Dyatlova Pass : a terrible riddle of the Ural Mountains

Published on : 08 April 20193 min reading time

The history of the Urals sadly preserves sad pages. One of these pages is the story of Igor Dyatlov’s group, or more precisely the story of the death of this group. It happened on February 2, 1959. Tourists from the Ural Polytechnic University headed by Igor Dyatlov died at the foot of the Solat-Chahl mountain. The most mysterious thing that makes this story terrible and mystical is the uncertainty and mystery surrounding this event. There is still no single expert solution, no single opinion on the causes of the death of tourists on one of the slopes of the Ural mountains. All because an image too terrible and unusual opened before the research team who found the place of death. So, some facts …

First, it was established that on the evening of February 2, Igor Dyatlov and his team (nine people in total) camped out completely and silently for the night. Witness a tent, a last diary entry properly installed, where nothing is said about extraordinary events.

Secondly, the perplexity is due to the fact that the bodies of the dead tourists were found outside the tent and, furthermore, quite far from it and scattered on the Solat-Chahl slope. Even more questions arise when you learn how people left the tent: they cut the side wall. What could prevent them from leaving normally by the entrance?

Third, the cause of death of some of the dead was absolutely atypical wounds to the “tourist”. Nikolay Tibo-Brignol died of an injury of about 50 m² at the base of the skull. Lyubov Dubinina has two broken ribs on both sides. S. Zolotarev, another member of the group, also suffers from rib fractures, but on one side. Others died of frostbite during the harsh winter of the northern Urals, because they were almost undressed (in sweaters and without shoes, in some socks). Fourth, it is not known why the bodies of the children were scattered over a large area and were found at different points on the slope. All of these facts are difficult to summarize in a logically consistent picture.

Among the versions of the death of the Dyatlov group, there is a version on the military tests of psychotropic weapons, and a version of the natural infrasound created by the wind and the shape of the surrounding rocks, and even a version with the participation UFO. The most plausible version seems to be that described in Nikolai Rundqvist’s book “Hundred Days in the Urals”: the avalanche that descended from the slope of Solat-Sikhla on that fateful night became the cause of death some tourists. The entrance and half of the tent were covered with snow, which explains the cut on one of the walls, the nature of the injuries of some participants and the lack of clothes for the others.

We must accept the fact that we will never know the whole truth. Finally, I would like to point out another, already mystical detail. The name of the mountain Solat-Chakhl (sometimes Syakhl), on whose side the tourists of the Dyatlov group died, is translated from Vogulsky as “the mountain of the dead”. According to legend, he died … nine (!) Mansi hunters.

The Ural mountains have launched another puzzle …

Choose a tent : the tents are different …
On the way: a bonfire, gas or gas ?

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