
Speaker A:No doubt is assumed that they also had a late start to this day and that possibly caused their short travel and early camping and why they camped where they did.
Speaker A:Photos from this day show some high spirits at the beginning.
Speaker A:But then there is what is assumed to be the last picture of the group as they.
Speaker A:They are now digging into the snow to make their tent.
Speaker A:So the way that they did it was on this ridge.
Speaker A:They dug in the snow sloped down.
Speaker A:They dug inward and made a, you know, a nice level place to stick skis in.
Speaker A:And then they stretched the tent up over the skis.
Speaker A:Use some skis, vertically tied it all together, but basically they used the cut in as almost not insulation, but one side of their tent was protected because it was where they dug into.
Speaker A:Not super well, it is kind of important.
Speaker A:But we know that they dug into the snow, give their tents some protection from the wind.
Speaker A:We know that this cut in was on the northeast ridge of the Kolotzkal Mountain, 100, maybe 200ft below the peak.
Speaker A:Right on.
Speaker A:All right, so on the 12th of February they were expected to be back in Vijay.
Speaker A:But there's a pause in any kind of extreme reactions to lack of communication since.
Speaker A:Since there could be setbacks and whatnot.
Speaker A:By the 20th, the UPI Sports Club calls a meeting and other explorers in the area had been notified that there was this group.
Speaker A:There's concern, you know, that they're missing.
Speaker A:It's actually result of the families beginning to call the university.
Speaker A:They're, they're like, are you guys going to give us any information?
Speaker A:Why haven't we heard from them?
Speaker A:What's going on?
Speaker A:Do you know anything?
Speaker A:Search parties began to be assembled, but a hiccup in exactly where to begin.
Speaker A:Now a challenge.
Speaker A:Turns out Dyatlov did not submit a map with his route with his application, just where they were going and roughly when they were coming back.
Speaker A:So no real way to know exactly where they could be.
Speaker A:The group, the groups that were out there on their travels.
Speaker A:Other hikers were notified and they began to plan where to look.
Speaker A:Actually quickly asked the local Manzi people to help out, which they did.
Speaker A:The university assembled more teams and then the military was involved as well.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:One of a another hiker man names Slobstop Slobber Slob stuff I don't know.
Speaker A:Okay, I'm gonna spell it for you and then you're gonna understand my issue.
Speaker A:Slo b T S o V Slob Soft and his hiking team were transported from Sverdlosk to Ivedell with equipment and supplies to start searching.
Speaker A:February 23rd, two helicopters transferred these guys to Mount Pum Sol, which is near or Otorten.
Speaker A:Then during the aerial searches, they spotted some ski trails around the Ospaya river leading to the ridge.
Speaker A:They believe that to be the Dyatlov groups Trails team set up camp near the Luvse River.
Speaker A:By February 24, Slobstop's group concluded that the Dyatlov group had not reached Mount Otorten and shifted their search back the Other way, you know, start at the end and work your way backward and then you might run into them.
Speaker A:On February 25, they found a snow covered campsite on the riverbank with faint ski tracks confirming the group's route out.
Speaker A:The Carolyn Group, another hiking group, returned from their own trek and joined the search after learning of the missing hikers.
Speaker A:Which is pretty cool.
Speaker A:They just finished their own like hike and they're like, what's that?
Speaker A:We got missing hikers, let's go.
Speaker A:On February 26, Slapstoff's team split into three divisions to cover more ground.
Speaker A:One division searched southward, another scouted for the group's storage cache and a third followed ski tracks toward Kola at Sekal.
Speaker A:And then this would lead to the discovery of the torn, snow covered, partially collapsed tent on the mountains eastern northeastern slope, which was the first clue.
Speaker A:Figure out where these guys were.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Weeks later, the frozen bodies of the hikers are discovered.
Speaker A:However, two members, Igor Dyatlov and Simeon Zolotariov are found huddled together.
Speaker A:Huddled together.
Speaker A:Identifiable under the layers of frost.
Speaker A:The position of their body suggests that they were watching one another.
Speaker A:Neither were willing their back on the other.
Speaker A:Between them sits the remains of a burnt object, undefiable, yet distinctly organic in texture.
Speaker A:A final cryptic entry in Dyatlov's journal reads, it's not Yuri anymore.
Speaker A:It's not Laudi either.
Speaker A:I don't know who I can trust.
Speaker A:I can't even trust myself.
Speaker A:This is the end.
Speaker A:I have to make sure it doesn't leave here.
Speaker A:No, of course not.
Speaker A: hat's, that's a parody of the: Speaker A:I just wanted to, just wanted to bring the mood up a little bit because it is going to get sad.
Speaker A:So goal.
Speaker A:But imagine, imagine if that is whether the, that's some fan fiction for the thing after it escaped.
Speaker A:No, wait, I don't know the time period in which it was in Antarctica.
Speaker A:I'm sure people could figure it out though.
Speaker A:I think you could, I think you can make the story connect.
Speaker A:Anyway, they did find the tent on the 26th.
Speaker A:One of the people to find it was Slobstov.
Speaker A:And coincidentally enough he had actually helped construct the tent a few years prior.
Speaker A:So he knew it.
Speaker A:This tent, not just a regular one, it's a long tent because it was two four person tents sewn together so it was extra long so it accommodate more people.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The tent had partially collapsed, snow also partially covering it.
Speaker A:And then here's where it gets tricky.
Speaker A:Nobody really treated this like a crime scene because they Just thought they had abandoned the tent.
Speaker A:So there's no real effort to, like, preserve any evidence or anything.
Speaker A:They took some notes, but it was mostly like, yeah, I mean, kind of.
Speaker A:They weren't, like, super diligent about it.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:But what we do know from what they annotated was that the tent was aligned in a north, south position lengthwise, with the south being where the entrance was.
Speaker A:As I mentioned, it was found partially collapsed.
Speaker A:The construction of the tent kind of went over a little bit, but, you know, it stretched over the.
Speaker A:Some skis to provide a base, and then also dug into the snow.
Speaker A:And then in addition to the dugout, they fashioned that flat spot and then posted two skis on either end, one near the door and one on the opposite end.
Speaker A:And then they tied a rope around the skis, and then that was the peak of the tent.
Speaker A:And then they tied more rope from the skis down to the flat part of the tent to make their corners, their.
Speaker A:Their ridged corners.
Speaker A:It's very technical.
Speaker A:Like I said, ropes were used to tie these things, keep the roof up.
Speaker A:You know, pretty durable rope, too, has got to be also very taut.
Speaker A:You keep the roof up and then give them as much space as possible.
Speaker A:But in addition to that, it's got to be able to withstand the elements.
Speaker A:They're.
Speaker A:They're camping in Siberia in the mountains, so it's got to be pretty sturdy because that's some serious wind action.
Speaker A:Could be a lot of snow.
Speaker A:So, you know, important to think about.
Speaker A:In addition to the sports, they also would line the corners of the tent with extra clothes, like they.
Speaker A:The clothes that they weren't wearing, which was an effort to kind of insulate it as much as possible.
Speaker A:And the collapse that I mentioned was due to the northern side ropes being broken, which would have collapsed a bulk of it.
Speaker A:But then also the eastern side had two large cuts into it.
Speaker A:And a lot of articles, podcasts, books, talk ad nauseam about these cuts from inside the tent.
Speaker A:And nobody, like, nobody talks about how they found the tent collapsed.
Speaker A:They say the weird thing is, is that there's a couple people or a couple sources that say the tent was fine, and then it very clearly wasn't.
Speaker A:Anyway, I don't know if people are assuming that it collapsed because there was cuts made, but regardless, the thing had collapsed like it very clearly did.
Speaker A:It noted that ropes were broken by people who were there anyway.
Speaker A:These people had tons of experience hiking and set this tent up a bunch of times before that, you know, and, you know, I mentioned the scene was not really thought about in a crime scene manner.
Speaker A:So they didn't like preserve a lot of it.
Speaker A:The tent was not spared from that either.
Speaker A:It was packed up and then helicoptered out and set up again at like a train station.
Speaker A:So the exact damage from the hiker or travel not known.
Speaker A:I mean, the two big cuts were probably made by the hikers, but you know, is kind of, kind of a mess of a, of a thing.
Speaker A:Also, the person who said that the cuts were made from the inside, just a random like tailor that showed up and was fixing uniforms at this place.
Speaker A:When they brought the tent in and set it up, she came in and she was like, all right, here to fix uniforms.
Speaker A:And then they were like, hey, you want to look at of this thing we got.
Speaker A:And she looked at it and was like, those cuts are made from the inside, like instantly, basically.
Speaker A:And then nobody questioned it.
Speaker A:I don't doubt that they were, but it is kind of funny that they were just like, yeah, she knows fabric.
Speaker A:Anyway, the suspected method of how they slept in the tent, you know, any other time, not this time specifically, but literally any other time, was that they would put their belongings kind of in the corners and then they line the edges with their spare clothes.
Speaker A:The stove, whether it was being used or not, was placed near the entrance and then it had like a, like a spout that went up to the peak and then there was like a long pipe and then a chimney kind of thing of sorts.
Speaker A:Hikers would lay down parallel to the entrance and the opposite end.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So if you imagine the tent as a rectangle, they would line up parallel to the shorter sides of the long of the rectangle.
Speaker A:It would be around 4 meters long, long and about 1.8 meters wide.
Speaker A:So just barely enough to accommodate somebody who's like seven.
Speaker A:So if you curled up, you know, get all cozy, you're probably okay.
Speaker A:In one journal entry, it is noted that Dyatlov and Zolateriov, the World War II veteran guy, both slept on either end of the tent near the entrance and opposite end, which were the coldest places to sleep as they were the most experienced and labeled as the strongest, according to the group.
Speaker A:Group now, despite finding the abandoned tent and partially snow covered search party, still didn't believe that anything bad had happened to these guys.
Speaker A:Yet because of how experienced they were, they figured if they were going to leave their tent behind, probably a good reason and they're probably fine.
Speaker A:It is a month like after they had left, but you know, they haven't heard from them yet.
Speaker A:But I'M sure they're fine.
Speaker A:Adding to the confusion, not necessarily for the search people, but the UPI sports club actually had lied to the family members saying that they got.
Speaker A:They got a telegram from Dyatlov.
Speaker A:So not a great move.
Speaker A:Another issue with that hypothesis that they're fine is that they found a lot of the group's boots, skis, coats, you know, important stuff.
Speaker A:And then they found a set or not a set, but they found footprints.
Speaker A:Not a straight line or not a single file line, like they were walking in pairs almost away.
Speaker A:Estimated to belong to eight or nine people.
Speaker A:But then again, since the scene wasn't preserved, a lot of the search parties footprints are involved too.
Speaker A:They did observe that some of the prints were made with no shoes, some were made with socks, and potentially one or two made with shoes on.
Speaker A:They also noted that the steps were closely paced or placed as if they were taking short steps, I.
Speaker A:E.
Speaker A:Walking calmly.
Speaker A:Some prints deviate from the path moment, like briefly and then return.
Speaker A:Searchers found some odds and ends, including money, warm clothes, cameras, that thing, things of that kind of nature that led them to believe that there was no invasion by an attacker at the tent, as some had suspected earlier.
Speaker A:The thought is that if they were attacked, they would have also been robbed, which is fair.
Speaker A:The night of the 26th, the searchers gathered around, had dinner, they offered drinks, and then some of them tried to give a toast to their friends.
Speaker A:You know, best wishes, hopefully find you guys soon.
Speaker A:And then one guy, a local woodsman who was there aiding the search, said that they're better off drinking for the dead.
Speaker A:So got a Mr.
Speaker A:Happy on our hands.
Speaker A:The next day, February 20th, four bodies were found.
Speaker A:So he.
Speaker A:He may have been blunt, but he was, he was right.
Speaker A:At roughly 11am, about one and a half kilometers from the tent, in a wooded area down the mountain, Yuri Krivinoshenko and Yuri Doroshenko were discovered.
Speaker A:One searcher saw something dark near a cedar tree.
Speaker A:According to official reports, there's like a flat area near the cedar tree where the remnants of a fire were found.
Speaker A:And then two or three meters from the fire, these guys were found frozen, without most of their clothes on, under a light dusting of snow.
Speaker A:This wooded area in general did not have the same levels of snow as the mountain did, just because the trees prevented a lot of like the wind sweeping and drifting of snow, which actually helped the searchers find these guys.
Speaker A:They were both found in underwear and a shirt, and that's kind of about it.
Speaker A:Bit around them were bits of branches and other Tree fallings, suspecting that they were either using these to feed the fire, and then also they could have been broken off from the cedar tree that was near them.
Speaker A:They found broken branches as high as 5 meters up, indicating that somebody climbed up this tree and were breaking pieces off for fire.
Speaker A:Krivinishenko had on a single sock, and a matching sock was near the fire, but it was burnt.
Speaker A:Now, for the pair, the causes of death was listed as hypothermia.
Speaker A:They were discovered to have a wide array of wounds, a lot of superficial scratches and cuts and stuff like that.
Speaker A:I would also like to tell you that if you are listening to this podcast with children present, maybe skip ahead or pause and do something else for now.
Speaker A:It's not especially, like, violent, but there's some graphic details ahead.
Speaker A:So just fair warning, all right, Starting with Yuri Doroshenko.
Speaker A:He's the man on which previous hike, he had chased away a bear with a geologist.
Speaker A:Geologist hammer.
Speaker A:He had previously dated Xena.
Speaker A:You're probably sitting there like, why are you telling me this?
Speaker A:You already did this.
Speaker A:Hey, hey, hey.
Speaker A:What are you doing?
Speaker A:I'm just trying to humanize these guys a bit because I'm about to talk about their dead bodies.
Speaker A:So I'm gonna.
Speaker A:I'm gonna bring it around so you remember that these are just people and not, you know, a guy on a mortician slap.
Speaker A:Right when they did his autopsy.
Speaker A:Skin was a brownish purple color, also covered with various bruises and cuts, as well as frostbite.
Speaker A:His hair on the right side of his head was burnt.
Speaker A:There's a gray foam found on his cheek, which is apparently common in pulmonary.
Speaker A:Pulmonary edema.
Speaker A:But it's also could be caused by postmortem compressions on the chest, like somebody was trying to give him cpr.
Speaker A:Essentially.
Speaker A:There's bruising in the right armpit region, bruises on the shoulder, forearm, skin missing from his fingers, all his fingers and toes or severely frostbitten.
Speaker A:He also had burns, like, not frost bite burns, but, like, regular burns on his hands and feet.
Speaker A:Just suspected to be caused by placing frostbitten extremities into fire and not being able to feel those because he was so severely frostbitten.
Speaker A:He's also got swollen upper lip, blood on the ears and nose.
Speaker A:Yeah, Marks of, like, blood pooling on his body that was not.
Speaker A:Did not line up with the way in which he was he was found laying.
Speaker A:This means that he was probably moved after he had already died, which makes sense because he was found, like, directly next to Krivin Ashenko.
Speaker A:So it's like somebody kind of was doing like a respectful, we're going to put these guys together.
Speaker A:It's also mentioned in some sources that some of the wounds that he had might have been self inflicted.
Speaker A:Basically an effort to knock himself out, to speed up the process and avoid being awake while freezing to death.
Speaker A:Just pretty hardcore.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yuri Krovanishenko, a silly goose of the group, the Mandolin man, worker at a nuclear power plant.
Speaker A:He was found with bruising on his forehead, bleeding and bruising around his left temporal bone.
Speaker A:Nose was missing, which could have been taken by animals or also, you know, it was frostbitten, so I just kind of crumbled off, which is gross.
Speaker A:His ears, fingers and toes were all very, very frostbitten.
Speaker A:He had a chunk of his own skin in his teeth which corresponded with a wound on his knuckle.
Speaker A:This is kind of indicative of biting his own knuckle in either an effort to stifle pain or cry or also could be to test to see how numb his hand was.
Speaker A:Frostbite, like if he could feel it at all.
Speaker A:There's bruises on his legs, some scratches on his legs, and then his hands and feet are also burnt.
Speaker A:Same, same, same reasoning as, as the other one.
Speaker A:Now finding these two bodies drew a lot more people into the area.
Speaker A:And due to that fact the next body was found 300 meters from the cedar tree, you know, by the cedar tree that the two Yuris were found.
Speaker A:The fists of Igor Dyatlov rose slightly over the snow, clenched in what is like a, trying to like you know, just a frozen, huddled like position.
Speaker A:He was lightly dressed, having only some clothing on, including a vest that Yuri Yudin had given to either K or Doroshenko, depending on what source you read.
Speaker A:He stated that he gave it to Doroshenko.
Speaker A:Igor was also wearing a sweater, shirt, ski pants, some sort of like Long John type singlet thing.
Speaker A:No shoes, a sock on each foot, but one being cotton and the other one wool.
Speaker A:He was lying on his back as I mentioned, and then his head was pointed towards the tent, indicating that he was attempting to walk to it.
Speaker A:When they found his body, people combed the area.
Speaker A:Manzi hunters arrived with their dogs and one dog found found Zenida.
Speaker A:Zenaida Komagorova.
Speaker A:She was found 630 meters from the cedar tree and roughly 300ish meters ahead of Igor.
Speaker A:She was face down with her head pointing towards the tent as well.
Speaker A:She had significantly better clothes on than anyone else, not like they were nicer, just that she was more dressed for the Cold weather.
Speaker A:She was wearing two hats, long sleeve undershirt, sweater, checkered like button, button up type shirt, another sweater, and then sports pants, trousers, ski trousers, three pairs of socks, but no shoes.
Speaker A:Now, Igor Dyatlov, the man who had done this trip a year prior, man who was asked by the university, the upi, to be a sports tourism guide and instructor, who had loved this stuff, built his own radios and stove to radiate heat and prepare food for his companions.
Speaker A:The autopsy revealed minor abrasions on his face, on his forehead, his cheeks, his dried lip, dried blood on his lips, not dried lip on his blood.
Speaker A:His knees were bruised, ankles had abrasions, a cut on his ankle, discoloration of his hands, there's red bruising on his knuckles.
Speaker A:And all the sources that are the source that one of the sources I found likes to point out that this is one that is found in people who are fighting, but also it could be caused by a bunch of different things.
Speaker A:But his cause of death was also hypothermia.
Speaker A:Zenida Zenita Xena Komogorova, the radio engineering student who had been bitten via.
Speaker A:Bitten by a viper on a previous hike, refused to let people carry her stuff.
Speaker A:She had that infectious personality.
Speaker A:She was respectful to everyone, made so many friends.
Speaker A:She, the children, she was loved by the children that they visited from that school that day.
Speaker A:She's described as filling the places she went with the pleasant breath of her soul, was a quote from the sole survivor, Yuri Yudin.
Speaker A:She also had several bruises and abrasions on her cheek, face, her hands were bruised, discolored, missing a chunk of her skin on one hand, frostbite on her fingers, large bright red bruise on the side of her torso, like a long bruise.
Speaker A:It's also noted that she died of hypothermia.
Speaker A:And the autopsy also states that she was not sexually active at the time of her death.
Speaker A:Which rules out, out, you know, a rogue prisoner from the Gulag being the thing that killed them, because obviously a rogue prisoner would defile a lady's corpse.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, to be fair, the autopsies did say that none of the men were assaulted either, so that kind of rules out a lot.
Speaker A:But anyway.
Speaker A:Now, sometime before they found the next body, the students who had came in to aid the search had to return to their Studies.
Speaker A:Studies.
Speaker A:On March 3, the same day that they had left, some other members of the search party found a storage catch.
Speaker A:The, the storage cache that they had left the night before their last night.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Everything seemed to be intact.
Speaker A:The food was all there, which means that nobody was really following them and watched them to take their stuff.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Which further ruled out the prisoner theory.
Speaker A:Two days later they would find another body.
Speaker A:Roost him or rooster.
Speaker A:Mystic Slobodan.
Speaker A:He was found roughly 480 meters from the cedar tree on March 5.
Speaker A:He was in between Igor and Xena on that same path.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Because there was so much snow covering him.
Speaker A:He was not seen despite people covering that area for two weeks.
Speaker A:He's also found face down, head towards the tent.
Speaker A:Dressed also very well comparatively.
Speaker A:He had long sleeve undershirt, shirt, sweater, two pairs of pants, four pairs of socks and a single felt boot.
Speaker A:He was buried under around 50cm of snow which was about a foot and a half.
Speaker A:So makes sense that he was not found right away.
Speaker A:Rustic Slobodin, the athletic yet soft spoken long distance runner.
Speaker A:The other mandolin player of the group, the engineering graduate.
Speaker A:A little bit different autopsy.
Speaker A:He had a hemorrhage on his temple, abrasions on his forehead, bruising, swelling on both sides of his face, bruising on his right eye, bloody nose, bruised knuckles like Igor, swollen lips, bruising on his leg, a tear of his skin from his forearm, fractures to his skull or a fracture on the front of his skull, I guess.
Speaker A:Despite this, his cause of death was also listed as hypothermia.
Speaker A:That was another two months.
Speaker A:That's right, two full months before the next breakthrough occurred.
Speaker A:This one is actually the final bit of hikers.
Speaker A:As all four were found in the same spot, the snow began to melt.
Speaker A:And this gave searchers the ability to explore different areas that had been previously too difficult because of how much snow there was a Monty man and his dog discovered some cut branches that seemed to form a path of sorts.
Speaker A:If like either they were left on purpose or that they like were dropped as somebody was walking.
Speaker A:This was around 50 meters from the cedar tree.
Speaker A:They all found some black sweatpants as well that had been partially cut and then a sweater that was assumed to belong to Lyudmila in this same area.
Speaker A:They decided to dig in this area and found more cut branches that were covered with clothes.
Speaker A:Clothes basically a makeshift bed that was dug into the snow.
Speaker A:This is a shelter that the remaining four must have made for themselves.
Speaker A:It's called the den or Dyatlov Den in Sources.
Speaker A:Bed had clothes wadded up into like four bundles which looked like it was four seats for them.
Speaker A:And it was suspected that Zolotariov had birthed this idea because you know, this is something that he would learn, learned in the war.
Speaker A:So where are they, well, a search of the area, including deep snow probes, returned results of finding flesh almost more than four meters down.
Speaker A:They dug and dug and dug until they went down nearly 14ft of snow and found Lyudmila Dubinina in a stream along with the others.
Speaker A:The man higher up than Liouda resting on like a ledge almost.
Speaker A:It's like imagine like a very.
Speaker A:Is like a stream that had a waterfall.
Speaker A:Like, it's like like stepped down.
Speaker A:She was in this kneeling position, her head resting on her arms, which were resting on the ledge of this formation.
Speaker A:It's like if you imagine a kid that was like super bored and just staring at a window and was like resting their head on their arms.
Speaker A:That's kind of how it looks.
Speaker A:And she's just like kneeling against this waterfall thing.
Speaker A:Now, just above her remained lay the remaining three, Alexander Kolatov, Levitov, Nikolai by Thibault Brynam and Simeon Zolotaryov, all lying next to one another.
Speaker A:Kolevatov was seemingly embracing Zolotaryov with his left arm draped over the top of him.
Speaker A:Now, they dug away a lot of snow to get to the bodies and then had them transported away for autopsy.
Speaker A:Now, it didn't appear in the book that I read, slash listened to, but it was noted on the website that in some like radio communication or like, like, I don't know, radiograms, there was some communication that the helicopter pilots, the military helicopter pilots, refused to carry the bodies away until there were zinc coffins because they were scared of radiation poisoning.
Speaker A:Which adds a layer to this.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The pilots specifically opposed orders of a colonel who was there, which feels pretty intense.
Speaker A:They did eventually move the bodies and then an autopsy was done after that Issue is that they had been sitting in a stream for however long, long as well as under 12ft of snow.
Speaker A:So there's, you know, varying degrees of decomposition to now think about.
Speaker A:Also the reason I knew about radiation is that one person, for whatever reason, was now checking bodies for.
Speaker A:He had a Geiger counter.
Speaker A:Not standard procedure at all, but he, he had one.
Speaker A:And they found some clothing items, some clothing items to be radiated.
Speaker A:We'll get into that in a bit, starting with Lyuda Milla Dubini, Nina Ayuta, the strong, outspoken woman who would challenge people on their beliefs, specifically if they were communist enough.
Speaker A:She would also be super welcoming and helpful to newcomers to hiking.
Speaker A:She would teach them whatever she knew.
Speaker A:She survived being shot in the leg before, you know, carried her own stuff afterwards.
Speaker A:She was fully dressed, without shoes, she was wearing a sweater Sweater that did give off some radiation.
Speaker A:This sweater did belong originally to Krivinoshenko, who you might remember have worked at a nuclear power plant and also assisted in cleaning up a nuclear disaster.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:It's unrelated though.
Speaker A:Her injuries though, pretty intense, starting with the obvious.
Speaker A:Her eyes and tongue are missing, so that's scary.
Speaker A:She also had a broken flattened nose, damaged tissue on the temple.
Speaker A:She had four broken ribs on the right side and six on the left.
Speaker A:There's no external damage to her skin or anything visible, but her heart did have a hemorrhage in it and there's a large bruise on her left thigh.
Speaker A:Her stomach also contained a lot of dark mucus, sometimes described as being a bunch of blood, but it's not how it was written in the autopsy.
Speaker A:In addition to her missing tongue and eyes, most of the bottom of her mouth is gone too.
Speaker A:So that's creepy, but is, you know, kind of suspected that it's just like some animals in the stream, little critters coming upon her body and just snacking, you know.
Speaker A:Her cause of death is listed as a hemorrhage of the heart with multiple fractured ribs with internal bleeding.
Speaker A:Next upstream we have Nikolai Thibaubernol, son of French communists who were repressed under the rule of Stalin, whose dad was was in a gulag when he was born and then died.
Speaker A:His brother also died at the same the same year.
Speaker A:Bright civil engineering student who was working for the construction department.
Speaker A:He was found just above Liuda.
Speaker A:He was one of the best dressed in the group in terms of how warm the clothes he had on was.
Speaker A:Due to this, it is hypothesized that Zoloteriev and himself were actually outside of the tent when whatever happened, happened.
Speaker A:Nikolai had several hats on one canvas and fur, and another wool.
Speaker A:He was wearing a shirt, wool sweater, fur jacket, sweatpants, cotton pants, ski pants, wool socks, felt boots.
Speaker A:His injuries were multiple fractures on his temporal bone on the right of his head, bruising on his lip, hemorrhage on his right arm caused death listed as violent.
Speaker A:There's no wonder why people are like creeped out by this kid.
Speaker A:Like some of the language is peculiar to say the least.
Speaker A:It's listed as violent.
Speaker A:That doesn't mean like somebody violently killed him.
Speaker A:It means that his cause of death is that it was violent, like he his head smashed.
Speaker A:What do you want?
Speaker A:Next I'm going to talk about Alexander Cole Levitov.
Speaker A:His upper body and legs were covered pretty well clothing wise, not wearing a hat or shoes, but everywhere else, pretty, pretty covered up.
Speaker A:The nuclear physics student whose father was a financial director of a gulag until he was accidentally struck and killed by a train.
Speaker A:And then they lost all sorts of creature comforts.
Speaker A:From that, he joined Communist League and began receiving better grades and also got a good internship in Moscow.
Speaker A:Nice apartment.
Speaker A:Part of his pants tested positive for radiation as well.
Speaker A:Not known what the source was, but he was a nuclear physics student, but who knows.
Speaker A:Galvatov's injuries include soft tissue missing around the eyebrow.
Speaker A:Also could be from critters just snacking on a dead body.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There's a wound behind his ear.
Speaker A:His neck is listed as deformed.
Speaker A:So I don't.
Speaker A:I don't know that means.
Speaker A:But it did also say that his hyoid bone is intact, which is the bone that is like a good indicator if somebody was like, like strangled.
Speaker A:Basically bruised knee, foamy, bloody liquid in the lungs as well as fluid inside the chest cavity.
Speaker A:You know, basically suspected that his capillaries all ruptured inside his lungs.
Speaker A:So that sounds fun.
Speaker A:As mentioned, Kolevatov was found kind of like his arm over Solitaryov, either trying to protect him or trying to warm or maybe trying to reach Liuda or Thibault.
Speaker A:In either event, the next and last person to discuss for the group is Simeon Zolotaryov, The World War II veteran, the late addition to the group.
Speaker A:He's a tour instructor having plenty of experience in the field.
Speaker A:But he also, you know, kind of a loose can't.
Speaker A:He was in the war, in the big war.
Speaker A:He had tattoos.
Speaker A:What's that about?
Speaker A:It seems pretty odd that he has tattoos until you realize that he's a Russian World War II veteran.
Speaker A:So, I mean, that feels pretty obvious to me.
Speaker A:But he was found wearing two hats, a scarf, several shirts, sweater, coat, multiple pairs of pants and shoes.
Speaker A:He was the other one who is suspected to have been already outside of the tent when whatever happened, happened.
Speaker A:Like Lauda, his eyes were missing soft tissue around them, also gone.
Speaker A:He had several broken ribs on his right side, which made his torso appear sunken in.
Speaker A:And a wound with exposed skull on the back right of his head.
Speaker A:It is not indicated whether the skin would was, you know, soft tissue, just like kind of eaten off potentially, or if it was just like it fell off, I don't know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Also similarly to Liuda, his cause of death is related to internal hemorrhaging.
Speaker A:So we have nine dead, all in various locations.
Speaker A:Several undressed, several internal trauma.
Speaker A:What exactly happened?
Speaker A:We have no clue.
Speaker A:The leading theories, as I mentioned at the top of the episode span A wide variety.
Speaker A:So I want to talk about a few of them for a second second before I share kind of what I now believe after looking over everything and my reasoning for it essentially.
Speaker A:So breakdown of the theories surrounding this incident.
Speaker A:Most outlandish to most plausible.
Speaker A:Kind of.
Speaker A:I don't think my list is exactly in that order, but it's close.
Speaker A:Number one, pretty outlandish.
Speaker A:Extraterrestrial involvement.
Speaker A:UFOs.
Speaker A:There were reports of bright orange lights in the sky, burn marks on clothing, unusual radiation levels that has led to some people to speculate that there might have been aliens involved.
Speaker A:The hikers, panicked behavior, you know, cutting their way out of the tent, interpreted as fleeing in an unexplainable phenomenon.
Speaker A:Biggest issue with this one, in my opinion, is just the lack of evidence for anything like.
Speaker A:And everything about this can be explained in a way without UFOs being involved.
Speaker A:I don't know, it feels weird.
Speaker A:Number two, government experimenting.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So the radiation on the clothes and the area's proximity to a missile testing site fuels suspicion of military involvement.
Speaker A:Eyewitness accounts of the strange lights and inconsistencies in the investigation, such as missing files.
Speaker A:Add to this theory, what this theory doesn't take into account is just the lack of radiation on like anything else.
Speaker A:There's a hand, not even a handful.
Speaker A:There's like two items with radiation on them and that's it.
Speaker A:If there was like a radio, like if there was a nuke, for instance, feel like there'd be more evidence of that, that, you know, there's no bomb impacts anywhere.
Speaker A:Everything's mostly intact.
Speaker A:I don't know if you've seen footage of nukes going off.
Speaker A:It's a little violent.
Speaker A:The searches by air still saw hike like ski tracks and stuff.
Speaker A:I'm just saying.
Speaker A:And then the military showed up.
Speaker A:You'd think they'd know mythical creatures, the yeti, some sort of cryptid talked about that.
Speaker A:That photo which showed the blurry, suspicious yeti, and then also the hikers having violent injuries and missing their eyes and tongues, you know.
Speaker A:But there's the issue that there's no predator tracks or tracks of any kind that just aren't human.
Speaker A:So there's that next one, hostile Manzi tribes, people.
Speaker A:These hikers were traveling through this territory, violating potentially some sacred land.
Speaker A:However, the Manzi did actually help search for these people.
Speaker A:They found.
Speaker A:I mean, statistically, I think they found more bodies than the others, but.
Speaker A:Yeah, so also feels weird.
Speaker A:There's also no shot, no signs of conflict.
Speaker A:Nothing's been taken, you know, so.
Speaker A:So I don't feel like that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker A:They also didn't violate any sacred ground.
Speaker A:This is a comment that people have made about the the dead mountain and don't go there mountain.
Speaker A:Those aren't actually sacred sites according to the Manzi people who lived in the area.
Speaker A:Next up, interpersonal conflict.
Speaker A:The isolation and harsh conditions might have led to some tension, some fighting.
Speaker A:But there's also no defensive wounds.
Speaker A:You know that we talked about those knuckle wounds but there's like no defensive wounds.
Speaker A:So next up we have katabatic winds.
Speaker A:Sudden strong downward downdrafts could explain the hikers rapid departure and disorientation.
Speaker A:The reported weather conditions do line up with this.
Speaker A:There's also infrasound.
Speaker A:Infrasound is a low frequency vibration caused by wind end might explain the triggered panic and irrational behavior but it doesn't account for the severe injuries.
Speaker A:Now there is also avalanche.
Speaker A:The tense damage, frantic escape aligned with an avalanche theory.
Speaker A:But then injuries like broken ribs.
Speaker A:And injuries like broken ribs are consistent with compressive snow.
Speaker A:But there was a note in the investor, the searchers thing that said there was no signs of an avalanche.
Speaker A:So another one.
Speaker A:Hypothermia obviously.
Speaker A:Obviously.
Speaker A:I mean there's the paradoxical undressing, you know, poor decision making and undressing due to hypothermia explains a lot of the hikers behavior and their exposure to extreme cold.
Speaker A:Major factor here.
Speaker A:Only issues that only two of the bodies were found without clothes and those clothes were actually found to be have been cut off.
Speaker A:Which means that the bodies were probably already dead when the clothes were removed.
Speaker A:And then, you know, an accidental ball is indicated by the or about the internal injuries.
Speaker A:Also if you've listened to time suck, you know, a friend of mine, you might have listened to it, might remember this one.
Speaker A:There's a theory that I heard from that which was that the stove gave off fumes and then these fumes made people start to get crazy.
Speaker A:They had stabbing holes in the tent, trying to vent it, different things like that.
Speaker A:That one is kind of appealing, but also.
Speaker A:So Igor had used this stove a lot and there's even notes that he didn't use it that night.
Speaker A:I don't know theories about UFOs, yetis, you know these, these theories grab attention.
Speaker A:But I think there's a lot of issues with some of these.
Speaker A:Yes, it is mysterious that there's radiation on two pieces of clothing.
Speaker A:But also I feel like everybody's theory gets shot down because people are like so excited to go.
Speaker A:Well that doesn't explain this.
Speaker A:This like as if one thing caused all of these things to happen, which I feel like doesn't make any sense.
Speaker A:My own personal theory is a mix of some of the ones that I've mentioned.
Speaker A:You know, I do believe that they intended to climb the mountain the next day, you know, lose use the ridge to cross to the destination of Otorton.
Speaker A:I looked on Google Maps or not Google Maps, Google Earth, which is a very technical and you know, realistic way to do this.
Speaker A:But I, you know, it gives you a rough estimate of scale for geography.
Speaker A:So I went to the mountain, I looked around and yeah, I mean it does make sense to climb and you know, cross the ridge over to a torton.
Speaker A:But anyway, you know, they had that late start and they pitched their tent, you know, in a spot that they thought was going to be good.
Speaker A:Maybe they just didn't feel like they would be able to make it to the.
Speaker A:I think that they were then laying in the tent tent minus Thibaut, Brynjol and Solitary off when where they cut into the snow to make their flat spot in their bunker situation led to a slab avalanche sliding off and crushing part of the tent.
Speaker A:I'm guessing that the two that were outside the tent were peeing.
Speaker A:That's my guess.
Speaker A:Or maybe they're smoking, I don't know.
Speaker A:You know, all the sources out there all talk about there's no evidence of an avalanche.
Speaker A:And they're right for the most part.
Speaker A:I mean there's no evidence of like an avalanche.
Speaker A:But a slab avalanche is not the same same as like a regular avalanche you see in movies and tv.
Speaker A:Biggest critics of this theory point to avalanche is needing a 30 degree angle to occur.
Speaker A:Slab avalanches do not.
Speaker A:It's called a slab avalanche because it's literally like the slab layer of snow.
Speaker A:Get.
Speaker A:Imagine you know, those geography or not geography geology pictures in like school where they have a mountain cut in half and then it's like this is what I whatever type of soil and that blah blah, blah.
Speaker A:Imagine that.
Speaker A:But it's snow.
Speaker A:The, the slab is like the upper crust.
Speaker A:The, the crusty layer.
Speaker A:When you step into snow and it's like crunchy.
Speaker A:That's on a mountain.
Speaker A:That's kind of the slab stuff, right?
Speaker A:And they cut into it and some of it slid down.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's my hypothesis and there's some evidence to back it up.
Speaker A:The resulting slab avalanche could have sent upwards of 600 to 1,000 pounds of snow onto the tent.
Speaker A:Enough to snap ropes for sure.
Speaker A:Collapse that north side that we talked about, people do like to point out that they camped on a 15 degree slope and that's not enough for an avalanche.
Speaker A:But then also, you know, there's the peak above them, which is significantly steeper.
Speaker A:And while it wasn't 30 degree upward, like I said, doesn't have to be.
Speaker A:The evidence to support the slab avalanche theory comes from, you guessed it, the movie Frozen.
Speaker A:Two men came together after seeing how lifelike the snow in the movie, movie, the Disney movie, behaved and requested to use the same code that they used to animate that in a avalanche simulation program that they had.
Speaker A:Johan Gaum, a professor from epfl, a technical institute in Switzerland, came together with Professor Alexander Puzren, a chair of geotechnical engineering at ETH Zurich, and put this simulation to the test.
Speaker A:They concluded that a small slab avalanche could explain some of the injuries as well as a reason as why they left their tent.
Speaker A:Now, I don't believe that it is responsible for all of the injuries, but I do believe it partially collapsed the tent enough to cause them to cut themselves out.
Speaker A:You know, people talk about how the tent was cut open and then they ran out.
Speaker A:What if the tent was broken on that rope and then kind of like down on them.
Speaker A:Their only way to get out was to cut themselves out because they couldn't see, see where they were.
Speaker A:You know, it's all crushed down and it's dark out.
Speaker A:You can't see the entrance.
Speaker A:You don't know what's happening.
Speaker A:You don't even know if you can get out that way.
Speaker A:So the only way to go in an avalanche is up.
Speaker A:You got to swim your way up, cut some stuff in the, in the walls and, you know, climb out of there.
Speaker A:This would also explain why they weren't able to grab all of the things that they needed to survive after that, why they, you know, couldn't find all their shoes, couldn't find all their clothes.
Speaker A:Just were probably wearing what they were sleeping in.
Speaker A:You got to remember, it's like negative 30 there.
Speaker A:So what they're wearing when they're found is probably what they were wearing when they were sleeping because it's cold.
Speaker A:So, you know, was not like they were all wearing snowsuits anyway.
Speaker A:Slab avalanche caused the partial collapse.
Speaker A:And then this is caused by them partially digging into the snow to make their tent, right?
Speaker A:Then harsh winds blew snow around all day, placing some loose snow on the edge of that slab.
Speaker A:And then that just gravity, right, just slid that slab down.
Speaker A:Searchers who arrived on location said there was no Evidence of an avalanche.
Speaker A:But slab avalanches are not as aggressive as the huge ones, so they can disappear pretty quick.
Speaker A:There's a chance they might not even would have known about it had they known that slab avalanches exist.
Speaker A:Because the wind, which was very aggressive, would have blown all the freshly turned slab away.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Which eliminates any depression in the snow where the slab would have came from.
Speaker A: actually went to the area in: Speaker A:In late January they had taken snowmobiles and the weather was calm.
Speaker A:But eventually wind picked up and actually ended up overturning one of their snowmobiles.
Speaker A:The wind caused the snow to whip around and they also experienced a loss of visibility.
Speaker A:When they finally got to the area of the Diatla tent, they found evidence of a recent slab avalanche.
Speaker A:They recorded it, watched the wind erase everything, which is crazy.
Speaker A:The other thing the original searchers noted was that if there was an avalanche, there would have been broken skis, which is weird because they literally recorded about a broken ski like 20 meters away from the tent.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The two vertical skis that made the roof, the peak of the tent were stationed standing.
Speaker A:But they were vertical or not vertical?
Speaker A:They were vertical, but they were parallel to the tents entrance, the north and south side.
Speaker A:Which means that the skinniest part of them would have been hit by the snow, which I feel like would prevent them from breaking.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It's just like a butter knife cutting through.
Speaker A:Now I don't believe that the snow could have crushed them completely.
Speaker A:I don't think that their injuries were all sustained that way.
Speaker A:I think some of them were.
Speaker A:But a lot of the internal wounds were from the hikers who fell 14ft into a ravine that, you know, and then also had snow fall on top of them.
Speaker A:So yeah, with the partial tent collapse while they were sleeping or, you know, laying down, they cut their way out and then they leave.
Speaker A:And then being experienced hikers, they leave in a calm manner because they don't want to like be running around being all crazy.
Speaker A:Because if this was a small avalanche, there could be a big bigger one.
Speaker A:You know, they had one flashlight, another flashlight was found near the tent, but they couldn't find it or something, I don't know.
Speaker A:But they had one flashlight with them.
Speaker A:Also something to note, these flashlights did contain radiation.
Speaker A:They were made with a radioactive agent of some sort.
Speaker A:Anyway, because of the avalanche, they weren't able to find their clothes, slowly walked away.
Speaker A:Not only to eliminate the potential of a follow up avalanche, but also to conserve an energy.
Speaker A:Now, I was looking on Google Earth as I mentioned, and this area that they ended up at with the cedar tree looks like it is roughly, not exactly, but roughly a similar distance that their cache was from the day before.
Speaker A:So I wonder if when they cut themselves out, they were trying to make their way back to where the cache was and you know, wait in the morning, get grab their old supplies and then wait for the morning and then realized that when they made the fire down by that cedar tree that they were not in the right spot.
Speaker A:Anyway, once they realized this, they probably were like, well, we're going to hunker down anyway and try to be as warm as we can.
Speaker A:Make a big fire, warm up, survive the night, come back to the tent in the morning, wait out any risk of an avalanche.
Speaker A:Few of them scaled up the cedar tree, get some superficial injuries from this.
Speaker A:That long skinny bruise that Xena gets.
Speaker A:I can't help but wonder if maybe she like was climbing the tree and then fell and hit a branch, like a big branch on her side.
Speaker A:They get a fire made.
Speaker A:Several of them have burns on their feet and hands.
Speaker A:Cravon, Shingo, you know, they're trying to warm up their hands, they end up dying.
Speaker A:And then the others redistribute their clothing in an effort to warm themselves and then kind of align them up in like a funerary manner.
Speaker A:Following this, the group separates into two different sections.
Speaker A:It is a little bit of a confusing aspect, but I kind of wonder if Xena Rustic and Igor go back towards the tent because they are now under the impression that any risk of an avalanche is over and they can go get their supplies, maybe get that stove because that thing is super hot.
Speaker A:That might warm everybody up, right?
Speaker A:Meanwhile, the warmly dressed crew Solitaryov go to like dig out a new shelter.
Speaker A:Scouted an area near the tree around 75 meters away.
Speaker A:Dug this den, gathering branches and stuff, leaving a trail for the people to come back.
Speaker A:Unbeknownst to them, they walk over a ravine, stepping into a valley with a tunnel underneath carved out from the running water of the ravine.
Speaker A:The weight of all four of them collapses this roof.
Speaker A:They have a 12 to 14 foot drop into that, into that ravine and.
Speaker A:And you know, they fall, receiving all sorts of different traumas and then crushed by a lot of snow afterwards.
Speaker A:Lack of external injuries kind of speaks to them.
Speaker A:Landing on snow as they fall and then also snow falling on them.
Speaker A:A couple of them have, I think it was Thibaut Brignon or no, Solitarya.
Speaker A:One of them had A skull fracture, but was also wearing two hats.
Speaker A:And I wonder if that plus the snow kind of of prevented an external surface injury, but an internal injury.
Speaker A:In my hypothesis, Liuda fell the furthest.
Speaker A:She was probably in front of them as the roof gave out.
Speaker A:I think maybe she was facing them.
Speaker A:They were.
Speaker A:The three were walking towards her and she had like turned maybe, maybe she was like, oh, wait, hold on, isn't this where the river was?
Speaker A:And then she fell all the way down to the lowest part of this ravine.
Speaker A:Ravine, and then tried to climb up to where everybody else was, but couldn't because her internal bleeding was so much that she died within, you know, minutes of falling.
Speaker A:Only able to get on her knees and like try to, you know, climb up and then essentially succumbing to her wounds.
Speaker A:Three men on the ledge, upper ledge, too wounded to really move any further.
Speaker A:And maybe they were buried relatively quickly to the running water.
Speaker A:Where their bodies were might have enabled them to move around a little bit.
Speaker A:A lot of them had internal wounds, you know, body, head, sanely cold water also put their bodies on fast track for hypothermia, even if they weren't super injured internally.
Speaker A:Tibo Brynjol.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, this is what I was talking about.
Speaker A:Thibault Brynjol had a major head wound, but was also wearing two hats, so might have blunted the external image damage.
Speaker A:My idea that they were all facing the same way and then Liuda was facing a different way, which is why they ended up in a different spot than, you know, animals getting at the eyes and the tongue and the lower part of her mouth, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:So, ferocious winds on the climb back to the tent, both Igor Dyatlov and Zina Kolmogorova died of hypothermia.
Speaker A:And then Rustic Slobodin had fallen several times.
Speaker A:Maybe he fell from the tree to catching things.
Speaker A:Maybe.
Speaker A:Maybe he was hit when the avalanche hit too.
Speaker A:He actually died.
Speaker A:Or it is.
Speaker A:It is suspected that he fell to the ground, still warm, which means he didn't die until after he was already on the ground.
Speaker A:But Igor and Xena were like basically frozen when they hit the ground.
Speaker A:And the reason this is assumed is because there's an ice melt underneath of Slobodan, which means that his body was warm when it hit the ground, causing the snow to melt and then freeze into ice.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So that's.
Speaker A:So that's interesting.
Speaker A:My theory kind of accounts for a lot of different variables.
Speaker A:A lot of the ones I could find explains a lot of the questions that I had.
Speaker A:But I think the biggest part is it doesn't rely on just one thing to explain everything.
Speaker A:Ultimately, I think people want there to be some sort of like one odd explanation.
Speaker A:A lot of conversation trying to explain one thing that caused all of this, but that's just not reality.
Speaker A:In reality, the dominoes fell, causing one thing after another other.
Speaker A:They all tried, you know, they did many things to keep themselves alive.
Speaker A:They made a lot of the right moves, but they just, you know, for whatever reason could not last the situation.
Speaker A:You know, they.
Speaker A:They did stay alive for a lot longer than they could have had they done other things and longer than a lot of other people could have.
Speaker A:They could have just walked around aimlessly.
Speaker A:You know, they sought shelter, they built a fire, tried to make it back to their tent, potentially reestablish it, you know, start the stove again, which would have warmed themselves up like way too much, right.
Speaker A:Got their boots and other things that they needed, make, you know, the others tried to dig into the snow, make a makeshift fork, fork, you know, gather firewood, warm themselves up, but then fell through the roof of that hauled out ravine cavern thing.
Speaker A:Like had that not happened, they might have survived.
Speaker A:You know, all those four would have all been alive just a little bit before they died.
Speaker A:Explains why Kov was wrapped behind solitary of his arm stretching out over him, right.
Speaker A:Timo Burgess, y'all.
Speaker A:Definitely like he had a massive head injury, so he probably wasn't awake.
Speaker A:But the others could have been, maybe he was.
Speaker A:Maybe Kolevatov tried to wake him or Zolo, you know, tried to check on him or whatever.
Speaker A:But I welcome you all to look into everything yourself.
Speaker A:This is, it's fascinating.
Speaker A:It's darkly.
Speaker A:I don't know, it.
Speaker A:It just sucks you in.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:There's so much information, there's so many like random things that you, you're like, wait, what?
Speaker A:And one thing can like throw something else like a curveball at you.
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker A:I dove real far into this research.
Speaker A:As you know, this is a super long episode, way longer than I have on almost everything probably.
Speaker A:I found myself imagining the last moments and their attitudes at the time.
Speaker A:You know, I saw these pictures of them hugging and smiling and reading these stories of them singing and joking around and just looking at all the pictures that they took and extensively at the places they went.
Speaker A:Like an omniscient or omnipotent member of the trip by the end, ultimately super saddened by what happened, obviously.
Speaker A:You know, I saw the post mortem photos, the photos of their corpses, which kind of drove it all.
Speaker A:Drove it all home, you know, it was just a real.
Speaker A:I don't know, like a dark fascination that I had with it, but was like looking at these pictures of the.
Speaker A:They're like autopsy photos almost, and looking into their eyes, but their eyes are just dark.
Speaker A:Like, the pictures are black and white, but their eyes are just empty.
Speaker A:It's creepy.
Speaker A:Their eyes are there, but they're not.
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:It's like no light in them.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's disturbing, for sure.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But, you know, like I said, they're regular people.
Speaker A:They're just friends having a fun trip.
Speaker A:They were wanting to push themselves to the limits, and unfortunately they found them right.
Speaker A:They did the right things in order to try and survive, but ultimately just wasn't enough.
Speaker A:And I think that's okay.
Speaker A:Obviously, it's sad that they died, but sometimes nature wins.
Speaker A:The unknown, compelling force, in my opinion, was nature.
Speaker A:We don't know everything about nature, but that doesn't mean that it's nefarious or evil.
Speaker A:Sometimes things just happen.
Speaker A:You're prepared for it.
Speaker A:Even if you're an expert, it can still get you professional.
Speaker A:People in all sorts of different areas died doing those things every now and then.
Speaker A:These college students were not experts in their field.
Speaker A:They were experienced.
Speaker A:But all it takes is have one thing go wrong for that experience to no longer be a benefit.
Speaker A:The funerals of the Dyatlov group reflected this lack of attention that the government was giving, you know, highlighting this dismissive attitude that they had rather than intentional secrecy, in my opinion.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Igor Dyatlov and Rustem Slobodan followed the next day.
Speaker A:At Mihailovsko, efforts to announce the funerals were met with indifference, and flyers posted by students were even removed in some cases, which forced them to, you know, spread the word informally.
Speaker A:And still thousands of mourners attended, which showed just how sympathetic the public was for these hikers.
Speaker A:The final four hikers like Mila Dubinina, Alexander Kolevatov and Nikolai Thibaubrun and Simeon Zolateriov were found months later and then buried.
Speaker A:In May, their coffins were closed, which was unusual for civilian funerals, leading to speculation about the nature of their injuries.
Speaker A:I think it's probably a good move because I saw the pictures of their bodies and I him scared by them.
Speaker A:It's sad to say, but obviously it was a good choice.
Speaker A:Leaving their coffins closed, relatives expressed frustration over how long it took to launch the search efforts and general lack of respect shown during the funerals.
Speaker A:The authorities appeared to more concerned with minimizing inconvenience than properly honoring the deceased or addressing the tragedy.
Speaker A:Despite the lack of care in the handling of their deaths, the hiker memory endured.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Skos 17 and the mountain pass where they perished was named Diatlov Pass.
Speaker A:These gestures, though, became lasting tributes.
Speaker A:Even though they started, they were small, you know, they're still there.
Speaker A:All right, let's.
Speaker A:Let's end this bad boy.
Speaker A:This one was way longer than I anticipated, but, you know, I was just finding myself overwhelmed with information.
Speaker A:I just kept finding more and more and more.
Speaker A:You know, there's no surprise in my mind why so many people have so many different ideas and theories as to what happens happened.
Speaker A:Also took some time for me just to review everything and kind of come to my own conclusion.
Speaker A:What I dislike about this case is that there's so much focus on what drove them out of the tent, which in my opinion seems like the smallest part of it.
Speaker A:Some alternate theories as to what happened after, I'm more than willing to entertain because that's, in my opinion, the real mystery.
Speaker A:Why they split up, why they went the way they did, who knows?
Speaker A:You know, this is coming on 66 years since this had happened.
Speaker A:So anybody's guessing is, you know, as good as mine, I guess.
Speaker A:If you got an idea, I'd love to.
Speaker A:I would love to hear it.
Speaker A:If you want.
Speaker A:I'm going to link the website in the description so you can check it out on your own.
Speaker A:But definitely give it a look.
Speaker A:Let me know what you think, what your theories are.
Speaker A:You know, leave a comment on YouTube, on the Facebook, the Instagram posts, and in Spotify.
Speaker A:You can leave a comment there.
Speaker A:You enjoyed the show.
Speaker A:Also, review us on Apple podcast wherever possible.
Speaker A:Share us with your friends.
Speaker A:That's how we, how we grow.
Speaker A:Help us reach people.
Speaker A:And it doesn't cost you anything but your dignity.
Speaker A:Anyway, thank you for joining me on this episode and as always, keep questioning the past.
Speaker A:The future will thank you.
Speaker A:See you next time.
