The Dyatlov Pass Incident

What really happened at Dyatlov Pass?



On February 2nd 1959, nine skiers died trekking across the northern Ural mountains in Russia. Since then the pass has been named Dyatlov after the group leader. They were aiming to reach a mountain called Otorten. The group originally consisted of ten members, but due to illness one of them, Yuri Yudin was forced to turn back early. This it seems actually saved his life.

Dyatlov in the mean time had intended to send a telegram back to their sports club no later then the 12th February. That telegram never came.  

After two weeks with no sign of the group, it was clear something had gone wrong. A search team was despatched into the area and they found an abandoned tent. It had been ripped open from the inside, with clothes and shoes left behind. It was their tent. Six of the students were found straight away, while the other three were discovered at the bottom of a ravine three months later, with fractured skulls and other injuries. They had all somehow died! There was also a great deal of scrap metal around the area as if it had been fenced off but not properly.

The branches on some of the trees near where they were found were broken up to five metres high, suggesting that one of the skiers had climbed up to look for something, perhaps the camp. It took until May 4 to find the last of them under four metres of snow in a ravine 75 metres farther into the woods then the rest of the group. These few were better dressed than the others, and there were signs that those who had died first might have relinquished their clothes to the rest of them. This explains how they got so much further then the others after they were somehow separated.

The injuries that the group had suffered seemed to be internal but not external. Also at the funerals people sore their hair and skin glowing as if it was affected by radiation.
What is most disturbing is that one of the bodies had had most of their face and tongue eaten away.

There are a number of different explanations that people have put forward in an attempt to shed light on this mystery. Lets take a look at as many as we can.

We'll try to take a look at all theories involved with this case and see if we can illuminate them one by one until we get to the most rational one. 

 Theories:

Aliens: Of course someone would say there were little green men involved. But why? Fascination with alien abduction has gone on for years. I should cover it properly at some point but for now I'll sum up my thoughts on the subject. There is no plausible evidence for it. The problem is that when something can't be given a definite answer people will say, 'Here is the answer, this explains it all'. But the answer they give doesn't add up either. And the truth is that there were other explanations to begin with; they were just flawed or couldn't be proven.

But why does the intervention of aliens explain this case? The wounds on the bodies, the fact that their clothes were missing, one of their eyes and face being eaten away. Is there really nothing on Earth that could do this and even if not then how do we know aliens could have done it and why? As there is no definite proof that aliens have visited us we can't conclude that there is a link here. There may well be intelligent life out there; but hopefully there is enough down here to give a better explanation for this.


Again I don't want to mock anyone that might believe this though. So I should point out that there were strange lights seen flashing in the sky that night. And you could certainly refer to these as UFO's given that this defines them perfectly until someone can tell us exactly what they were. Unidentified Flying Objects. What else can they be if not that?




 Yetis: Again we have the same problem as with the aliens above. There is no evidence to support their existence. Some people would disagree. But on the whole most experts who have attempted to find any trace of them have been left disappointed. Any attempt to refute this has generally been met with a long list of could be's and what ifs.
  
'These footprints in the snow could belong to a yeti',

'That could be blurry footage of bigfoot',

Cryptozoology is the study of animals that people claim to exist but haven't yet been proven to be real. Oxford geneticist Brian Sykes has worked on the study of myths like bigfoot for many years and is yet to find scientific proof anywhere. He has tested DNA samples on hair and skin samples alleged to belong to creatures like yetis and even the illustrious big foot mentioned above only to find that they actually belong to other animals like apes, dogs, horses, bears and even humans.    

If there was evidence to support the existence of these creatures though it still would not fully explain the victims injuries. They were wounded internally but showed no sign of external injuries. Some would say that a bear hug might have this effect by crushing them but then if a creature did attack them for whatever reason like them invading its territory surely it would do more than this. Victims of such attacks are generally torn to shreds and only one victim looked as if to have been attacked or mauled as they were missing parts of their face. 
  
Show me something I can believe and I'll look at this case again. But I still think we can find a more rational explanation.


Infrasound: Infrasound has also been blamed for what happened. This can after all affect the way people feel and behave. In 1998 part time school lecturer Vic Tandy wrote a paper called 'Ghost in the machine', in which he tried to explain the sensations people get which are attributed to the presence of ghosts stating that this is in fact caused by infrasound. He did so by carrying out a number of investigations at sights believed to be haunted.

Further test carried out with music at different frequencies resulted in people experiencing feelings of fear and panic.

It does seem to have an effect on people. But can it kill? The short answer in my opinion is no. Or at least not in this case. While it can lead to such side effects as fear, anxiety and even headaches and nausea I'm pretty confident that it would not lead to an experienced team of skiers/ hikers to run out into the cold and die. They would be prepared for extreme conditions amongst other things and they would have gone out there ready to face anything especially in an area they had not been before and weren't familiar with. And even if the infrasound had affected some of them I don't think it would have had this affect on the whole group as it only seems to have any affect on around 22% of people anyway. Surely at least one member of the group would try to keep things under control if some of them were acting strangely.

The infrasound theory is an interesting one as it adds a scientific perspective but when you look at it properly and remember that we are looking for the most likely solution and not just a possible one it starts to fall apart. 

The infrasound theory was first introduced by Donnie Eichar in his 2013 book Dead Mountain.

Murder: There was initial speculation into the possibility that the indigenous Mansi people might have attacked and murdered the group for encroaching on their lands but this hypothesis was quickly refuted when an investigation revealed that the nature of their deaths was inconsistent with murder.                


Military tests: One of the more common theories as well as the idea of infrasound is that of a military cover up. It is believed that around the time when these hikers were in the area the Russian military were testing parachute mines in the area. This would explain why the decision was made to stop investigating the case before it was officially explained. Some say it could also explain their injuries as the impact of the explosions would hit them with enough force to break their bones but without causing any bruising as there was no physical object that hit them. 

In this scenario people blame one of the victims faces being destroyed simply by a wild animal that found the bodies later and tried to eat them. If the bodies had started to freeze then the whole body would not have been eaten of course, but the eyes are the last part of a persons body to freeze given that they are encased within the skull and because tears are salty. The tongue is also of course preserved for longer as it is inside your mouth. If an animal began to eat away at the soft tissue it would have attempted to eat away the rest of the face as well and given up in the conditions it was faced with as the rest of the body would be too hard meaning that looking for live prey would be preferable. 

The parachute mines being dropped in the area might also give a more rational explanation for the glowing lights seen in the sky above the area at the time.      

 
Parachute mines are often dropped with chandelier flares which drop down onto the parachutes and explode in mid air casting light over the area as a way for the pilot to see where the mine is landing. As you can see from the picture on the right this creates glowing lights in the sky.








This theory has been tested though not debunked by the fact that whilst the files on this case were suppressed for a long time this is not unusual because the USSR is a secretive police state and the concealment of  problematic or mundane information is standard procedure, but in any case the files on the Dyatlov Pass incident have been released to the public since the late 1980s. Though it should really be said that much still remains a mystery, we don't know how much of the information is still being kept from us and most of what we do know comes from information that was released unofficially.



Avalanche: The avalanche theory is probably the most widely accepted. The group heard an avalanche coming and quickly made an escape from their tent to try and get to safety. In the confusion they were separated from each other and some of them climbed the trees to try and see were the rest of the group had ended up and which was the safest path. Some of the hikers ended up be buried under the snow which is why they took longer to find and were found buried under four feet of it. 
 Again in this case the missing face on one of the victims can be attributed to a wild animal. 

As for the fact that some of the group were found undressed, this can be explained by an act called paradoxical undressing. This is brought on by hyperthermia. In the final stages of hypothermia people become confused and delirious. What makes matters worse is that whilst this is happening- the cold temperatures makes the nerves in the vessel walls become paralyzed leading to vasodilation (the dilation of blood vessels which decreases blood pressure) and makes the person feel warm. This in turn leads to them taking their clothes off.

So they most likely undressed themselves which rules out foul play.

  

Conclusion:

I believe that there is some truth here in two of these theories. The group probably didn't realize that they were heading into an area that the military were using as a test sight for parachute mines as it was being done secretly. They could have had suspicions that something was going on there as they got further up the mountainside and set up camp quickly in preparation to move on as soon as they could if they needed to, but initially they might not have picked up on the magnitude of the situation. My guess is that a few of them questioned whether or not they were allowed to me there when they sore all the scrap metal in and around the area as if put there to utilize the area. There was probably debate about this with a few of them saying that there was nothing official (no signs up) to say that they shouldn't be there.

If the weather was harsh or even just appeared to be in the circumstances then this might explain why the tent was not put up correctly. Not to mention it would have been disturbed a great deal when they made their escape from within it.

Moments later it all kicked off and they were frightened by what was happening, the lights in the sky and the sudden sound of explosions, so they decided to leave their things behind and get away as fast as they could. It's not improbable that the parachute mines may have caused an avalanche down the mountain side as well which a few of them were caught up in when they got separated from the rest of the group. Some of them tried to stay safe and warm by lighting a fire and they had the equipment with them to do this. They had camping lanterns with them.
      At some point in time the other group members in an attempt to reach safety or find a safe path, maybe even to find the rest of the group climbed the trees to get a better view of the area. Another blast or bad footing would have caused them to fall and one of them in doing so received a skull fracture.  

If some of them were hit by the impact of the mines it would explain why they had internal injuries but no external injuries. The blast impact would break their bones but leave no bruising as they had not been hit by a blunt object. At some point the group tried to get to safety and group back together but those who were still alive succumbed to the effects of hyperthermia and died. An animal later tried to eat one of the bodies but could only eat away the soft tissue areas of the face and gave up as the bodies by this time were mostly frozen solid.

What of the radiation found on their clothes and the strange glow that came from their skin? Does this mean that there was radiation in the area from more military experiments? Maybe, but not necessarily. As mention above the group had camping lanterns with them to light a fire,
which in those days contained thorium. This was dangerous as it emits radioactive particles and so had these been damaged or if they were later damaged with all that was going on it would have affected their clothing and skin when the contents spilled on them.

I have reached this conclusion based on the available evidence as I believe it to be the most plausible in this case. But of cause you may disagree with me if you think I've missed something.

Prove me wrong.




Riddle me this- ANSWER: The answer to the last riddle is, four of the men were pallbearers carrying a fifth man in a coffin.

NEXT RIDDLE: A woman steps up to a machine and puts a coin in it. She is disappointed with what happens next so she takes off her coat and puts it on a chair to one side. She puts another coin into the machine, smiles and says, 'That's better'. Then she picks up her coat again and walks away. What was she doing?