The following year, the inquiry pinned the hikers’ deaths on a combination of an avalanche and poor visibility. In 2019, Russian authorities announced plans to revisit the incident, which they attributed not to a crime, but to an avalanche, a snow slab or a hurricane. "But we show the plausibility of the avalanche hypothesis. ![]() “We do not claim to have solved the Dyatlov Pass mystery, as no one survived to tell the story,” lead author Johan Gaume, head of the Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, tells Live Science’s Brandon Specktor. But as Robin George Andrews reports for National Geographic, new research published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment points toward a more “sensible” explanation, drawing on advanced computer modeling to posit that an unusually timed avalanche sealed the hikers’ fate. Today, the so-called Dyatlov Pass Incident-named after the group’s leader, 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov-is one of Russia’s most enduring mysteries, spawning conspiracy theories as varied as a military cover-up, a UFO sighting, an abominable snowman attack, radiation fallout from secret weapons tests and a clash with the indigenous Mansi people. Memorial honoring the nine victims of the Dyatlov Pass Incident The wounds, said a doctor who examined the bodies, were “equal to the effect of a car crash,” according to documents later obtained by the St. One woman, 20-year-old Lyudmila Dubinina, was missing both her eyeballs and her tongue. While the majority of the group appeared to have died of hypothermia, at least four had sustained horrific-and inexplicable-injuries, including a fractured skull, broken ribs and a gaping gash to the head. Per BBC News, two of the men were found barefoot and clad only in their underwear. Over the next several months, rescuers recovered all nine hikers’ bodies. “We were about to drink it when one guy turned to me and said, ‘Best not drink to their health, but to their eternal peace.’” “We shared out between us-there were 11 of us, including the guides,” Sharavin recalled. Perplexed, the search party decided to toast to the missing group’s safety with the flask found in their tent. A slash in the side of the tent suggested that someone had used a knife to carve out an escape route from within, while footprints leading away from the shelter indicated that some of the mountaineers had ventured out in sub-zero temperatures barefoot, or with only a single boot and socks. Inside, they found supplies, including a flask of vodka, a map and a plate of salo (white pork fat), all seemingly abandoned without warning. ![]() ![]() In February 1959, university student Mikhail Sharavin made an unexpected discovery on the slopes of the Ural Mountains.ĭispatched as a member of a search party investigating a group of nine experienced hikers’ disappearance, Sharavin and his fellow rescuers spotted the corner of a tent peeking out beneath the snow, as he told BBC News’ Lucy Ash in 2019.
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