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The Dyatlov Pass Incident

17 February

The Dyatlov Pass mystery has been solved with science, and Joe tries to explain how. Sandra delves into the juicy conspiracy theories, and dreams about riding a moose into battle.

Joe got his information from:

• Wikipedia
• Article in National Geographic, by Robin George Andrews
• The photo of four members of the group posing for the camera can be found here.

Sandra got her information from:

• Wikipedia
• Article on BBC News
• Stuff You Should Know (podcast), The Dyatlov Pass Mystery (episode)
• Blog post on the Ermak Travel Guide. This is also where the "light phenomena" photos come from, and the photo of the group skiing.

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

What is a haberdashery?

A shop that sells haberdashers? [Laughter] I think it's like a sewing thing.

Oh. Maybe, yeah. I just realized I was gonna say haberdashery, and then I was like: "what even is that, I don't remember". I think I knew at some point.

I don't think that would fit in any context of any conversation we were having.

I think the word stuck in my subconscious because it's just such a great word, isn't it? Who doesn't love a haberdashery. I wonder if you could say that when you're drunk, like: "no, I wasn't drunk, I was just a tad haberdashed". No, doesn't work. Well, might work if you deliver it with some gumption.

See now that's a better word.

The english language is full of very ridiculous, funny words. And also very ridiculous, funny places, like words for places, town names and such.

Like Flitwick.

Oh is that a place? I only knew it as a professor. Oh Professor Flitwick, you can flick my wit any time.

No see, that doesn't work because it's "flit". So you've just fucked up your own joke there, haven't you. [Laughter]

No, you fucked it up! I delivered it with some gumption, it could have worked.

[Music]

Okay. It's Wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. You're listening to Midweek Murders, and I'm your host Sandra.

And I'm your host Joe.

Today we're going to talk about the Dyatlov Pass incident. I'm so excited, I'm so excited.

Have you been practicing your Russian pronunciation?

It's gonna be a struggle, we both know that. I got my information from wikipedia, BBC News, Stuff You Should Know - the episode that's called The Dyatlov Pass Mystery, and the Ermak travel guide - which had some of the photos that I was looking for. I also read loads of other sources about this, during my years of obsession with it. Okay, I'm finished. What are your sources?

Wikipedia and National Geographic.

Yeah! That's how we do it here.

And that is it.

That is it, yeah. Okay. So nine russian youngsters, and one 38 year old, were going on a camping trip across the mountain range called the Urals. They were very experienced in hiking and trekking, and this was not their first rodeo, or outdoorseo. [Laughter]

[Joe sighs]

It's gonna be a long episode! To put this in perspective, all 10 of the group's members had a grade 2 hiking certification. And they would also receive a grade 3, the highest certification available, after finishing this trip. They were all studying at the Ural Polytechnic Institute at the time, except for the 38 year old I think, and the leader of the group was a 23 year old radio engineering student named Igor Dyatlov. So the other members of the group were... Oh god... Lyudmila, Alexander, Zinaida, Rustem, Nikolai, Semyon, and three guys named Yuri. Which is a crazy amount of Yuris.

Would it not be easier to refer to them by their surnames given that the case is called Dyatlov pass?

You know what? It probably would have been, but now I've written all of these notes with the first names, so we're kind of fucked.

I mean it probably wouldn't have been. One of the Yuri's is Krivonischenko, there's a Thibeaux-Brignolles - beautiful Russian name...

Beautiful.

... Doroshenko, Dubinina, Kolevatov, Kolmogorova, Slobodin...

Yeah okay, I'm happy with my choice.

... and Zolotaryov.

So Semyon is the 38 year old, and he, I think, was not a student at the university. He's a professional tour guide from what I understand it, and a veteran who fought in World War II. I think he met some of them, or Dyatlov, or someone, and decided to tag along with their group. And this wasn't like unheard of, or weird, at the time. So the goal of the trip was to reach Otorten, and the group left the city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, on the 23rd of January 1959, to begin their hike. Okay, let's just make a blanket excuse and say - sorry for the mispronunciations.

And by mispronunciations we mean mispronunciations. Oh, the irony. [Laughter]

So they reached Vizhai, the last inhabited settlement before the mountains, on the 27th of January, and they set off into the wilderness the next morning. That day, Yuri Yudin realized that he would not be able to continue on the trip as his rheumatism flared up, and he returned to Vizhai. Little did they know that he would be the only surviving member of the group. Dyatlov told the sports club that they belonged to, that were financing the trip, that he would telegram them when the group reached Vizhai on the 12th of February. But he told Yudin that he was expecting a delay of a couple of days. Remember when we had telegrams? [Laughter]

Telegram for Sandra! You need to leave. [Laughter]

That is not the first time I've heard that. Kidding. Or am I? And I think why he was expecting a delay was because of the bad weather, but I'm not sure.

I think with this kind of trip, or any kind of difficult trip, there's always a plus or minus amount of days. Simply because you can't predict what's going to happen, or how long it's going to take. It's usually like: "we'll arrive on this day, but we might be a couple of days late".

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. The group made a mock newspaper documenting their trip, and took photos throughout their journey all the way up to the day before the incident, which made it possible for investigators to know exactly what route they had taken. This mock newspaper thing is so cute, and also so sad. What we know is that the group reached a highland area on the 31st of January, where they would begin the climb. They stored provisions that would be used for the journey back in a wooded valley, and the next day they began to move through the pass, and planned to set up camp for the night on the other side of the pass. But the weather worsened, and the group accidentally started going west towards the top of Dead Mountain, or Kholat Syakhl... we're gonna say close enough, no?

Yes. Sorry, I had to think about that whether I was gonna let you off with it or not.

Being a Russian expert.

Da.

Our Russian correspondent. They realized their mistake, but decided to set up camp on the slope of the mountain rather than backtrack downhill 1.5 kilometers, or 0.9 miles, to a wooded area which would have provided more shelter against the weather. Yudin speculated that this could have been either because the group didn't want to lose the progress they had gained by going uphill, because we all know what a pain it is to go uphill, especially in snow. Have you been skiing? Was that a thing that you ever did?

I can't ski with my knees!

No, but like in your childhood?

I'm not made of money.

We used to take school trips skiing.

We don't have mountains.

Oh yeah! No, that makes sense actually. But going uphill in snow is a pain.

Going uphill in the dry is a pain.

True story bro. So he also speculated that it might have been because they wanted to practice camping on the mountain slope. On the 20th of February there had been no word from the group, and their families wanted a rescue group to be sent out. At first the university they went to sent out a group consisting of volunteer students and teachers to find them, but later on the police got involved and sent out helicopters and planes to aid the search. On the 26th, they discovered the abandoned campsite. And I'm guessing this took a while because it wasn't the route that they were planning on taking, because they got a bit lost because of the bad weather.

And also snow.

Yeah, and also snow. What they found was a badly damaged tent that had been cut from the inside, all of the groups belongings and some of their shoes were still in the tent. And nine pairs, or six, or eight depending on what source you're reading, of footprints were still visible in the snow leading away from the tent. From the footprints they could tell that some of the hikers had been barefoot, some of them were clad in socks or wearing a single shoe. And also, a thing that should be said is that they could tell that they hadn't been running from the tent. They could tell that the footprints were from walking, which was a thing that I found very, very weird when I first read about this case a couple of years ago.

Why?

I don't know. I just feel like - why would you leave a tent in a panic by cutting it up from the inside, and then that panic not being there when you actually get out of the tent?

Because they weren't panicking.

Yeah, probably. I just couldn't understand. If you weren't panicked, why wouldn't you take your shoes, and your jacket, and stuff like that? So a thing that maybe should be said as well, is that...

Butt.

No, I'm gonna get to it. So the footprints...

What?

I'm thinking about the flashlights, but that's probably for later.

I said butts.

Oh booties!

And you were like: "no, I'm gonna get to it later". Like, what? [Laughter] What?

Oh, didn't you know about the butts? [Laughter]

No, I didn't read that. They didn't have any! [Laughter]

So the footprints led down to a wooden area on the other side of the pass, which I'm thinking is the wooded area where they decided not to backtrack to, because it was in the same distance. But I'm not sure. And at the edge of the forest they discovered remnants of a small fire. Here, the bodies of Yuri Krivonichenko and Yuri Doroshenko were found, both were in their underwear. The branches of the tree where the fire had been were damaged, which could indicate that someone had climbed it trying to get a better view of something. Maybe they were looking for the campsite, I don't know. Nobody knows.

Igor Dyatlov, Zinaida Kolmogorova, and Rustem Slobodin were found between the fire and the campsite in poses suggesting that they had been attempting to return to the tent. As I understand it, they were found crawling uphill. Or not crawling, because they were dead, but in poses suggesting that they had been crawling uphill. Maybe they were unaware of where the wooded area was? Maybe they thought that it was closer?

Closer than what?

Then what it was.

Why does it make a difference?

I'm just confused about why they would walk that far. Although downhill it takes much less time than uphill.

It would have provided cover, they could have started the fire, so it would have offered them their best chance of survival.

Yeah.

To me it seems like a logical step whether you know that it's 1500 meters away or a mile away.

Yeah. No, that does make sense. I'm just confused about why they didn't stay longer at the fire. Maybe it did make sense at the time, and that I'm just not an experienced hiker, because I'm not. Surprise, surprise! Sitting here with my beer. So the remaining four members of the group were not found until two months later, under 13 feet, or four meters, of snow. Three of these were wearing more clothes than the other bodies had been found in, indicating that they had taken the clothing from their group members after they died, as Lyudmila was wearing Yuri's burned, torn trousers - one of the Yuris that were found by the fire. And this does make sense. So after the first bodies were discovered, the cause of death was hypothermia, but when the other bodies were discovered people became suspicious of foul play. Maybe we should talk about what kind of conditions the bodies were found in?

Well, well, well. So the five that died of hypothermia had no injuries that might have led to their deaths. Slobodin...

Rustem, yeah.

... did have a small skull fracture, but that was deemed non-fatal, and that probably coincided with the broken tree branches, in that it's hypothesized he climbed up the tree and fell down on his head.

I didn't know that!

So four bodies were found at the bottom of the creek, and three of them had severe soft tissue damage.

Okay, yeah.

So Thibeaux-Brignolles didn't. Dubinina was missing the tongue, eyes, lips and part of her face. Zolotaryov was missing eyes, and Kolevatov was missing eyebrows.

Oh! Only the eyebrows?

Yeah, bit of a weird thing to go missing. But the forensic pathologist, Vozrozhdenny, determined that all of these soft tissue injuries were post-mortem.

Yeah, that's what I read as well.

So they all occurred after they died, and it makes sense because these are the typical parts of the body that scavengers, in terms of animals, would go for. It's quite well documented that if you're a little old lady in a house full of cats, and you die, they will eat your face. Anyway, Thibeaux-Brignolles suffered a major skull fracture. Dubinina and Zolotaryov both had major chest fractures. The interesting thing about these wounds is that the force that was needed to do it would have been equal to that of being in a car crash, and there were no external wounds, they had no soft tissue wounds that would have coincided with this internal damage. So when you've got that kind of internal wound but nothing on the outside, it's indicative of that being performed, or received, under high amounts of pressure. The important thing about those two sets of clinical symptoms is that you can rule out any case of someone else inflicting that bodily harm.

I also heard about some burn marks on the skin. Is this something you read about?

I did read of it, but it was a glancing reference. The only thing that I can imagine it coming from is, once they've got the fire up, they were so friggin cold that they got too close.

Yeah. Which would make sense because of the trek towards the wood.

I imagine it's probably more the fact that they were in their underwear.

Yeah, but they might have had clothing that the other people took when they died.

Yeah, they still weren't fully kitted out, were they? It was like trousers.

No, no. No shoes, no... yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I've got more. So I did get a bit of a summary of where we would be up to in the case, but also where the investigators were up to, which might be helpful. So there were no indications of anybody else around. So you mentioned that earlier, with the random number of footprints, or sets of footprints, away from the tent. Might have been all nine of them, might have been less than that, but there wasn't more.

From what I've read, there's between five and nine. So there's not more than nine, however you look at it.

So like you say, they know that the tent was cut open from within. They all died within six to eight hours of their last meal, which is significant if you're looking at things like poisoning.

Yeah.

One of the sources that I read said that they all left of their own accord on foot, apparently there was no source of dragging. There was radiation found on one set of the clothing.

Yeah, I think it was more than one set of the clothing, but that might be wrong.

Mhm. Well I'm done.

Okay. So because people became suspicious of foul play, because of the four bodies found in May, they interrogated and tortured a couple of Mansi - the local indigenous reindeer herders, on the suspicion that they had attacked the group for trespassing on their land. This seemed highly unlikely though, as you said, there was no additional footprints at the tent site, and none of the bodies had injuries that indicated a fight. Not to mention that the Mansi people were peaceful, and probably didn't give a shit that there were people camping in the mountains. I would be very surprised if they gave one fuck about that. The Mansi people had also helped with the search, and the four bodies discovered in May were discovered because of a Mansi tracker and hunter, who had found a part of Lyudmila's sweater in the snow. So they were volunteering to help in the search. And fun facts about the Mansi people, in legends they are said to have been riding moose, or the Eurasian elk, into battle. Which is probably not true, but I really hope that it is.

I can confirm, they did do that.

I also heard, in the Stuff You Should Know episode, that apparently they ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms by feeding the hallucinogenic mushrooms, that are poisonous...

To their reindeer, and then drinking their piss.

Yes! Have you heard about this?

I don't know if it was specifically this group of indigenous people, but it's quite common in far northern hemisphere tribes to do that. Also just wanted to push that out there before you could finish your sentence, so that you know that I knew stuff. [Laughter]

Of course. So one of the Mansi people living in the area now, or at the time when they did the BBC article, stated to the BBC that they: "absolutely did not have anything to do with the incident". Because why would they, and also there's no evidence to suggest that they did. And he stated that he: "believes that there's a technological explanation for what transpired, we just don't know what it is". Other theories about what happened include; the group was attacked and chased by wildlife. And the things that contradict this theory is that there were no animal footprints found around the tent. And speaking of which, Zinaida had been in a relationship with one of the Yuris, Yuri Doroshenko, and had fallen in love with him on a previous expedition, or hiking trip, when he chased off a brown bear with a geologist's hammer. So they probably wouldn't have panicked, cut up the tent, and left all of their clothing and belongings at the sight of a bear.

Also worth mentioning that the slope that they camped on, in Mansi translates as like: "a lack of prey", or a "lack of animals". So also unlikely to have been a wild animal attack.

Unlikely, yeah. One other theory is katabatic wind; which is rare events of extremel violent winds. And this, I think, is the theory of two Swedish people that went to the Dyatlov pass and did some investigation of their own, I guess. And said that at least one such incident has happened in a mountain in Sweden, where eight hikers died, and the topography of where that happened in Sweden is very similar to the topography of the campsite. So maybe, maybe not.

Yeah. Katabatic winds are also... they're described as "rare phenomena", but also are incredibly common in specific places in the world. So I feel like, if you meet the conditions for katabatic wind, then they can happen regularly. I just think there's probably not that many places that have it.

Yeah, that's true. Speaking of winds, did you know that it can rain fish?

Have you been reading the bible again?

No! True story bro. I looked it up because I was like: "nah, this sounds like bullshit to me". Turns out it can happen, but it happens when there's a hurricane, or typhoon? What is a typhoon?

A typhoon is a hurricane at sea.

Oh, okay.

So it sucks them all up from the sea, and then drops them when it gets over land.

Yeah, exactly. Funny story, it has happened plenty of times in recorded history. I was like: "this is hilarious".

Yeah. Happened during Egyptian times, apart from it was frogs, not fish.

Yeah, but it has also happened with frogs, but...

I was making a biblical reference, you turdington!

Yeah! But it also has happened with frogs. So I'm guessing [Joe sighs]... So I'm guessing that might be the hurricanes? [Laughter]

I understood, I just wanted to fact check.

Yeah? So why did the Nile turn into blood? It didn't, it was clay.

So another theory is infrasound; wind going around the Kholat Syakhl created a Kármán vortex street, which can produce infrasound capable of inducing panic attacks in humans. This theory could maybe explain why the group fled the tent, and then when they were out of the infrasound's path they would have regained mental clarity. Which explains trying to return to the tent. And the other theory is the military tests. There were records of parachute mines being tested by the soviet military in the area around the time when the hikers were there. They theorized that maybe the group woke up by a loud explosion, and fled because of the shock. Parachute mines detonate while still in the air, and leads to injuries similar to those experienced by the hikers, as I understand it. So that's heavy internal damage with relatively little external trauma. The theory coincides with reported sightings of glowing orange orbs floating, or falling, in the sky. Because there were witness statements taken about these glowing orbs, although these eyewitness statements were first taken a couple of years after this happened, so I'm not sure. And then one source said that the hikers allegedly photographed them, so I looked for the alleged photos of these light phenomenons, and there is two photos. There's some flash thing in one of the photos, and then the other photo is very bright. I'm guessing this might be exposure problems. Another theory is radiological weapons; that could explain the radioactive residue found on some of the people, as well as some of the belongings, or the clothing. As well as the bodies having an orange, or brick red, skin color, as well as gray hair. Although this is probably explained by mummification, as I understand it? I couldn't find the autopsy photos, so I'm not sure that actually is a thing that did happen.

I might be able to help you out on this, in that it's quite common, and I don't know what the frequency of it happening is. But there's one pathologist, who, this is a sign that he looks for to confirm hypothermia. It's a condition called frost erythema, also colloquially known as stoplight knees. It's a general reddening of your skin caused by a very complicated process involving carboxyhemoglobin and oxyhemoglobin. But basically, your oxygen in your bloodstream will bind to one or the other, and it will cause this reddening of your skin. Which seems to coincide a bit more with the facts rather than some crazy theory.

Yeah. I get it, and that's why I thought that the mummification thing was partly explainable. Because, I felt like, the bodies they found in the permafrost are really darkened. So I kind of guessed that it has to do with the cold environment, no?

I remember seeing the picture of the guy... the oldest ever tattooed person.

That might have been a lady.

Might have been a lady. Or woman! [Laughter] Yeah, they were pretty brown. It was like going out for a night out in Essex. [Laughter]

But I read on reddit, a long time ago...

Oh, here we go!

And I spent quite some time trying to fish out that reddit post, but I couldn't find it. But I read that one of them, or more, was working at a laboratory at the time. Which might have been the cause for the radiation. And it wasn't a lot of radiation, it was like a tiny bit of radiation, as I understand it. No?

I don't know the exact amounts, but I'm inclined to think that it was only a small amount.

Yeah. I think I read somewhere like the exact amount. But they said that: "this is a normal exposure amount of radiation to something that is not that radioactive".

Yeah. So it ain't no big bomb.

Yeah.

Well the National Geographic article mentions in passing that, at the time, camping lights had some sort of radioactive element to them. Which would make sense in the context, in that it was low level radiation, and it was only on a few of them or their things. The people that were closest to the source of the light probably would have had a higher exposure.

Maybe, yeah. So another theory is aliens, obviously.

Okay, case closed, we're done here.

Because of the infamous photographs, that I don't think is that telling at all, because you can't really see what's going on, it just looks like bad exposure. And also other eyewitness statements about the glowing orbs in the sky.

It's called the moon.

I also read that there's another theory about ssssss... Semyon.

Snakes?

Sorry, my parseltongue is a bit rusty. There's another theory about Semyon, and they said that he was a KGB agent sent there to kill them for some reason.

Because nobody in Soviet Russia can have grade 3 hiking license. [Laughter]

That would have been funny. But because he was a World War II veteran, because he was an outsider in the group in some way, because he had his camera on him...

Oh! Suspicious. [Sarcasm]

... when they died. So none of them had shoes, but he had a camera. But I'm guessing that he was probably wearing the camera in the tent when this happened.

But not his shoes? I am suspicious. [Sarcasm]

But I think that someone said that Dyatlov forced everyone in the group to wash their feet every night. Which might be true, might not be true, but it sounds weird.

Do you not remember the Dan Radclaff... Radclaff? [Laughter] The film we watched?

Jungle, yeah.

Wash your feet bro.

Yeah. It might be some hiking thing.

It's the same conditions, isn't it? They were hiking through the jungle, so they were getting wet feet, you're hiking through snow, you get wet feet. Make sure they're clean and dry.

That's true. I did believe the fire theory for a while there. And the fire theory is that they had a stove in the tent, and the theory was that the stove fell over and things started burning. Which would explain the burn injuries on the bodies, and also some of the burnt clothing, and also the panic to get out of the tent. But I will say this on the burnt clothing thing, Zinaida wrote in one of her last diary entries that:

"All day long we followed the river, at night we'll camp on a Mansi trail. I burned my mittens, and Yura's jacket, at the campfire. He cursed me a lot!"

Yura is one of the Yuris. So it might have been that they sometimes came close to the fire.

I think that would make sense, in that you're spending all this time hiking through the freezing cold, the only chance you ever get to dry out is when you stop at night for the fire. So they probably got too close with their clothing. And then when they were in the state of hypothermia and confusion, because they'd escaped their tent, then they probably got a bit complacent with their person.

Yeah.

And that's where the body burns come in. Like having hiked in a rain forest, I know all too easily how difficult it is to get dry clothing, and how tempted you are to just move everything closer to the fire just to dry it out quicker.

Yeah. Maybe we should discuss the theory that is prevalent now, when they say that science has solved the Dyatlov pass incident.

But we already talked about the aliens. [Laughter]

Yeah. The avalanche.

Oh! The avalanche that was caused by the alien landing, got ya. [Laughter] So given that this is a nice mountainous, hilly landscape covered in snow, with very strong winds, why has it taken until 2020 to conclude that it was an avalanche? Subscribe and like to find out why. [Laughter]

I. I... [Laughter]

I think they first said that it was an avalanche quite soon, but now they've successfully explained the evidence.

Obviously one of the first theories was avalanche. There are a number of reasons why they thought that it could have been an avalanche, and then also a number of reasons why this was pooh-poohed. Let's go through why they ruled out avalanche, or why it's been a mystery for the last 50 years. Now one of the biggest reasons that they thought it couldn't have been an avalanche, was that there was no debris left behind that would have been indicative of an avalanche. Now they cause massive amounts of damage, the tent would have been completely submerged, the cops of trees where they made their fire would have been destroyed, you would have seen more signs of an avalanche had it been an avalanche. Also another reason was that a lot of the weather reports, and hiking reports and things like that from other people in the area, had never shown any sign of avalanche before. It wasn't recorded as being an avalanche risk zone. Another one of the reasons was that these were all experienced hikers. Part of your grade two is to traverse a peak on rock, snow, and ice, and they were all grade two going up to grade three. So they'd all hiked on ice and snow before, they wouldn't have camped in a known avalanche path. Just wouldn't have done it. You would have taken that sacrifice of going those 1500 meters back downhill to get out of the way of an avalanche rather than risk it. One of the reasons that you can rule out, or rule in, a zone for being an avalanche risk is the topography. And at the time they thought that the slopes were too shallow. And then one of the biggest things, is that usually victims who fall to an avalanche asphyxiate, because they've been submerged in the snow. There is usually not the blunt force trauma that you would see with the victims that were found. And there's usually no chance of escape from an avalanche, if you know you're in an avalanche - it's too late.

Yeah.

Unless you get found. So with modern science the case was reinvestigated. It's been reinvestigated multiple times over the years, but with this latest one that I think started in 2019? Might have been earlier.

I think the investigation started 2015, but it went up to 2019.

Okay, yeah. Makes sense. So they looked at the weather conditions historically, and currently, and found that the weather at the pass could be particularly brutal. They could get winds up to 70 to 100 kilometers an hour, that's about 45 to 70 miles an hour. Temperatures can plummet down to minus 40 degrees, and these weren't conditions that were considered by the original investigators. One of the biggest factors was that the hikers dug their tent into the side of the slope. So they didn't camp on the surface, they dug it in so they would have a flat camp. Now what that does is weaken what's called the snow base, which is the underlying layer of snow that causes all of the stability. It's that hard, clumpy stuff rather than the soft surface snow. They also found with modern topographical techniques that the slopes weren't that shallow at all. They looked into all of the topography of the area, and the particular region where they set up camp had a 30 degree angle of slope, which is really steep. Also, fun fact for you, the minimum requirement for an avalanche is 30 degrees.

Oooh!

Ooooh, what a coincidence. So during this reinvestigation, the team that were looking at it were spending a little bit of down time and watching Frozen, as you do. And they were super impressed with the animation of the snow in Frozen. They were like: "hey, this looks like snow! That's pretty incredible!". So they spoke to Disney, and managed to get hold of their coders for the animation.

Yeah.

So they went to Hollywood, took this animation code and reprogrammed it to simulate the conditions on the mountain. They also had a bunch of crash test data from General Motors. General Motors had a bunch of data about blunt force trauma and impact injuries for safety testing for their cars. So what the investigators did is, they paired this data together. So they had the new topography data from the new investigations, they had the new animation code from the Frozen team, and they had the blunt force trauma information from General Motors. The combination of the Frozen data and the topography showed that it was very much possible for an avalanche to have occurred, at the specific time that these guys were camping.

This is a slow avalanche, no?

Yeah. It has a certain name, and I think slow avalanche is probably right. Because it's not that whole massive cascade of snow, it was a very, very localized event. Because they had dug their tent in and weakened the snow base. So what they concluded with the animation is that there would have been an avalanche block, rather than a massive wall, that they estimated would have been about 16 foot long. Which is about the size of a standard people carrier, like a nine person taxi or something. In terms of avalanche speak, that's really, really small. But they've proven it could have been possible, and it fits with all the rest of the data in that; the tent wouldn't have been completely submerged, it wouldn't have flowed all the way down the mountainside into the cops of trees at the bottom of the hill where they were camping. So you would have seen no damage from that, because it was such a small avalanche. It would have been covered by snows that would have come afterwards, so you wouldn't have seen any of the movement, or anything like that. Now I'm a bit confused about where and when the blunt force trauma injuries occurred.

Me too. I was gonna ask you a question about that. [Laughter]

Okay. So this study, that was published in the National Geographic, has said that in the tent, some of the bedding that was found had been placed on top of their skis, to form a base layer for their mattress type thing. Now when you coincide the General Motors data about force and crash velocity, they concluded that the strength of the avalanche, and the pressures involved, would explain the blunt force traumas that the victims had without having any of the surface trauma. So they thought that the fact that a couple of these hikers had slept on their skis, is what caused them to have their rib fractures, and their skull fractures etc. Which would make sense, because if not all of them were doing it, then not all of them would have had the same level of damage. Now if you've got a fatal skull fracture, you're not just gonna hop out of bed, jump out of the tent, walk down to the trees with everybody else, and then die.

That is the question.

Some of the other stories have said that they fell down a ravine, and that's why they ended up in the river, or the stream, or whatever. Which also makes sense, because if there's been light snowfall, it could quite easily hide loose footing where they could have fallen. But if they had fallen, that wouldn't have accounted for their injuries, because then they would have had surface injuries. You can't fracture your skull without laceration, bruising, to your head. So the fall wouldn't have caused the injuries.

Could you survive for a while with that amount of internal damage?

I think the ones with chest fractures probably could, Dubinina and Zolotaryov.

Yeah.

I don't think our boy Thibeaux would have been in any condition to walk down the hill with a major skull fracture. They could have carried him I suppose.

Yeah.

Which would then accommodate for the fewer number of footprints. It's one of those things that I don't think we'll ever know.

No.

I would be inclined to think that they probably carried him from camp, but he was obviously still alive, otherwise they would have just left him behind.

Yeah. It seems incredulous because of the fact that the people with internal damage survived longer than the people without internal injuries.

Yeah, because they were all the ones with the extra clothing. They had the extra clothing because they lasted long enough to take it off of their campmates who'd have died. Which then doesn't lend towards them already having their injuries.

Yeah, exactly.

Unless the guys that died of hypothermia gave them their clothing to try and increase their chances to survive, then realized: "wait, that's a stupid idea. Let's go back to camp and get more clothes", and died on the way up.

I think I solved it! [Laughter] They put the clothing on the people that were injured. That were... because I read somewhere that someone went there, maybe it was the BBC article, maybe it was the Swedish people that went there to investigate, I don't know. But they said that the place where the four other bodies were discovered weren't that far away from the fire, so it was in speaking distance, like they could have spoken to each other. So they put the injured people there, and then they all died, and then the snow fell upon the injured people.

And then the end.

Yeah. Isn't that an epiphany? [Sarcasm] I was like: "I've solved it!". [Laughter] I didn't solve it but, you know.

It sounds like you solved it to me.

Okay! We've done the shit.

We've done the shiiit.

So on the 11th of July 2020, Andrey Kuryakov, deputy head of the Urals federal district dictorate of the prosecutor-general's office, announced an avalanche to be the official cause of death for the Dyatlov group in 1959. That was a quote from wikipedia. I didn't want to write: "the deputy head of the Urals federal district dictorate of the prosecutor-general's office", by myself. I was like: "we're gonna quote that". And the area where the incident took place is now named Dyatlov pass in honor of the hiking group leader, Igor. Yeah. That's the case! Thank you so much for listening to Midweek Murders, we'll see you next week. Bye-bye!

Goodbye to you.

[Music]

Topics

• Dyatlov Pass incident
• Dyatlov pass mystery solved
• Dyatlov pass explained
• Dyatlov pass avalanche
• science solves Dyatlov pass