Dyatlov group 1959 what happened. What really happened at the Dyatlov Pass

More than half a century ago, a mysterious and tragic event occurred in the mountains of the Northern Urals. At the beginning of February 1959 for an unknown reason nine tourists died.

After this tragedy, three deputy chairmen of the KGB lost their posts at once, which became an unprecedented case in the history of the most powerful intelligence service in the world.

FEAT ON SCHEDULE

Ski trip to one of the peaks of the Belt Stone ridge of the Subpolar Urals, Mount Otorten, was conceived by members of the tourism section of the Ural Polytechnic Institute. S. M. Kirov back in the fall of 1958. The route belonged to the highest category of difficulty.

The group had to cover more than 350 km in harsh winter conditions in 16 days and climb the Otorten and Oiko-Chakur mountains. The campaign was timed to coincide with the XXI Congress of the CPSU and was supported by the leadership of the Ural Polytechnic University.

The initial composition of the group consisted of twelve people, but in the end, on January 23, 1959, ten set off from the Sverdlovsk railway station: Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin, Yuri Doroshenko, Georgy (Yuri) Krivonischenko, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolles, Lyudmila Dubinina, Semyon (Alexander) Zolotarev, Alexander Kolevatov and Yuri Yudin. It must be said that the group was only nominally considered a student group, since four of them by that time were no longer students, and some had nothing to do with UPI at all.

The composition of the group was heterogeneous. The youngest was 20-year-old Dubinina. The instructor of the Kourovka camp site, Zolotarev, who joined at the last moment, turned 37. The group leader, Dyatlov, is 23.

Despite his youth, Igor Dyatlov was already a very experienced tourist and had more than one route of varying degrees of difficulty behind him. And the rest were far from newbies. In addition, they already had experience of joint campaigns and all of them, with the exception of Zolotarev, knew each other well and represented a closely knit, friendly and proven team of like-minded people.

Every person counted, and it was even more offensive to lose one of the participants in the very first days of the campaign. Due to worsening radiculitis, after the first transition from the village of the 41st quarter to the non-residential village of the 2nd Northern mine, it was forced to leave the Yu. Yudin route. Acute pain did not allow him to move at the planned speed, even without a backpack.

The loss of one of the experienced male tourists forced the group leader to reconsider the schedule and postpone the date of the group’s arrival back to Sverdlovsk in the event of a successful completion of the hike from February 10 to 12. However, no one doubted this outcome. And no one could have foreseen that this annoying absurdity would save the life of Yuri Yudin - the only one of the entire group.

Based on diary entries, it is possible to only partially reconstruct the picture of what happened: on the evening of February 1, 1959, a group led by Dyatlov set up camp near Mount Otorten in order to climb to its peak the next morning. However, subsequent events did not allow the group to fulfill their plans...

The group did not get in touch either on February 12 or later. Some delay did not particularly alarm the institute's management. The relatives were the first to sound the alarm. At their request, a search and rescue operation was organized, which began only on February 22. Everyone took part in the search for missing people: from students and tourists to army units and special services.

Moreover, all subsequent events took place under the close control of the CPSU Central Committee and the KGB. The level of what happened is evidenced by the fact that to investigate the tragedy at Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, a state commission was created, which included: Major General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs M. N. Shishkarev, Deputy Chairman of the Sverdlovsk Regional Executive Committee V. A. Pavlov, Department Head of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU F. T. Ermash, Sverdlovsk prosecutor N. I. Klinov and Aviation Major General M. I. Gorlachenko.

We pay attention to the last figure in this list. It would seem, what should a military pilot do here? Nevertheless, some data allow us to assert that the Air Force Major General was not included in the commission by chance. The case was under the personal control of the 1st Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU A.P. Kirilenko.

SCARY FINDS

The official investigation could not give an answer to the question about the causes of the tragedy on the night of February 1-2. Or didn't want to. The criminal case was dropped on May 28, 1959. The document, compiled by an employee of the Ivdel prosecutor L. Ivanov, said: “... it should be considered that the cause of their death was a natural force that people were not able to overcome.”

Nevertheless, enthusiasts continued their search. Today, there are several dozen versions of the reasons for the death of the Dyatlov group. Among them:

• adverse weather conditions;
• quarrel between tourists;
• death at the hands of the local population;
• attack by escaped prisoners;
• clash with special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs;
• paranormal phenomena (mysticism and UFOs);
• man-made disaster (G. Tsygankova’s version);
• avalanche (version by E.V. Buyanov);
• KGB special operation during the Cold War (version by A.I. Rakitin).

It must be said that the investigations conducted by volunteers inspire respect, and some of them answer, if not all, then many questions.

On February 27, one and a half kilometers from a tent found half-buried and frozen in the snow, installed on the slope of Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko were discovered. Almost immediately, the body of Igor Dyatlov was found three hundred meters above. Then, under a thin layer of dense snow, the body of Zina Kolmogorova was found, and on March 5, the body of Rustem Slobodin was found.

The next two months of searching yielded no results. And only after the weather warmed up, on May 4, did they find the rest. The bodies were located at the foot of the mountain under a layer of snow 2.5 m thick in the bed of a stream that had already begun to melt. First, the body of Lyudmila Dubinina was found, and the rest were found a little further downstream: Alexander Kolevatov and Semyon Zolotarev were lying at the edge of the stream in a chest-to-back embrace, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolle was downstream, in the water.

The first assumption was that the tourists were caught in severe bad weather. A hurricane gust of wind blew part of the group down the mountainside, while the rest immediately rushed to their aid. As a result, people were swept along the slope by the hurricane, and in the end everyone froze. However, then the investigation abandoned this version, since subsequent finds did not fit into it.

There could be no talk of psychological incompatibility. Who would go on such a difficult and dangerous route with untested or conflicting people? This should be known at least in order to understand: all members of the group trusted each other, each of them earned the right to be among the lucky ones, and everyone stood up for each other. Thus, the version about the death of all members of the group due to a quarrel also did not stand up to criticism.

A thorough inspection of the camp revealed several signs pointing to a crime. However, it cannot be said that it looked like a robbery, as if the group had encountered some criminal elements. Quite a large sum of money, as well as watches, cameras and even alcohol remained untouched. Only one camera disappeared along with the loaded film. But the tent was torn and beyond repair. An examination showed that it was disabled from the inside.

But by whom and for what purpose? However, valuables left behind and a damaged tent indicate that the criminal version is untenable. It is unlikely that fugitive criminals would have left themselves without a roof over their heads when the thermometer could drop to 50 degrees at night.

It was suggested that the group was mistakenly destroyed by a special unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who confused tourists with criminals who had escaped from prison. But knowledgeable people say: in this case, small arms would definitely have been used, and there would have been gunshot wounds. But they were not on the bodies.

The idea was put forward that tourists entered the sacred slope of the prayer mountain and were killed by representatives of the local population (Mansi). However, as it turned out, there is no prayer mountain in these places, and all the witnesses described the indigenous population as calm and friendly people towards tourists. As a result, suspicion against Mansi was lifted.

People who are prone to mysticism and sincerely believe in the other world passionately claim that everything happened because the group violated the boundaries of a sacred place protected by spirits. It’s not without reason that they say: this zone is forbidden for humans, and the name of Mount Otorten (the Mansi call it Lunt-Khusap-Syakhyl), where the group was going to move in the morning, translates as “Don’t go there.”

However, A. Rakitin, who devoted several years to research, claims: in fact, “Lunt-Khusap” means “Goose’s Nest”, and it is connected with the lake of the same name Lunt-Khusap-Tur at the foot of the mountain. Lovers of the otherworldly insisted: the tourists recklessly set up their last camp on the slope of Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, which translated from the Mansi language means “Mountain of the Dead.” This is confirmed by the fact that even Mansi hunters do not enter these places.

The tourists were killed by something unknown and terrible. In particular, Igor Dyatlov’s nephew later testified: all the dead had gray hair. However, the absence of people in this area is also explained very prosaically: these regions are too scarce in game, and there is simply nothing for hunters to do here. And the creepy name Mountain of the Dead, with a more accurate translation, turns into “Dead Mountain”.

V. A. Varsanofyeva, a geologist, Doctor of Science, who worked for a long time at the Institute of Geology of the Komi branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, argued that the gloomy name was given to the mountain only because there is nothing on its slopes, not even vegetation - only screes and stones covered with lichen . Thus, the mystical version also seems untenable.

Adding to the mystery was the fact that all the bodies were found far from the camp, while most of the people found themselves half-dressed and without hats on this extremely frosty night (up to -30°C), six had their shoes off, and had only socks on their feet. Some were not dressed in their own clothes, two were only in their underwear. The version of E. Buyanov was seriously considered, claiming that an unexpected avalanche occurred, and it was this event that forced people to hastily, half naked, leave the camp.

However, according to other experts, with a slope steepness of only 15 degrees, an avalanche is unlikely to form. Although this does not exclude movement of the snow, and if it is sufficiently dense, there is a possibility of serious compression injuries found on the bodies found. However, the skis, stuck in the snow, remained in a vertical position, which worked against this version.

Everyone agreed on one thing: some emergency circumstances forced the tourists to leave their sleeping bags and tent in extreme haste to save their lives. But what hostile force forced them to do this? What could be stronger than the fear of death from the cold? The motives for the behavior of hardened and psychologically stable people at the moment when their fate was being decided have not yet been identified.

Unanswered questions multiplied. Some frozen bodies were in a defensive pose. But from whom or from what? It did not add clarity to the fact that on some of the bodies large burnt areas and traces of serious injuries, both intravital and postmortem, were found. Strong depression of the sternum, numerous fractures of the ribs and other body bones were noted, which could have been caused by compression and powerful external forces.

Yu. Krivonischenko and L. Dubinina had damaged eyeballs, S. Zolotarev had them completely absent, and the girl also had no tongue. A. Kolevatov has a broken nose, a deformed neck and a damaged temporal bone. The tourists received all these injuries during their lifetime, as evidenced by hemorrhages in nearby organs. All the clothes had a strange purple tint, and in Yu. Doroshenko’s mouth, experts found traces of gray foam.

It should be noted that already at the very initial stage serious contradictions were identified. Some experts claim that the holes in the tents were made by the tourists themselves in order to evacuate as quickly as possible due to a sudden danger. Others insist: the tent was deliberately damaged by some hostile force to exclude the possibility of its use in the future, which, in the conditions of the North Ural frosts, which reached critical levels, would have been guaranteed to lead to the death of people.

And both of these statements directly contradict the statements of others: the tent, frozen in the snow, was initially intact and was damaged during an inept search operation. At the same time, they refer to the conclusions of the prosecutor’s office investigator V.I. Tempalov, who in his detailed description of the scene of the incident did not say a word about her injuries.

ON GUARD OF THE HOMELAND, BUT NOT PEOPLE

The most popular version is related to weapons testing, in particular missile launches. They talked about the components of rocket fuel, the impact of the blast wave, explaining compression injuries. Excessive radioactivity in the clothes of tourists recorded by the investigation is provided as confirmation.

But this version also looks strange. Weapon testing is usually carried out at special testing grounds with appropriate infrastructure capable of recording the damaging effect. In addition, over the past time, not a single document has been made public about the tests carried out in that area. On the contrary, data have become available that refute this version.

At that time, there were no rockets in the USSR capable of flying from the launch site (Tyura-Tam, later Baikonur) to the site of the tragedy, and the spacecraft’s launch vehicles were oriented to the northeast and, in principle, could not fly over the Northern Urals. And in the period from January 2 to February 17, 1959, there were no launches from Tyura-Tama.

Sea-based missiles, which were being tested at that time in the Barents Sea area, had a flight range of no more than 150 km, while the distance from the place of death to the coast was more than 600 km. The air defense missiles adopted at that time could fly at a distance of no more than 50 km, and the nearest launcher was deployed only a year later. However, we will return to air defense later.

OIL IN EXCHANGE FOR BLOOD

It is impossible not to take into account another serious version. She claims: the cause of the death of tourists is a man-made disaster caused by a tragic combination of circumstances. In part, this version echoes the version of the aforementioned E. Buyanov about the avalanche.

The whole country was preparing for the opening of the 21st Congress of the CPSU. At that time, it was customary to report on new labor achievements. The discovery of a new oil and gas field and, most importantly, a timely report about it promised considerable privileges to all involved.

But there was little time left. To carry out urgent reconnaissance work commissioned by the government, the USSR Ministry of Geology and Subsoil Protection and the Ministry of Aviation, methanol was delivered by the An-8T aircraft, the world's largest payload, which was specially converted for the transport of dangerous goods.

Methanol is extremely toxic and, when exposed to humans, causes respiratory paralysis, cerebral and pulmonary edema, and vascular collapse. In addition, the optic nerve and retina of the eyeball are affected. An emergency situation that arose during the flight forced the crew commander to free himself from the cargo and, while loitering, dump it in hard-to-reach and deserted places. Unfortunately, the group’s route passed in the An-8T flight area, and the tourists were exposed to a toxic substance intended for completely different purposes.

Methanol has the ability to dissolve snow and ice, turning them into a flowing mass. It is used in gas and oil fields to prevent clogging of oil well shafts, underground gas storage facilities and main gas pipelines with ice-like crystalline hydrates. In addition, to carry out geophysical work in special cases, the method of radioactive tracers was used. There is reason to believe that the An-8T was transporting radioactive methanol.

A large amount of substance deposited on the snow cover in mountainous areas contributed to the liquefaction of huge masses of snow. And this is what provoked the formation of a heavy ice-snow landslide on a slope with a steepness of only 12-15 degrees. According to the version, it was precisely this mass of liquefied snow that covered the tent with tourists that February night. And it is the sprayed methanol that causes the purple tint to clothing.

Considering the traces of radioactive contamination and the nature of the injuries, this version seems much more realistic than the UFO version. Although she does not answer the question why only some of the clothes of the dead
was radioactive. True, the author of the version explains it as follows: clothes soaked in a toxic radioactive substance were removed from the corpses in order to conceal the cause of the death of the group. And yet there were questions that this version could not answer.

KGB VS CIA

From some point on, evidence began to appear in the criminal case about strange fireballs observed in the area where the tourists died. They were repeatedly seen by residents of the Northern Urals, including search engines. According to eyewitnesses, a fireball larger than two lunar diameters grew in the sky. Then the ball faded, spread across the sky and went out.

It is on the basis of this evidence that supporters of the “Martian” version insist: the tragedy is connected with a UFO. But that was later, and for now a decision is being made to conduct a radiological examination of the clothing of the victims. The results showed that there were traces of radioactive substances on the clothes of two participants in the hike. In addition, it turned out that G. Krivonischenko and R. Slobodin were holders of state secrets and worked at the secret enterprise “Mailbox 10”, which was developing atomic weapons.

Things began to take a completely unexpected turn. The reason for creating a state commission with such a high status also became clear. Subsequently, it turned out that radioactive contamination specialist A. Kikoin took part in the inspection of the incident site as the leader of the group, and even with unique equipment.

We should also remember the international situation at that time: in the context of the flaring up Cold War, the USSR was hastily forging a nuclear shield. At the same time, the conclusions of the official investigation become clearer, because everything related to state secrets was carefully hushed up. Still would! After all, nothing that may bear radioactive traces of top-secret production should not leave the restricted area.

Because isotope microtraces contain comprehensive information about what and how exactly reactors produce. In those days, there was nothing more valuable to foreign intelligence services than this data. Moreover, we are talking about the late 1950s, when the nuclear potential of the USSR was a sealed secret for Western intelligence services. All this gave a completely unexpected direction for researchers.

Among the dead was another difficult figure: Semyon (Alexander) Zolotarev. He introduced himself as Alexander when meeting the rest of the group. A. Rakitin states in his research: Zolotarev was a KGB agent and carried out an absolutely secret mission with Krivonischenko and Slobodin. His goal was to control the transfer of clothing with traces of radioactive substances to a group of American agents.

Based on their analysis, it was possible to establish what exactly was being produced at the secret plant. The entire operation was developed by specialists from Lubyanka and pursued one goal: disinformation of the main enemy. The campaign itself was only a cover for an operation of national importance, and the students were used in the dark.

Apparently, during the meeting between agents and couriers, something went wrong as planned by the intelligence services, and the entire Dyatlov group was destroyed. Their deaths were staged in such a way that the tragedy looked as natural as possible. That is why everything was done without the use of firearms or even knives.

This was not difficult for the elite fighters. Judging by the position of some of the bodies and the nature of the injuries, it can be assumed that the dead had to deal with masters of hand-to-hand combat, and traces of burns indicate that in this way the presence of signs of life in the victims was checked.

But the question arises: how did foreign intelligence agents get into the deserted and inaccessible region of the Northern Urals? Unfortunately, there is a very simple answer to this: until the early 1960s, NATO planes flew into the USSR from the North Pole almost unhindered, and dropping a group of paratroopers into deserted places was not particularly difficult.

It is no longer a secret that in the middle of the 20th century the USSR did not have an effective air defense system, and the presence of “strato-jets” among NATO countries - RB-47 and U-2 aircraft capable of rising to a height of more than 20 km - made it possible with high efficiency carry out the deployment of agents and aerial reconnaissance of almost any areas of interest to them. The following facts speak about the impunity of the NATO Air Force: On April 29, 1954, a group of three reconnaissance aircraft carried out a daring raid along the Novgorod-Smolensk-Kyiv route.

On Victory Day - May 9, 1954 - an American RB-47 flew over Murmansk and Severomorsk. On May 1, 1955, reconnaissance planes appeared over Kiev and Leningrad. The May Day demonstrations of Soviet workers were photographed, sincerely believing that “the Red Army is the strongest of all, and not even suspecting that spy planes were flying literally over their heads.

According to American aviation historians, in 1959 alone, reconnaissance of the US Air Force and CIA made more than 3 thousand flights! The situation looked absurd: the center received a stream of reports about foreign aircraft flying over the country, and domestic aviation experts declared that “this cannot happen.” But this concerned not only the USSR. The technical superiority of the U-2 over existing air defense systems at the time was so obvious that the CIA used these aircraft around the world with open cynicism.

As it turned out, the fireballs had nothing to do with UFOs. These are simply huge illumination bombs that are parachuted to provide illumination for the purpose of photographing large areas and secret objects at night. Now the inclusion of an aviation general in the commission becomes understandable.
However, another question arises: how could the CIA agents leave the scene? After all, without escape routes and evacuation, this operation lost all meaning.

And if the air defense forces were powerless, then the same cannot be said about the KGB. It was not difficult for the special services to block off train stations and comb through all possible places where strangers might appear. And in winter, no one can walk hundreds, or even thousands of kilometers under their own power undetected in the conditions of the Subpolar Urals. And this is where truly unique know-how comes to the fore.

SKY HOOK

In the fall of 1958, the Americans, using parachutes, landed two reconnaissance aircraft on the drifting Soviet polar station North Pole-5, mothballed two years earlier. The Americans were interested in all the draft documentation related to meteorological observations in the Arctic and the means of communication used by Soviet polar explorers.

And here - attention! After completing the mission, the scouts were evacuated and brought on board the aircraft using a unique system developed by designer Robert Fulton and installed on the P2V-7 Neptune reconnaissance aircraft. This device was designed to pick up a person on the surface of the earth and deliver him on board an aircraft flying above him. The device was called the “sky hook” and turned out to be surprisingly simple, safe and effective to use.

The evacuee was dropped with a container containing a warm overall with a special harness, a mini-balloon and a cylinder with compressed helium. All this was accompanied by a nylon cord about 150 m long. One end of the cord was attached to the mini-balloon, and the other to the harness. Having dressed in overalls and filled the balloon with helium, the passenger launched it into the sky. The evacuation aircraft, using a special device installed outside the fuselage, hooked a stretched nylon cord at a speed of about 220 km/h and, using a winch, lifted the person aboard the aircraft.

The first to be boarded in this manner was US Marine Sergeant Levi Woods. This happened on August 12, 1958. Subsequently, the “sky hook” was tested in various conditions of use: on the water, in the mountains, in forest areas. The reviews were very positive. It is known that at least two such interceptor aircraft were based in Europe.

With a flight range of 7,000 km, the Neptunes could carry out emergency evacuation of reconnaissance officers from almost anywhere in the European part of the USSR. This version is indirectly indicated by the loss of a camera with loaded film. It may have been taken as one of the evidence of the meeting between the agents and the couriers.

Today, many interested in this topic admit that A. Rakitin’s version looks the most realistic. However, opponents of such conspiracy theories counter: this is impossible, since the authorities did not prevent a wide range of civilians from participating in the search operation, from whom in this case it was necessary to hide the true causes of the tragedy.

Perhaps, over time, new data will appear that will reveal the mystery of the death of nine tourists on a February night in 1959. However, the number of those who know the true causes of the tragic events more than half a century ago is steadily approaching zero. Will we ever know the truth? Unknown. Do we have the right to this? Undoubtedly. This would be a worthy manifestation of respect for the memory of the victims. Along with the name Dyatlov Pass, which already exists in the Northern Urals and is marked on maps.

Alexander GUNKOVSKY

Why does this matter haunt me?
The main thing is that after reading thousands of articles and watching videos, I understand that all researchers are starting an investigation based on someone’s invented version of the development of events at the Dyatlov Pass.

I am confused by the cliches that seem to be embedded in the minds of researchers.

Stamp “Tourists cut the tent from the inside when something scared them.”
The tent could be cut by someone who wanted the tent to become lighter. Any person could have cut it, after the tourists had died.
Can you imagine a situation where a truck loaded with cognac suddenly crashes near your house? Anyone brave will want to take a bottle for themselves. And here is the same situation. Tourists died "near Mansi's house." It will be three weeks before the tent is officially located. During this time, “both a beetle and a toad” could have visited the scene of the tragedy.
Not all people are afraid of the dead. There could be different chains of traces there, why are these traces of tourists? Why do they think that the tracks appeared at the same time?

Stamp "The tourists have nothing missing." Judging by the way the investigation was conducted, no one really knew what things the tourists had. Yudin identified things, identification
was carried out negligently. I think food and shoes were stolen, and then to convince people that nothing was stolen, food had to be delivered and the stolen shoes had to be tracked down.

Stamp "Tourists frozen in dynamic poses." Where do you see dynamic poses? Lying on your back? Lying on your side? One hugging the other? Tourists froze in more than strange positions. Someone moved two people under the cedar - Krivonischenko and Doroshenko - after they died. I note that the bodies were moved before they became numb. The body of Lyuda Dubinina could not move from the bodies of the other tourists with whom she was found, thanks to the flow of water from the stream. The bodies of Kolevatov, Zolotarev, Thibault lay directly in the stream, in the flow of water, and did not move anywhere because 4 meters of compacted snow lay on top. The body of Lyuda Dubinina lay in accordance with the terrain on which it was located. This could only happen if Luda died in this particular position or if someone moved the body when it was not yet frozen. This is such a strange thing. The bodies were not numb, but were carried, turned over, and undressed. By the way, only Kolevatov and Zolotarev have a normal pose for those who are freezing (one warms the other with his body) and this would be normal if they had not been found in the stream. One researcher writes that tourists deliberately lay down in the stream to bask in the water, supposedly the water is warmer than the surrounding air. Sometimes I want to take researchers outside, to get away from computers and closer to reality.

The stamp “We walked from the tent to the cedar tree in socks, and then made a flooring and lit a fire.” In general, it is unrealistic to walk in the snow in socks. My legs immediately begin to hurt so much that I want to get on all fours just to avoid stepping on my frozen feet. It is impossible to walk in the snow without shoes! IMPOSSIBLE! Moreover, it takes a long time to walk, make a fire, carry wounded comrades, make flooring, and try to return to the tent. My feet immediately freeze and hurt so much that it is IMPOSSIBLE to step on them! Go and walk in the snow, check it out! At the site of the Dyatlov Pass, I would organize a 1.5 km race in socks for researchers, and I would give the Order of Dyatlov and the Mountains of the Dead to those who return to the tent!

And a bunch of other stamps: “No one escaped from the camps” (well, no one), “Not a single shot was fired,” “The tent was set up according to all the rules” (only Yudin could say whether it was set up according to all the rules), “At the site of the tragedy there were no more people" (and who then left a flashlight on the slope of the tent after the tent was covered with snow, who left a trace of urine near the tent, where did the extra skis come from)?
From article to article, researchers repeat these cliches like parrots.

It all happened on the night of February 2.
How is this proven? A photo of where the tent is being set up? Last diary entry? Nothing has proven this. Since the case began on February 6, the accident could have occurred from the night of February 2 to the evening of February 5. And this is three whole days! During this time it was possible to fly to Moscow and return. They keep telling us about February 2nd. Why and who needs it? It is beneficial for someone for three days to disappear, for the group’s route to disappear during these days. So that a large number of search engines slow down at the Dyatlov Pass and do not go further. The photo of the tent being set up is extremely strange. The slope is completely different, there is much more snow, it is impossible to identify the people in the picture, and the tourists had nothing with which to dig such a large hole; they did not have a single shovel.
They write that they dug the snow with skis. Do you remember those wooden skis, they could break, because the crust where the tent was set up was hard.

The storage shed is also a big oddity, both the place and the way it is installed. Only a complete fool could bury food in the snow and walk away from it for two days. In the snow, any animal will smell and dig up food supplies that are valuable for the winter. And Mansi hunters could find a storehouse and take precious products. The storage shed was made in a place where they did not intend to return; the storage shed was made not before the ascent, but far from Mount Otorten, where they were going to climb. I am especially pleased with the 4kg boiled sausage found in the store. Who needs to take boiled sausage on a hike? And if they did, they would eat it first.

The main thing is that the last four tourists were found with severe lifelong injuries.
Three - Zolotarev, Kolevatov, Thibault - were found in the stream. These three lay there as they died. And they should have been found on the flooring. They couldn’t spend the effort to make a flooring and die in a stream in the snow. This means that someone came after their death (if tourists made the flooring), on the sixth or seventh of February, removed the frozen bodies from the flooring, when they were not yet covered with snow, and put these bodies in the stream. And who could it be, if, according to the assurances of many researchers, there was no one at the pass except a group of tourists? Then LUDA Dubinina did it (Because Zolotarev took off her jacket and hat, deprived her of the last warm things)! Because only she is found in a dynamic pose! She killed them all, put the last ones in a stream and died of grief, praying on a stone. And then a mouse came and bit off her tongue. The mouse, comrades, is the reason for everything that happened! It's like a fairytale.

For those who think that tourists dug a den in the snow, not knowing that a stream flows under the den, there is one argument. We need to answer the question: what did tourists use to dig a den for four people if the skis were left under the tent? It is very important to look on the Internet how such dens are made (they are made for one person).

From the beginning of the opening of the case on February 6 until the discovery of the first corpses and the re-opening of the case on February 26, 20 days of investigative actions will pass about which we know nothing. During this time, the shoes will disappear from the corpses and will be transferred to the tent, the corpses will be carried, shifted, pockets turned out, clothes will be mixed up. An incomprehensible warehouse will appear, the products in which will be covered with cardboard, which no one in the group carried or took with them.

Who knew, but could not reveal to us - fools - the whole truth? And this is Lev Ivanov, the investigator on the case. Why did he write the article?
HE wrote the article and put the answer in plain sight! These are the words from the article.
“When we landed in the taiga and then climbed Mount OTORTEN on skis, we literally at the very top found and dug up a tourists’ tent covered with snow.” (From the article “The Mystery of Fireballs” by Lev Ivanov, an investigator in the case of the death of the group).
What do you think, Ivanov mistakenly named one mountain after another? Kholatchakhl confused with Otorten? Automatically, as they say now about Tempalov’s note, he automatically replaced the name because he was thinking about one mountain and named another?
Let me note that “literally at the very top,” literally! Was the tent found on the top of Mount Kholatchakhl? At least? No, on the slope.

The actions and responses of the modern prosecutor's office are simply ridiculous! Nothing has changed in the minds of the prosecutor’s office from “King Pea” to the present day. They say that prosecutor Tempalov made a mistake with the date in the memo. And the criminal case was also started by mistake on a different date (February 6, not 25-26, when the tent was found). And in this case, there are radiograms that contradict the general course of the search for the bodies of tourists.
This case is a matter of blunders and inconsistencies, or perhaps very thoughtful work.
The interesting thing is that the photo films were developed by the tourists themselves. When I read about this for the first time, I was very surprised. I myself have been involved in photography and I know that if the development is unsuccessful, the film can be ruined and exposed. The film was placed in a tank and the solution was poured in complete darkness. Leave such important documents to chance. "What negligence"! - I thought then.

Let's say everything went as usual. The tourists lost their minds and set up a tent 1.5 km from their storage facility on the mountainside during a hurricane wind. Then they left the tent and all went down the slope, where they died from freezing.
Someone, unknown, made a statement to the police that he saw an abandoned tent and several corpses of tourists. According to the statement, the investigator had to check the information and make sure that all the tourists died or come to the aid of those who survived. The police detachment went to the indicated place where they were convinced of the reliability of the information and had to carry out initial investigative measures - an inspection of the scene of the incident. This squad finds a tent and the corpses of tourists. This is absolutely incredible! Stormy weather continues and strong winds are blowing. The corpses of tourists are far from the tent. This detachment finds corpses, which they then search for and cannot find, groups of search teams, for some reason drags the corpses of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, and covers them with a blanket, shifts the corpses of the last four into the stream and removes the shoes from the corpses of Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, Slobodin, then folds the shoes into the tent, cuts the ramp near the tent. And only then, when the relatives of the victims begin to “sound the alarm”, they forget about the place where they found the corpses and the tent, and search again, making a false storage facility. There are so many incredible actions in the ordinary death of tourists from hurricanes and frost.

1.1. One trace of urine. “When investigating cases, there are no minor details: investigators have a motto: attention to detail! Near the tent, a natural trace was found that one man was leaving it for minor needs. He came out barefoot, wearing only woolen socks (“for a minute”). This trail of bare feet is then traced down into the valley." (From Lev Ivanov’s article “The Mystery of Fireballs”).
Many will remain silent about this, as if they themselves have never seen a toilet. It is not customary to talk about this. And we'll talk. If you've been on a long winter hike with backpacks and a tent, then you don't need to explain how difficult it is to relieve yourself if there are two sexes on the hike, when girls go to the left and boys to the right. During a hike, when you need to pee, take off your backpack, skis, find a bush to hide behind, take off several layers of clothing and expose your butt to 20-degree frost, it is impossible to relieve yourself during the hike itself, it can be done only during halt and parking. It’s even more difficult when you want “big”, but there are no bushes and trees. Very soon tourists stop being shy during the hike. This happens in groups of athletes, when, for example, there is one locker room and boys and girls have to change clothes at the same time.
In short, we arrived at the parking lot and immediately decided where the toilet was. They trampled the snow and here you have nine traces of urine and nine “heaps”. And only then did we climb into the tent and begin to prepare for bed. But to think that you can leave the tent one at a time (climbing over others), or one peed and no one else wanted to, is stupid.
What follows from the fact that only one trace of urine was found? There was only one person in the tent.
I can't reconcile this conclusion with the whole story. Let’s say Kolmogorov remained in the tent, and everyone, immediately after setting up the tent, went towards the forest to look for bushes to relieve themselves.
Or, the fact that the tourists did not put up a tent in this place, but someone else installed it there.

1.2. Skis under the tent.
I recommend everyone to go on a winter hiking trip and try to put skis (9 pairs) under the tent. Very soon you will understand that the skis are hard and there is no heat from them, and they will also occupy an area equal to half of Dyatlov’s long tent. What about the other half? Skiing under a tent is kind of a mess. Skis are vital equipment. Without them it is impossible to move through the snow. Skis must be taken care of and always in combat readiness. For example, someone is going to go get firewood, and their skis are lying under the tent.
Conclusion? The tent was put up on skis by someone who doesn’t know how to take care of them during a hike, when the only way to move around is on skis.
Wooden skis could break if you stepped on them unsuccessfully, especially the bent nose of the ski could break. I know this because I often skied on these same skis as a child.

1.3. Cold overnight.
A cold overnight stay is an overnight stay in a tent at sub-zero air temperatures (outside). It’s very good if you can heat the tent with a stove on a cold night. A wood-burning stove is just like hemorrhoids. If the stove is heated, it gets very hot. There is always the possibility of fire. In order to light the stove, a person on duty is needed. He must monitor the stove, add firewood, make sure that no coal falls out, and that the stove does not smoke. This is a complex process. As is the installation of the stove, so is the process of melting and heating. It is impossible to light a stove with raw wood. There should always be a supply of dry firewood. It takes a lot of wood to burn wood all night. They must be dry, otherwise the oven will smoke. It is impossible to sleep in a smoky tent. After setting up the tent, you need to immediately put on the stove, remove the pipe, heat it, and then climb into the tent.
It is interesting that the tent was erected during the last night, but the stove was not assembled for heating. Or maybe the one who set up the tent didn’t know how to install the stove correctly?
Can a person spend the night in a canvas tent at minus twenty without a stove? I think that this must be a northern seasoned person. Special conditions are needed to survive here. For example, spend only one night in such conditions.
So the question is, where to get dry firewood? You can get them from local people, or you can find sushnina (dry standing tree) in the forest. Cut down a tree, cut it into logs, then split them with an ax into logs.
I think only in the most extreme case will a tourist set up a tent at a distance of one and a half kilometers from the nearest dry tree.

Now we are going camping with a gas stove and gas canisters. Even such a stove and cylinders have weight, but this weight is incomparably lighter than a stove with wood. The gas furnace is practically safe and does not require an attendant to keep an eye on it.

1.4. Excess weight.
A winter hiking trip, when you need to cover 300 km, even without luggage, along a beaten track and a flat road, is difficult. Don't believe me? Walk at least 100 km and let a car follow you, which will save you if something happens. And then there’s a hike with climbing peaks and spending the night in a tent. And now you need not only to move, but also to carry luggage. How much can a woman carry? We find the norm - 7 kg. If you start counting how much luggage weight each tourist had on a hike, you get large numbers (30 kg). Only food items were found in the warehouse weighing 55 kg. Add to them the weight of the tent, stove, ice ax, saws, and other equipment, add three liters of alcohol, felt boots, and firewood for the stove. Add to this figure the weight of things after Yudin left and you will understand that this is a lot, almost an prohibitive amount, especially for women. Researchers often write that women on a hike were sad for some unknown reason. Here's the reason - too much luggage. It’s not for nothing that the Dyatlovites are helped by locals and a horse-drawn cart.

1.5. Why did Yudin leave?
And he realized that he would not be able to carry the things that were loaded onto him for 300 km. He was the wisest in this whole story. As soon as the horse turned back, he turned back too. I look at Yudin’s smiling face in the last farewell photo and cannot believe that the man is very sick and left the race, citing illness. I watched an interview with Yudin and it was clear how carefully he thinks through his answers, how he avoids answering questions, how he is disingenuous in some places, how his eyes dart and how restlessly he behaves. It might not mean anything, or maybe he knew something that he couldn't tell people.

1.6. Discipline.
Reading the diaries, I was amazed at how lame discipline was in Dyatlov’s group. They got up late, took a long time to get ready, did stupid things, got into trouble. Responsibilities were not distributed. Suffice it to mention that during one of the overnight stays, the padded jacket burned down, and the torn tent was repaired during the hike. With such discipline in the conditions of a campaign of the third group of complexity, they would have died without any missiles, UFOs, evil military men, prisoners, Mansi and other people.

1.7. From the new.
It turned out that on February 2 all the tourists in the group were alive, a guide with a horse was found who brought their luggage, and this fact was reported to the public! This fact suggests that the Dyatlovites most likely climbed Otorten. And it was necessary to look for artifacts on Mount Otorten and not on the Dyatlov Pass.
Researchers found witness Salter P.I., who said that there were 11 bodies, that they were brought from the pass almost simultaneously, they were very dirty. Just think, where did they find dirt when there is snow all around? Did you fall into the mud in winter? Found a bunker, and there's dirt in there? Where is it wet and dirty in winter?
And the very latest news is that another person is buried in Zolotarev’s grave (which I doubt, such an important study was carried out too superficially and carelessly).

Researchers often give examples of seemingly similar cases of death of tourists, for example the death of Korovina’s group in the Khamar-Daban mountains. I think that the case of the death of the Dyatlov group is distinguished by one significant detail. When the Dyatlovites went down to the cedar, they were able to light a fire. I believe that a fire is a very important condition for survival. In this case, someone could die, but not the whole group. Korovina’s group was younger, with less experience (children).

I think we will find out exactly how the tourists died. The resonance is very great. A large number of people took up the search. Everything does not disappear and somewhere there is a document with the answer to all our questions. Nowadays private people have a lot of different machinery and equipment. Many tourists and researchers follow in the footsteps of the Dyatlov group.

Old.

This version arose as a result of many years of studying documents available on the Internet about the death of Igor Dyatlov’s group, thanks to tourist experience and spending the night in a tent at sub-zero air temperatures (from -5 to -15 degrees).
The case of the death of tourists in the area of ​​Mount Otorten began on February 6, 1959, how could this happen if the tent was found only on February 26? Very simple. Someone found the dead tourists and made a statement to the investigator. Who could it be? It could probably be a hunter or one of the tourists, the one who survived.
It was not the bird on its tail that brought the news.
- I know that the bodies of dead tourists lie on Mount Otorten. - The man said.
- So you killed them. - The investigator answered. (A typical situation for Russia).
What if four tourists went out to people, reported the death of their comrades, and died as a result of the work of a zealous investigator? Such cases are not rare in Russia.
Kill, as a result of investigative pressure, and then fall on supernatural forces. Do you remember the very good and revealing film “Cold Summer of ’53”? This was the time when tens of thousands of criminals were released from camps, and the main characters Kopalych and Luzga were serving their sentences - one as an “English spy”, and the second for being surrounded and only being in captivity for one day.
The interrogation of the head of the communications unit of the Vizhay forest department, V.A. Popov, began on February 6, 1959: “The witness testified: in the second half of January 1959, in the village of Vizhay, I saw two groups of tourists who were heading to the Ural ridge region.” There is a memo from the prosecutor of the city of Ivdel I.V. Tempalova dated February 15 “... due to the death of tourists, I have been summoned and am leaving for Sverdlovsk for 2-3 days”...

And they found the dead tourists in the area of ​​Mount Otorten, and not in some other place, this is also clear from the name of the case. Then the usual investigation begins, during which it turns out that the tourists died strangely and the damage to the bodies does not confirm freezing. They decide to keep the deaths of tourists secret and drag out the matter. Ivdel prosecutor Vasily Tempalov and investigator Vladimir Korotaev hid information about the death of the group.
And they delayed it in every possible way until May 26, 1959. This is how the case begins, which is being investigated until 2019 and so far there is no end in sight. First, the map of the group’s route was confiscated and it had to be restored (thanks to Rimma Kolevatova). It’s stupid to think that Dyatlov did not provide the group’s route to the UPI sports club.

Where would you go to look for the missing tourists of the Dyatlov group? Of course, to Otorten - this was the main peak that tourists were going to conquer. How long could traces of the group's presence remain there? Yes, not at all. There, no traces at all could have been preserved until February 26 (crust, wind and snowstorms hid all traces). There could only be a bookmark left by the Dyatlovites.
To remove traces of the group’s presence on Mount Otorten, it was necessary to remove the bookmark. One can only assume that there was a bookmark and it was “Evening Otorten” - a combat leaflet written on February 1, 1959. Otherwise, why call it that way for a message written on a piece of notebook paper, the original or a copy of which for some reason has not survived?

I note that to this day few people are looking for artifacts on Mount Otorten, because it is said clearly and definitely - a tent and corpses of tourists were found in the area of ​​the Dyatlov Pass (modern name). The tent was found by Slobtsov and Sharavin, they immediately realized that this was the tent of Dyatlov’s group and that the tourists left it in panic and ran down the slope. It was dark and the tourists left the tent, making cuts in the slope of the tent. They ran away, leaving warm clothes and shoes in the tent; they were so scared that they lost their minds. Where do such conclusions come from?
It is because of this cliche that many absurd versions were born.

We look at the map and see that you can go to Mount Otorten in several ways. One is to walk along the Lozva, from there turn onto the Auspiya tributary and walk through the mountains, the other is to walk along the Auspiya to Mount Kholatchakhl, cross the (Dyatlova) pass to the 4th tributary of the Lozva and walk along the Lozva tributary to Lake Lunthusaptur. Another interesting thing is that from the second Northern one you can go along Lozva straight to Otorten without turning onto Auspiya. Why do you need to walk along rivers (near rivers)? Because there is water and wood for the stove and there is less wind, and it is warmer. The river is the road. And from Anyamov’s testimony it turns out that in February they saw traces of the group in the upper reaches of the Lozva River.
But the path along Lozva was not easy. It froze badly and it was possible to fall through.

Some Dyatlov experts believe that the Dyatlovites slipped past the turn to Auspiya and walked another two km along Lozva, then returned and walked along Auspiya (made a detour).
In Dyatlov’s diary for January 31, it is written that on that day they made an attempt to climb Mount Kholatchakhl (We are moving away from Auspiya, a gentle climb began, we went beyond the border of the forest, the wind speed was similar to the air speed when lifting an airplane, we were very tired, we went down to Auspiya and stopped at overnight). At the same time (most likely) the Dyatlovites realized that it was impossible to walk along the top of the mountains and then they had to make the only right decision - to return to Lozva and walk along it, as the local residents advised. Instead of trying to cross the pass and look for the Lozva tributary on the other side in the deep snow, or, although it blows away, go through the mountains.

And, most likely, they returned to Lozva on February 1, and on February 2, their belongings were dropped off by a local resident and everyone was still alive. And then there is an explanation for the ski tracks of tourists in Lozva.
However, both the traces in the upper reaches of Lozva and the guide’s story may relate not to Dyatlov’s group, but to the second group of tourists.
They write that I.D. Rempel persuaded Dyatlov not to walk along this route, Gennady Patrushev persuaded him not to walk along the ridge and called him “hard-headed” because Dyatlov did not change the chosen route, and also, judging by the diary entry, Ognev persuaded them not to walk. I think he told the tourists various horror stories about the place where they were going to go, maybe that’s why the girls were in a bad mood. It was not for nothing that they were dissuaded from going along this route. Severe cold and hurricane winds in the mountains and the poorly frozen Lozva River.
Let's try to get back to that time for a minute. Auspia ended and the gentle ascent to the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl began. The slope is pure ice, the wind knocks you off your feet. The tourists were unable to get up and went down to Auspiya. During the day, as Dyatlov writes in his diary, they developed a new method of walking (two steps forward, one step back). In the evening we were very tired.
Now imagine the state of mind of tourists at this moment. It turned out that the ascent was impossible and it was impossible to go this route. That the second option - to cross the pass and follow the Lozva tributary - is also almost impossible. This tributary is a ditch, and the snow is 2 meters deep and the crust does not hold there. Dyatlov wrote that they walked 1-2 km in an hour. It also became clear that the weight of the luggage exceeded the capabilities of people. And also, at the top of the mountains it turned out that the group was poorly dressed for the frost and wind, and the tent was torn and blown in the wind. (From the general diary: “We agreed and went to the 41st site by car. We left only at 13-10, and in the 41st we were around 16-30. We were freezing cold, we were driving a GAZ-63 at the top.” We were still frozen when we were driving to car. There is no heavy wind or frost in the mountains yet).
Judging by the diary entries, the moral situation in the group was tense.
I think that the reason for this was the appearance of Zolotarev in the group. He was an adult, confident man, a camp instructor, was sociable, and knew a lot of new songs. Of course, two girls Dubinin and Kolmogorov paid attention to him. Naturally, the young men from Dyatlov’s group were jealous when Zina Kolmogorova was interested in someone. Igor Dyatlov liked Zina, Zina had not yet finally decided on her choice and was open to any new impressions (judging by the entries from her diary). Where tourists went there were few women and any free woman was an object of men's fascination and desire. And Zina was so pretty, so cheerful and sociable that everyone who saw her fell in love with her.
Imagine how Dyatlov felt when it turned out that he had chosen and insisted on a route that turned out to be impassable. And next to him was Zolotarev, who most likely realized faster than Dyatlov that the route was not passable and told him about it. Imagine how ashamed Dyatlov was at that moment in front of Zina, whom he loved, and how low he fell in her eyes as an experienced hike leader, how ashamed it was to return home to his comrades without completing the route. “Officially” the campaign of the Dyatlov group was timed to coincide with the 21st Congress of the CPSU. The Dyatlovites could not refuse to continue the hike even when they realized that the route was not passable. What will they say to their fellow Komsomol members and communists? How will the parties look in the face?
Imagine how Zolotarev felt when he went with Dyatlov only because he wanted to spend fewer days on the hike. And they were already delayed, trying to climb the ridge and lost a day, then they lost another day setting up a storage shed. I think that Zolotarev should have been very dissatisfied with Igor Dyatlov because he did not go along Lozva (along the river) to Otorten.
This was the moment of highest moral tension in the group. It was necessary to make a decision to return and walk along Lozva, or maybe not to walk at all.
This option could not suit Dyatlov. Then his authority was completely annulled.
Perhaps he insisted on walking along the ridge of the mountains, although he most likely realized that he was mistaken.
At this moment, any incident can become a mechanism that starts a chain of ridiculous deaths.
If everything was not staged and the tent really stood where it was found, then the wind was so strong that it tore and tore the old slope and it cracked. The tent immediately became unbearably cold. Someone (Tibault or Slobodin) came out to fasten the canvas of the tent slope, fell down the slope, hit his head on a stone and died almost immediately. The girls started getting hysterical. Tourists, who until then could barely contain their dissatisfaction with Dyatlov, began to shout at him that he was to blame for everything. Dyatlov jumped out of the tent and walked away (very soon his heart stopped). One of the tourists went to look for Dyatlov and froze.
Tent marks are often mentioned. You know, from my house to the bus stop there is a short road, in winter there are tracks in the snow. Just by looking at these traces, no one will think that people jumped out of the house at the same time for an unknown reason.
I read about other groups. The severe moral state of people, severe frost, hurricane squally wind, which intensified the frost and the body’s perception of frost, the absence of one leader, a torn tent, all this is quite a sufficient reason to die at such a distance from people and help.
Why did the case become so loud?
I think that some other circumstances came into play.
I think that if Zolotarev had not gone with them, Dyatlov might have admitted his mistake, returned to Lozva and successfully completed the route.
In other cases of the death of tourists, when this became known, no one was in a hurry to immediately go to the site of the tragedy, collect the bodies, and find out the reasons for the death of the group. In the case of Korovina’s group, the bodies lay there for a month. Shoes also disappeared and bodies were chewed by wild animals.
And they took off their shoes, expensive shoes. There were cases of missing shoes when other groups died. They removed it and then returned it because the case became very loud. The eyes and tongue were eaten by small rodents, which became more active by May. There is no mysticism if you think sensibly.
I think that Dyatlov did not change his mind about going to Otorten along the top of the mountains, which is why he decided to set up a storehouse at such a distance from Otorten. Otherwise, this storehouse cannot be explained at all. From Otorten, Dyatlov wanted to go along the other slope of the mountains and did not intend to return to the upper reaches of the Auspiya.
Someone else probably felt unwell. I think Luda. Everyone forgets that women have their periods and then: they have a headache, they can’t lift heavy things, and they generally feel bad. I can’t imagine how women felt among men on such days. There is no place to wash, no sanitary pads.
When I understand that tourists could simply quarrel (without any drinking), then other versions pale in comparison to this fact.
Read the diary entries! Where do you see a similar group? Entries from diaries from the Internet:
“Then the discussion resumes again and again, and all our discussions that were during this time were mainly about love.” (Kolya Thibault).
The initiator of these discussions is Zina Kolmogorova. They write that love passions were unknown to tourists of that time and they went on a hike without distinguishing between genders, like comrades. And they slept in the same tent, not feeling passion; they, they write, did not even know what sex was.
“It’s especially difficult to walk today. The trail is not visible, we often lose track of it or go groping our way. Thus we walk 1.5 - 2 km. at one o'clock.
We are developing new methods of more productive walking. The first one drops his backpack and walks for 5 minutes, after which he returns, rests for 10-15 minutes, and then catches up with the rest of the group. This is how the non-stop method of laying ski tracks was born. This is especially difficult for the second one, who walks along the track groomed by the first one, with a backpack. .. Tired, exhausted, they set about arranging for the night. There is not enough firewood. Frail, raw spruce." (Dyatlov).
Raw spruce does not burn in the stove, which means there is no firewood, there is nothing to warm the tent, and there is no way to dry clothes. Everyone is tired and exhausted. The day was wasted.
“Does he really think I’m some kind of fool? And in general, I like to add fuel to the fire, damn me... They saw off the Blinovites with tears. The mood is spoiled... The mood is bad and it will probably be for another two days. Evil as hell." (Luda) It is believed that Lyuda was in love with one of the Blinov Group (Zhenya?).
“As always, I’ve found some fellow countryman again... Will we go somehow? Music has had a terrible effect on me lately, guitar, mandolin, etc. Last night the boys made stupid jokes. In my opinion, you don’t need to pay attention to them, maybe they will be less rude. And so far nothing. It’s time to go out, but they’re still digging and digging. I don’t understand how it can take so long to get ready. The first 30 minutes have passed. Of course, the backpack is okay, it’s heavy. But you can go... The first day is always difficult. Sashka Kolevatov tested his device and quit. After lunch we made just one trek and stopped for a break. I was sewing up a tent. We went to bed. Igor was rude all evening, I just didn’t recognize him. I had to sleep on the wood next to the stove"… (Zina)
The girl is supposed to go out on the route, but she sleeps on the firewood, Igor, who is supposed to make sure that she gets enough sleep, is rude to her.
And Kolmogorova found a fellow countryman again. Any man dreams of being Zina’s fellow countryman and makes the entire group of tourists jealous; everyone likes Zina.
Kolevatov tried to carry weights on a sled, but the sled fell through, got stuck in the snow, and Kolevatov abandoned it. They take a long time to get ready, walk slowly, and sew up the tent.
“Lyuda quickly finished her work and sat down by the fire. Kolya Thibault changed his clothes. I started writing a diary. The law is this: until all the work is finished, do not approach the fire. And so they argued for a long time about who should sew up the tent. Finally, K. Thibault could not stand it and took the needle. Luda remained sitting. And we sewed holes (and there were so many of them that there was enough work for everyone, with the exception of two people on duty and Lyuda. The guys were terribly indignant).
Today is Sasha Kolevatov's birthday. Congratulations, we give him a tangerine, which he immediately divides into 8 parts (Luda went into the tent and did not come out again until the end of dinner)." (Unknown).
From what was written, it is clear that Dubinina was very offended by everyone, sat in the tent all evening, and did not get a tangerine. Or maybe she felt bad. This is before a hike of the third difficulty group, when you need to mobilize all the forces of the body.
Why do they always sew up holes in the tent? So - bad clothes. Dubinina forgot her sweater and her sweatshirt was accidentally burned. There are holes in the tent. In the combat leaflet "Evening Otorten" there is a note about one blanket that cannot be used to warm 9 tourists. It’s strange why there is only one blanket left and it is clear that it is very cold in the tent.
Once again, for a moment, let’s try to look into the Dyatlov group’s tent. It's -20 outside, hurricane winds, snow, blizzard. It is impossible to hang the stove (a strange design of the stove, suitable only for calm weather), there is no firewood, it is impossible to light a fire. The tent at this moment should “shake”, “sway” in the wind. It must be terribly cold inside the tent. On such a cold night it is difficult to withstand, survive, and not lose strength for the further journey.
Is it possible at this moment to undress for sleep, take off felt boots and sweatshirts and fall asleep sweetly?
Yes, this is delirium in delirium that the Dyatlovites set up a tent and undressed for the night, took off their shoes! They began to write a combat leaflet and cut the loin! After setting up a tent in such a squally wind, their clothes would become frosty, they would be very cold, and it would be impossible to stay warm in the tent. It was as cold there as outside, only there was less wind.
If at such a moment a rocket fell on the Dyatlovites, a yeti appeared, or the prisoners came to the light, then this is not just a blow of fate - it is a double blow. And so everything turned out very fatally, and then there was a rocket, like the killer’s final chord - a shot in the head. Finish it off - for sure.
I think that the decision to go to Otorten along the ridge of the mountains was made reluctantly, but by a majority vote. Otherwise, they would have split up before the storage shed was built.
It’s interesting that there are supporters of this version, but no one wants to hear this version. Because the intrigue disappears and a poorly planned tourist trip with gross miscalculations appears. The ideal tourist group disappears, and ordinary tourists (a bit slobs) appear with a not very experienced leader.
You see, there were enough circumstances to die. It is precisely in this combination of circumstances that one can see some kind of otherworldly intervention in the destinies of people. It was this case that became the most mysterious story and over time, interest in the case only grows.

I am re-reading the case materials for the thousandth time. Everyone writes that the group is ideal, the tourists are experienced, and the place where the group died is not dangerous - the slope is gentle, you can hold on in any wind, no avalanches were recorded during the period of the group’s accident.

So, they could have reached Otorten and died on the way back, when they were going to the storehouse. What does it change? This changes people's morale. From losers who failed the route, they turn into winners. It was difficult and there were some problems with discipline, love passions, clashes of characters, ailments, poor equipment not suitable for extreme cold and wind, but they were able to pass exactly as Igor Dyatlov planned - along the ridge, and to all the people who They tried to stop them, they proved that tourists are strength.

My old versions.
I. Don't go there.
1. They searched for the missing group thoroughly, extensively and for a long time.
I think we need to start getting acquainted with the case of the Dyatlov group by organizing a search operation. Four groups of students were assembled for the search and were transferred to Ivdel. They were joined by the military - "a group of captain A. A. Chernyshev and a group of operational workers with dogs under the command of senior lieutenant Moiseev, cadets of the sergeant school under the command of senior lieutenant Potapov and a group of sappers with mine detectors under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Shestopalov. The Mansi search engines were helped by the Kurikov family" .
And now, I'll tell you a secret. At that time and at a later time, both tourists and groups of tourists died. And no one was looking for them! Moreover, no one has searched on such a large scale and for such a long time. Just think about how much equipment was used for search operations, how much money was invested in the search.
Question: why were they looking for these particular tourists? They searched and found, although the search continued from February to May? Do you naively think that they would be searched for with airplanes, helicopters, and the military, if there was just an avalanche, a UFO flew by, or a yeti passed by? The case was related to the possible declassification of state secrets, which is why the search operation took so long and carefully.

My friends’ daughter went on hikes of moderate difficulty. The group did not return from one trip. The parents went to look for their daughter. They were told that several avalanches occurred along the route at that time. If the tourists don’t come out, then the parents will be given a certificate that their daughter is missing and that’s it. No one went to look for tourists (they didn’t fly on planes, they didn’t attract search dogs and sappers with mine detectors).
How long can you sit at home and talk about the fact that a person goes to bed warming a flask of coffee with his temple? Go on a hike and you will soon realize that survival on a hike is up to you. And if you die, then your body will remain where you died and no one cares about you! Go on at least one hike, and only then start drawing conclusions.

Following is the original story. As I research the case, many things change in my thoughts, but for now I left it.
2. How they told me about the Dyatlov group.
In the five-story building in which I lived as a child, five Jewish families lived. At that time, I knew nothing about the fact that they were Jews and no special attitude towards this fact was formed in my mind. I learned that my Jewish friend was at the time when I was studying at the institute. We were friends because we lived in the same house, went to the same class and the same school. She was an unusually smart girl. And life in these families was different from life and way of life in Russian families. I was very interested and curious about everything that I heard from my friend, now I think that all the topics that my friend conveyed to me were simply discussed in this family over evening tea.
I was born in 1967. Around the age of ten, I heard from a friend about nine tourists who died in the mountains. The main information that I heard then was that a group of young people died from incredible fright. This is what a friend told me: “All night someone scary walked around the tent in which the young people were sitting. They heard footsteps and saw light breaking through the tent flap. In horror, the tourists cut the tent and jumped out of it. And after some time, all the tourists were found dead in different places near the tent. Their faces were distorted with fear, their bodies were frozen, they lay in unnatural positions, and the skin on their faces was orange.”
My friend's story shook me to the core. I was an impressionable girl whose family traveled a lot and spent the night in an ordinary four-person canvas tent. In my family, no such events were ever discussed. My parents were atheists. The life of my family was prosaic and all relationships within the family were purely everyday. I had to wash floors and dishes, carefully prepare homework, in the summer weed grass in a potato field and take care of animals. There was no question of any dead tourists in my family.
It becomes clear why I still remember this story, told to me by a friend in childhood.

3. You can understand what happened only by knowing and understanding that time.
Now, when many versions have appeared, when many people have carefully studied the material about the cause of the death of the group, and the main thing is that these materials have become publicly available, it makes it possible to consider this story both from the point of view of known facts and from the point of view of their everyday experience, with a look a person who lived in that Soviet post-war era.
I am sure that modern youth, no matter how hard they try, will not be able to fully understand the whole history, will not be able to appreciate everything, getting used to the course of events and trying them on for themselves, because the youth now are completely different, they have different values ​​and completely different outlook on life.
Looking at the photographs taken by Dyatlov’s group on this hike, I see and feel more of the lively, cheerful faces of tourists. I also had a FED camera; many children were involved in photography back then. And I have a lot of black and white photographs with different groups of people in them. This happened in many families. So at that time they tried to capture many events of their lives. Sometimes I go through these photographs and look at them. Many of the people captured in these photographs are no longer alive. What can you do, such is life. The only thing that pulsates in the mind is that these people from Dyatlov’s group were still very young, now from the height of their age, I would say – just children. But again, I’ll make an allowance for the fact that the time was completely different. And at 24 years old, a young man, boy or girl, was already an adult, a fully formed individual. Now these are children. And then, they were already adults. People with inner qualities, which are so few in modern youth. These were young people with deep love for their Motherland, with patriotism, with clear political views and convictions. They were characterized by heroism and self-sacrifice to save other people. They were united by a feeling of friendship, strong and indestructible. Nowadays it is so difficult for young people to understand. There are no feelings for the Motherland, no patriotism. Heroism to save others has become extremely rare. The friendship disappeared completely. There is no friendship now in the concept in which it was then.
And we were atheists. And they didn’t believe in other worlds and phenomena at all. And such phenomena happened extremely rarely. To a greater extent, these were horror stories, similar to fairy tales, than real facts. There were wolves, bears and wild boars in the forests, and there were plenty of stories about them, and they often approached houses in villages, and they were much more terrible than flying balls.
My grandparents (Kingdom of Heaven to them) talked a lot about the war and we children lived as if this war had not spared us. We played war and clearly knew how to defend the border of our Motherland and that the enemies do not sleep and we need to always be on the alert. These stories instilled in us a certain suspicion towards possible enemies of the Motherland and communism. The young people from Dyatlov’s group were much closer in time to the war. All these feelings were heightened in them. They knew for sure who was a friend and who was an enemy. These were very weighty concepts, absorbed with the war that took place in the country, with a clear political ideology in the country. Now they will begin to convince you that young people tend to rebel and go against the policies of the entire country. Yes, there were few such rebels then. “The party said: we must! The Komsomol answered: yes! And this political slogan is not a joke or a hoax, but a clear guide to action, absorbed into the blood with mother’s milk from early childhood.
It is absolutely impossible to understand this whole story without taking into account these facts. People have changed a lot, their worldview has changed.

4. The best detective story.
I looked through a lot of information, what I found about the Dyatlov group, those documents that are known to the entire Internet community, reconstructions of the death of the group, as well as comments on them. Now I can’t tell you the best author and the best version. My opinion on this matter changes as I delve deeper into the information on the case.

5. What evil force was chasing the Dyatlov group?
It is very easy and simple to explain everything by the fact that, as they say: “A brick fell on your head.” Or it can be explained differently, say, by a coincidence. But the brick, you see, falls precisely on the person’s head, creating one single connection. A brick fell on his head and the man died. All and no human walks after this event are envisaged. Fell - died. One connection.
In many explanations of the situation with the death of the Dyatlov group, it turns out to be some kind of multi-step approach. The brick fell, and fell, fell, fell, and always landed squarely on his head. But the falling of a brick is just a random coincidence. Even a shell does not fall into the same crater twice, so they say. And then the blast wave hit, hit and finished off the entire group. Well, how can one believe in such versions?
So the story with the dead group suggests that although something terrible happened, people put up worthy resistance, showed that, although they were scared, they did not give in to the circumstances, but took quite sufficient actions to survive in the situation that had arisen. They didn’t get completely confused, didn’t scatter in different directions, didn’t freeze individually, but grouped together and began to survive: they broke branches, built a flooring, insulated themselves with the clothes they could get, and lit a fire. They had a knife, matches and firewood. All you had to do was wait out the dark and go to your storehouse, where there were food and things and spare skis. And, after all, if you think about it deeply, then they had chances for survival, not for the whole group, but for some. They absolutely had to survive in that situation. But this would be the case if the matter concerned otherworldly forces, or individual natural phenomena. It is only in horror films that an evil force chases the heroes until they finish everyone off. In life, a case is isolated, that’s why it’s a case. And everything else is already a pattern and cannot be attributed to the horror stories about the Mountain of the Dead, the warnings of the Mansi: “Don’t go there,” and the mysterious number 9. All this is just a warning that going there is dangerous, that people have already died there when something people. Dangerous does not mean necessarily fatal. After all, just like pilgrims, tourists now go there and, laughing at Mansi’s warning, go in a group of 9 people.
Then, the Mansi have holy places there. They had to invent all sorts of horror stories so that tourists would not come and spoil their way of life and their well-established life with their clumsy actions. If faith in shrines had been as deep among the people of that time as the feeling of patriotism, then no one would have died. Why do they tell us: “Don’t go there”! Are we stubbornly climbing? Where it's dangerous. They warned that it was dangerous, why go? Why casually brush aside the traditions and beliefs of other peoples, other cultures and other views on life, believing that your views and beliefs are the only correct and true ones: “And we are knee-deep in the sea. But we don’t believe and we don’t believe, but we will go anyway. We want to pull death’s whiskers!”
Everything is clear in the case when a group of tourists is buried in an avalanche. This is comparable to falling bricks. Action and result. And that’s it, no further debugging occurs. I am writing this for those who offer versions akin to a fallen brick and then suppress all other facts. And the people from Dyatlov’s group still walked, and lived, and acted. All the same, they would freeze, so they explain what importance is where, and in what order.
What kind of EVIL POWER do you have? So he’s chasing after the Dyatlovites. And this never happens in the nature of things.

7. Why did the tourists leave the tent?
Here we would have competed in inventing horror stories, if there had been no chains of traces left indicating that the Dyatlovites did not run away from fear in different directions, but came out as a group in full force or one less, we will say that it was quite full force. We left the tent, going out into the cold, leaving warm clothes in the tent.
For example, ball lightning appeared, a UFO, a rocket flew by. Why cut the ramp if ball lightning quickly reaches the ramp? Or did the snow cover the entrance so much that the tent had to be cut open?
I dismiss the avalanche versions and the possibility that a snow slab slid onto the tent, because if the injuries to Dubinina, Zolotarev, Thibault-Brignolle were received at the beginning of the incident, then who fought for their lives if the rest were without shoes?
For example, an animal came, jumped on the tent, and fell on it. The tourists began to hit it with an ice ax and cut the ramp, the animal ran away. They got out through the cut. The animal returned, wounded and angry (left no traces, no blood on the tent or around).
Fear forced them to cut the tent, but they did not run, but walked away from the tent, leaving there the most necessary things for survival (shoes, warm clothes, food).
Such actions can only be explained by general insanity, but subsequently the work necessary for survival was done, logical actions were taken.
But the cuts on the tent, this fact in itself, can be placed as a point on a straight line, literally anywhere. The fact itself does not mean that it happened exactly at the moment in time in which we want to see it. The cuts could have appeared during the event that forced the Dyatlovites to leave the tent, as well as after it.
I found that the searchers who discovered the tent shoveled the snow and cut the slope with an ice ax in two places; they even said that a piece of the tent came off.

8. When did tourists receive injuries incompatible with life?
The second conclusion relates to the final injuries with which the tourists were found. This fact, it seems, can also be placed at any point during the entire duration of the events, while the last of the Dyatlovites remained alive. But here it is quite obvious that with such injuries no one will walk one and a half kilometers in the snow, no one will fight hard for their lives: walk, collect brushwood and branches, climb a cedar tree for branches for flooring, make a fire. Having such injuries, a person needs help and needs someone who will fight for him and make selfless efforts to save him.
And this is a very big job, considering that the group of Dyatlovites, at a time when they had to fight not only for their lives, but also for someone else’s, even for the life of their best friend, found themselves at that moment half-naked in bad weather and severe frost. So, the amount of work that would go to those who did not receive serious injuries incompatible with life exceeded the capabilities of these people. They would have to carry the wounded, take care of them, and not about themselves. Dubinina, Zolotarev, and Thibault-Brignolles had injuries incompatible with life and, meanwhile, turned out to be better dressed than anyone else and were for some time in the best living conditions. They had a flooring of branches in a ravine, protected from the wind. Even if they were dragged, laid out, dressed, dying, moaning, on the verge between life and death. This is easy to write, but you carry the wounded on yourself with only socks on your feet! Place Zolotarev on your back and make efforts to save yourself and him. And yet you dragged him to the cedar, and then what? Some more time will pass until a place for the flooring is found, until this place is prepared, branches are broken and trained, and laid on the flooring. Where were the wounded all this time? Did they lie side by side in the snow and wait until everything settled down and they were seated on the flooring? But they show no signs of frostbite.
Versions that Zolotarev, Dubinina and Thibault-Brignolles were injured at the very beginning of the unfolding tragedy seem devoid of any meaning to anyone who has dealt with snow, frost and understands what a person can and cannot do while being in the snow wearing only socks.
Please note that Doroshenko, Krivonischenko, Kolmogorova and Dyatlov, who, as it were, bore the brunt of working in the snow under the cedar tree, were found wearing socks and only Slobodin had one felt boot, and Zolotarev and Thibault, who in the course of such versions should They only had shoes to save them, Zolotarev was in burkas, and Thibault was in felt boots.

9. Zolotarev Sasha - why do we single him out?
And Zolotarev in this story is a very extraordinary person. “Semyon (Alexander) Alekseevich Zolotarev, born in 1921, was one of the conscripts of 1921-22. He went through almost the entire war, was a battalion Komsomol organizer, and after the war he joined the party. He had 4 military awards, after the war he worked as a tourism instructor at the Artybash tourist center (Altai), then moved to the Sverdlovsk region, where he got a job at the Kourovskaya tourist center as a senior tourism instructor.”
War does not leave a random person alive. Only a person who is very adapted to life, who has an animal instinct and global intuition, who has intelligence and common sense, who can soberly assess the situation and find the only correct way out, who knows how to use the human resources around him, will survive. This is not just a lucky person who “is afraid of a bullet and does not take a bayonet”, this is a person who knows how to survive in any situation, having the main goal - survival, and not unjustified heroism inspired by time.
And if you ask me who was sure to survive, I will answer that it was Zolotarev. To survive, he had to be prepared for any difficult situation that happens on campaigns. In the tent, he undoubtedly had to occupy the best place in order to leave it faster in case of danger. Zolotarev, of course, had to be the best dressed. And he had to take the most reliable measures for his salvation and the salvation of the people with whom he found himself in the group. In general, being next to Zolotarev at the time of a tragic situation meant surviving or holding out as long as possible. Being capable of survival, Zolotarev also saved others to the best of his ability.
And if you tell me that, contrary to the laws of nature, in a difficult situation that takes a long time to overcome, some lucky Vasya will survive, and Zolotarev will die because he was simply unlucky, then I will never believe it. Zolotarev was not just the oldest of the guys. He was much wiser and more experienced, went through military school from the very beginning and received a reward for being unsinkable - his own life. And if he did not die immediately and was not initially significantly injured, then it was he who should have rallied around himself a group of tourists who would ultimately survive. And that’s exactly what most likely happened. It was these four people who lasted the longest, they were the ones who were better dressed than others and had shelter to hold out until daylight and go to the storehouse where there were things and food. Zolotarev and Thibault also had no signs of frostbite, and this was another plus for further survival. In general, they had no reason to die at all, and they had to continue to fight the natural phenomenon and overcome it. And I cannot attribute everything here to the fact that Zolotarev could succumb to emotions, a sense of guilt for his dead comrades; it was Zolotarev who should not have been prone to sentimentality and disgust about the clothes taken from his dead friends. They're dead anyway and don't need clothes. But we need it alive. What kind of sentimentality is there? It was Zolotarev, like no one else, who was ready for death, he saw death, he got used to death as much as possible, he did not experience the emotions about death that anyone who has not dealt so closely with death experiences.
Now, if you were in that situation, it would take time, say, a week of a very difficult existence, to part with some of your moral principles. For example, would you dare to go to dead bodies at night to take off their clothes?
Doroshenko and Krivonischenko were found under a cedar tree almost naked, in shirts and underpants. They could not have been undressed by accident or undressed themselves; parts of their clothes were found not far from the cedar or on the flooring in different places.
It is also obvious that at the moment of making a decision about what to do and how to proceed next, the group of tourists split up: two tourists, led by Dyatlov, went towards the tent (walked away from the tent), two remained at the cedar, and three remained with Zolotarev at flooring
If the situation is complex, then there should be only one leader and decisions should be made by one person, like a captain on a ship.
What could be done in a situation where most of the group is standing in the snow wearing only socks? The most important thing is to keep your feet warm! First, insulate your feet, and then everything else: dragging, chopping, lighting. What is the fastest way to insulate everyone’s feet? You can only make a flooring of branches, laying these branches for the flooring in a windless place.
It is not surprising that Dubinina ended up with Zolotarev, a girl who proved her ability to endure and wait when she was shot in the leg on another hike. WITH
Kolevatov turned out to be this group - efficient and pedantic. All the men in this group were older than the rest of the tourists in age.
And the fact that Krivonischenko and Zolotarev were buried separately from the entire group, in another cemetery, side by side in closed coffins, also remains a fact that is not entirely clear: one was found with the first group of dead tourists, the second with the second group. For the first one, the parents asked, they wanted him to be buried at the Ivanovo cemetery, and why was Zolotarev separated from the second group of bodies found?
To give the whole story a modern twist, I want to believe that Zolotarev did not die then. That another person was buried instead of him. After all, he was identified twice, confused with Doroshenko. And then they buried him in a closed coffin. I want to believe that Zolotarev completed the task that he was entrusted with. That he, as befits such a person, could not die so easily and surrender even to a superior enemy.

10. Other people.
It is obvious to me that there were other people involved in this tragedy. Because a footprint was found from a boot that did not belong to members of the group, a scabbard and a piece of overcoat cloth and a soldier’s winding. Yes, these strangers had to be there only because Zolotarev, Dubinina, Kolevatov, Thibault-Brignolles had to survive, had to overcome the elements. Why was there a need to hide the flooring if the threat could not come down to them and cause them harm?
Only other people could and did finish off, something that any natural phenomenon will never do to you. The story about when the evil force returned, not from the anomalous (parallel) world, it concerns only the relationships between people.
Surely these strangers had weapons with which they could threaten. Most likely this weapon was not a firearm. Because it is impossible to hold a group of nine people if you never use your firearms. Those you are holding will very quickly realize that not a single shot was fired at them and will simply stop being afraid.
But I can’t really imagine a very large group of other people in those conditions, because the traces of their presence would have been more numerous. And this is someone else’s ski track, and the Mansi hunters would probably have known about the presence of some other people in the territory where the tragedy took place.
But this, of course, is already speculation. I think it is impossible to clean the place without leaving traces. Didn't these people appear out of thin air? They had to pass through the villages, had to be noticed by the local population, before they got to this place. If they arrived by helicopter, then there should have been a trace of the helicopter landing.
They also could not hide the flooring, but simply choose a windward place. After all, there was nothing to dig a den in the snow with, there was no shovel. They write that they even dug a place for a tent with skis. (When traveling in winter, we always took a shovel, or even two. We need to clear the area of ​​snow, level the area, clear the snow around the tent; if it snows all night, then the person on duty must monitor and clear the snow near the entrance, sweep the snow from the tent. This is a lot of work. If there is only one shovel, then one person digs, and the rest freeze in the cold).
From the point of view of the appearance of strangers, everything is clear. They drove the Dyatlovites out into the cold almost naked, drove them away from the tent and decided to wait until they froze. Then they saw that the tourists were not frozen, but even lit a fire and, perhaps, warmed up and were ready for a retaliatory attack, they went to look for them, found those who did not die from freezing, killed them, then covered their tracks and left.
For example, prisoners who escaped from a colony. There are correctional labor colonies around the scene of the incident. They reject this version because presumably no one escaped from the colony at that time, and they don’t, they say, in the winter. There is nothing to eat in the forest, it’s cold, you can find it by following the tracks.
An interesting version of the group’s meeting with poachers.
I don't think it was a planned murder. Perhaps Dyatlov's group met another group of people who could not have been there at that moment. And the Dyatlovites not only suspected them, but also openly expressed their doubts. True, I’m not smart enough to put forward versions of a more complex plan. Involving criminals, the KGB, and spy groups in their reasoning. I don’t really believe that there could have been a planned delivery, because the creators of this version themselves understand how difficult it was for two groups not to diverge in time and such a complex space, in the event that part of the group is not dedicated to the whole story and is not understands why wait time. This would be a very complex operation, completely uncontrollable, where any miscalculation would lead to a fatal result.

11. Consequence.
The investigation was conducted as it always is in our country - under pressure from above, and this makes it seem: careless, chaotic, stupid, strange.
The first version of the investigation was an attack on a group of tourists by Mansi hunters. After all, it was their interests that were affected, their shrines were disturbed. The Mansi had a very good reason to scare the tourists and drive them away from the sacred territory. But the Mansi had no reason to destroy and finish off a group of tourists. And it was the Mansi, from whom nothing escapes in their forest, who saw someone else’s ski track. It’s very strange that they were released; it was so convenient to blame the whole tragedy on them.
In the version about the death of a group of tourists at the hands of people, many see that the tent was not robbed, food, alcohol, valuables and many other things were not lost. (Some notebooks, diaries, photographic films were missing, six out of ten were missing, no one knew exactly how many things there were and what kind of things they were, the belonging of the things was determined approximately).
No firearms, if any, were fired at any of the group members. But this only proves that these strangers did not need the valuables and alcohol found in the tent. The tragedy most likely occurred by accident.
Of course, investigator Ivanov was forced to present everything as he was ordered. And also the case could not disappear completely, dissolve into oblivion; the fathers of Slobodin and Dubinina could demand an objective investigation into the deaths of the children. Especially Dubinina’s father, because her body was found in a very terrible state. Looking at his daughter’s body, the father could not help but understand that she was not just frozen. He could not be satisfied with this result of the investigation.
It is obvious here that the investigation had a directive to present everything as an accident, and whoever ordered this was aware of the events that happened at the pass or what reasons could have led to such tragic consequences. I think that the investigation would not have hidden the meeting between the Dyatlov group and the spy group if it all came down to this. Why hide the fact that tourists showed vigilance during those difficult post-war times for the country? It was necessary and necessary to hide in the event that one’s own people destroyed their own. After all, this fact would be impossible to clearly explain to the people. It was necessary to hide if our people were engaged in some secret developments or tests in this deserted place, which no one needed to know about.

12. Orange skin of the dead.
There was still a very big resonance among the people. There were many search engines who probably shared information, Yudin survived, who was also not satisfied with the progress of the investigation, and there were a large number of people at the funeral. For whom the color of the skin of the dead was a fact that stirred the imagination. So much so that many years later, I learned from a friend that the skin color of the dead tourists’ faces was orange! Many people unsuccessfully try to explain this orange skin color and often simply brush it aside (the name of the color may be the perception of each individual person, from here one thing is clear that the skin color of tourists was not common for a frozen deceased person, I think among the people present at the funeral there were people who had seen frozen dead people before this incident, had experience, and to them, like many others, the skin color was strange, this color defied logic and experience). And the first thing that might come to mind is radiation or chemical poisoning. And a radiation test was carried out. Otherwise, why would they hold it? No one checks frozen bodies for the presence of radiation. And radiation was found on the clothes of the victims.

13. Strange act.
Krivonischenko’s action at the station also seems strange. Entry from the diary of Lyudmila Dubinina: “January 24. (...) One small incident occurred - Yurka K. was taken to the police, accusing him of deception. Our Yura decided to walk around the station with his hat, and performing some kind of song. Yurka I had to help out (....)". A strange incident, because this trick jeopardized the entire campaign, or the participation of Krivonischenko himself in it. Nowadays it is more common for young people to fool around, knowing that this will not entail any consequences. At that time, they fooled around with caution, and illegal songs were sung and lyrics were rewritten, but everything was in the strictest confidence, and not at the station, not in front of strangers. Self-discipline and self-control were more developed. And then there was such unjustified tomfoolery - he held out his hat and asked for alms. I sang a song at the station, where there was a patrol and singing was prohibited. All this can only be understood if Krivonischenko, under some pretext, needed to get to the police station, so that the group would not suspect anything. A merry fellow would certainly be taken on a hike, but a fool would not. This is an insignificant fact, which, in general, does not prove anything, but is very strange in light of the fact that the entire group of tourists died.

14. Where did the language go?
Another fact that disturbs the minds of people researching the death of the Dyatlovites is the absence of eyeballs from Zolotarev and Dubinina and the absence of a tongue from Dubinina. This is the most explainable phenomenon. And I wonder why anyone thinks people did that. They killed and then mocked the bodies. For what? Or were they interrogated by squeezing out eyeballs? For what? And what was there to question? The entire group was already dead by this time. But if a person’s tongue is pulled out or his eyeballs are squeezed out, then he will definitely never tell anything. I think that in this case everything is more prosaic. After death, Dubinina’s mouth was open, and her face was turned to the side where animals or birds could reach, which always eat out the eyes and tongue first. The bodies of Dubinina and Zolotarev were not found longer than others and were subject to greater decomposition and greater change. If they had lain there for another month, not a trace would have remained of them.

II. Logical chains.

1. Let's return to Zolotarev.
I'll start with the personality of Sasha Zolotarev. From the forensic examination report: “On the back of the right hand at the base of the thumb there is a tattoo “Gena.” On the back of the right forearm in the middle third there is a tattoo with the image of a beetroot and the letter C, on the back of the left forearm there are tattoos with the image of “G + S”, “DAERMMUAZUAYA”, a five-pointed star and the letter C, the letters “G + S + P = D” and “ 1921." You can find many forums and websites where people try to unravel the meaning of these tattoos. Basically, all the reasoning boils down to the fact that the body that was buried was not the body of Semyon Zolotarev, that, most likely, it was Gena (Gennady), a prisoner from the colony, of which there were many in the place where the tragedy occurred. "DAERMMUAZUAYA" - words that were filled in with a new tattoo in order to hide the meaning of the old one. For example, it is difficult to fill in the letter M with a new letter, but the letter G may well turn out to be the letter E, you just need to add two lower sticks to it; from the letter L you can make the letter A by adding a crossbar. There are no real witnesses to that story and it is impossible to know for sure whether the body was identified and whether Zolotarev’s mother really came to the funeral.
But there was another story known to me, which I know for certain, when a mother did not identify the body of her dead son. It is impossible to find out in a situation where the body and, especially the face, have undergone significant changes. You can only reliably identify things if you have information about things. But many parents, unless their children live with them full-time, have little knowledge about their child's belongings. It is possible to identify teeth and crowns if such information is available, but many parents do not know this for sure. But Zolotarev lived separately for a long time and, as you know, visited his mother only occasionally. DNA testing would help in this case; only this could clarify and finally confirm whether Zolotarev, with whose identity there are so many questions, inconsistencies and inconsistencies, was really found and buried. Let's look at the monument erected in memory of a group of tourists at the Mikhailovskoye Cemetery (Ekaterinburg) and find that A. I. Zolatarev is buried, we find, for example, a party card, and there Semyon Alekseevich Zolotarev, we find other documents where Semyon Alekseevich Zolotarev is listed and We also read the plaque on the personal monument at the Ivanovo cemetery. We also learn that Zolotarev asked to be called Alexander.
Here's the version. Eight people were immediately found, all except Zolotarev. Let's just say he went missing. But this cannot be revealed to the public. Endless questions and suspicions will arise. In this case, it is much easier to stage it, hide the bodies, disfigure faces beyond recognition, delay the investigation, and wait until everyone gets tired of waiting for the outcome. The first bodies of tourists were buried in front of a large crowd of people, but Zolotarev was only 12 people. He was buried in a closed zinc coffin in another cemetery.

2. Versions of the division of power and conflict over the right to women.
Let’s assume that the incident that led to the death of the tourists was a very ordinary one: they didn’t divide the power, they didn’t divide the girls.
Looking at the photographs of the Dyatlov group’s campaign, I see that in some photographs Zolotarev is talking with Kolmogorova, it is noticeable that he is paying attention to the beautiful girl. Zina Kolmogorova has complex relationships with the men in the group. Igor Dyatlov likes her, and they find a photo of Zina in his possession. Here are lines from Zina Kolmogorova’s diary: “After lunch, we made just one trek and stopped for a rest. I sewed up the tent. We went to bed. Igor was rude all evening, I just didn’t recognize him. I had to sleep on the wood by the stove.” There are many other entries from the girl’s diary that directly indicate that there were no ideal relationships in the group of young tourists. What does the phrase say that Igor was rude?
And the fact that there was no sex between them does not affect the relationship at all. Rather, it intensifies passions even more.
Before the trip, Zina had a relationship with Yura Doroshenko, you can find information that they were going to get married, but something went wrong between them, in a letter to a friend, on the train, the girl writes: “He walks hand in hand with some of the girls I'm jealous." "We are together and not together." Here a whole tangle of love, an explosion of passions, immediately arises.
How can one discard all these facts when talking about UFOs, rocket launches, control deliveries? The relationships of tourists on a hike can ruin any ideal situation.
Both women could become a detonator, a trigger mechanism, and provoke the situation and consequences with any of their inappropriate actions.
Will you say that these were disciplined, marching women who did not know the passions of rebellion and inappropriate behavior?
Reading the wall newspaper that the tourists allegedly made on the day of their death, one cannot help but notice that there are hints of love affairs in the group. “Let's welcome the XXI Congress with an increase in the number of tourists!”
I also noticed how different the worldview and understanding of events in the brain are between men and women. Men will notice the note about sleighs and Bigfoot and ignore the tourist birth rate recorded in the first paragraph.
A quarrel over girls could happen either within the group or with someone whom the group might meet on a hike, any group of men (In such remote places there are always fewer women and they can always become a cause of interest and a cause of disputes between men).
There was also a possible conflict of leaders in the group. Researchers write that only the leaders went on this campaign. But Dyatlov was not an ideal group leader. In a difficult situation, no single decision was made; it is clear that the group was divided.
It can definitely be said about a group, about three tourists, and possibly Luda Dubinina, who were found nearby, with a certain interaction with each other (lying next to each other, one hugging the other).
All the other tourists did not form a group, split up, and found them in different places. Krivonischenko and Doroshenko did not die in the positions in which their bodies were found under the cedar tree (the body is elongated, the arm is thrown behind the head). They (or one of them) could be found and brought under a cedar tree, undressed and left to lie there.
3. Before or after climbing Otorten?
I also often think that the tragedy occurred after climbing Mount Otorten; there are several clues about this. So the newspaper is called “Evening Otorten”, why call a wall newspaper that if the job has not been done yet? Why was there only one log when the ascent was ahead? Why did you park so quickly when the storage shed is only 2 km away? Did you walk away a little and immediately get up? Or maybe we didn’t get there a little on the way back? And the last photo, where they put up a tent on the mountainside and the place where it was found, the researchers notice that the slopes are different, in the photo the slope is greater. Although, you could be wrong here. I often take photographs while hiking. Photographs of the slopes do not convey the steepness of the slope. The tent in the photo was photographed from different points: from the bottom and from the top. The steepness of a slope always appears less in a photograph.

4. Anomalous versions.
I’ll be honest, I don’t consider anomalous versions of events. On two overnight stays, Sergei and I saw a UFO in the sky, but so what? The UFO was flying high in the sky and did not touch us. Not a terrible thing.
I was afraid of wild animals, and Sergei was afraid of people. Very often he chose places to spend the night that were remote from people and habitation.
Many times we found ourselves at the cemetery in the late evening, after nine o'clock in the evening, and once we spent the night near the cemetery. Nothing abnormal happened even once!

5. From the experience of winter overnight stays.
I'll tell you a little about winter overnight stays. I was very surprised by the fact that experienced tourists do not share their experiences of their overnight stays. So, we spent the night at minus 20 degrees in a three-person nylon tent with a double layer of the thinnest material. Such two-layer tents undoubtedly retain heat better, provide excellent protection from the wind, and get little wet. We had a small Pathfinder gas stove. On the last night the snow was 30 cm high. The operation of the gas stove immediately makes the tent warm; after 15 minutes you can sit in the tent in just shorts, it’s so warm there. On our last night we slept without the gas stove on. We warmed things up and turned them off. We didn't experiment with cold and survival, it was just warm. At night, if they wanted to pee, they went out wearing rubber boots, but they barely dressed, they were lazy, even though it was cold outside. Only one night Sergei jumped out of the tent naked, without shoes. On that cold autumn night, it seemed to him that mermaids were swimming in the lake next to which we set up our camp.
Looking at the photographs where the Dyatlovites are standing in thin hats, with open windbreakers, without scarves, it is hard to believe that the temperature is minus 20 degrees. At minus 20 degrees, frost freezes on parts of clothing close to the face from walking. Frost freezes from breathing when walking. The hat, the collar near the face, everything becomes white and needle-like.
True, on hikes there were often times when the weather changed rapidly, and the wind in open areas was so strong that it knocked you off your feet and made it impossible to walk, just crawl on all fours.
Also, Sergei noticed that such traces as those found near the tent could only form if the snow was wet. Only in this case the snow is compressed and then, after melting, the tracks appear like columns. In such an open place where the Dyatlovites’ tent stood, there was a very strong wind, and wind causes much more inconvenience than frost. For people who found themselves without clothes, it was important to quickly find shelter from the wind. At the same time, being in the snow without shoes meant quickly dying. I find versions that one tourist was blown away by the wind when he went out to pee, and others rushed to help, and they were also blown away by the wind. It may well be, but why cut the tent?
One day we swam in a spring at minus 20 degrees. On that trip I wore nylon tights and thin socks. It was not cold to swim in the cold. It was cold to stand on the frozen floor and pull on nylon tights. While I was trying to quickly put on my shoes, I almost froze my feet. I dressed poorly, one sock got stuck inside the shoe. She cried from the cold. What saved me was that we came to the monastery; it was warm there. I took off my shoes and for about half an hour tried to warm my feet and howled in pain when my feet began to gradually move away. While I was putting on tights, I stood completely naked, in the cold, after swimming and my body was not frozen at all, only my legs were frozen. Since then, I am sure that being left without shoes is certain death, and if you had to stay in the cold without shoes, you need to take off your clothes and insulate your feet.
Secondly, you need to walk or collect firewood while a person is moving, even with little clothing, but with insulated legs, he has less chance of freezing. Third, you need to look for shelter as soon as possible.
The conclusion is simple. Any person who has a little experience of surviving in cold conditions will not walk in the snow wearing only socks; he will very quickly begin to redistribute his clothes, tear off the sleeves from the jacket (cut with a knife) and wrap his legs. If experienced people did not do this, it means they did not go down to the cedar, did not drag the bodies of their injured comrades there, did not collect brushwood for the fire, which means they died on the way down from the tent, and not while climbing up to it.
The fire near the cedar could well have been a signal (if the tourists did not go to the tent, but got lost on the way from it and was intended to gather everyone in one place), but most likely it was intended for heating. It’s very logical to go down and make a signal fire, but how can you find a tent after walking away from the fire into the darkness of the night if you’ve moved a distance of one and a half kilometers? This is completely impossible, that’s what I know for sure, unless the same signal fire is burning near the tent (They write that there was a large signal lantern on the tent, that’s why it was visible).
There were times when, during winter fishing, we went one and a half to two kilometers into the lake on ice, and then we had to return to the car to get something. The car was always clearly visible from the fishing spot and it seemed that it would be easy to go back and find our fishermen. But on the shore it turned out that it was very difficult to find the way back. All the fishermen looked the same from afar. Everyone was sitting on boxes, wearing chemical protective raincoats. From a distance they all looked the same. The trajectory of the path was quickly forgotten, it was impossible to find the way back unless one of his friends gave a noticeable signal from the shore (Usually stood up and waved his arms, when the bottom was clear and visibility was good).
Even during the day, I don’t believe that it was easy to find a tent if it was easy to walk from the cedar. At night, it was completely unreal. Therefore, Kolmogorova, Dyatlov and Slobodin were most likely the first to die when they descended from the tent. They did not insulate the legs. We fell behind the group and got lost in the confusion. I find versions that they were blinded, so they crawled towards the tent. You see, even if there was good visibility, it was difficult to find the tent and find the direction to it. It was easy to get away from it, but very difficult to return, up the slope in strong winds and frost, poor visibility (unrealistic for a healthy person). If it was necessary to find a tent, then one would have to follow their own tracks to it, but these three did not follow the tracks.
I'll add about the equipment. In 10-15 degree frost they dressed like this: a cotton undershirt, a sweater, a padded jacket (quilted, quilted), a cotton scarf on the head, a hat with earflaps (rabbit, beaver) on top, the ears of the hat were tied, cotton tights and quilted quilted trousers on the legs, plain and woolen socks and felt boots with chemical protective stockings. Over the padded jacket I wore a raincoat with a hood, and a chemical protection raincoat on top. The hands are covered with fur coated mittens. It was always much colder on the lake, and a strong piercing wind blew. We went 5 km into the lake while we were walking, but it was hard to walk, it was hot. They came, drilled holes, and sat down. It got cold very quickly. My feet and hands were freezing in felt boots. To protect from the wind, fishermen sew a bag from transparent film, which they put on top.
Yesterday, the air temperature just happened to be minus 20 degrees. I was dressed warmly and immediately froze in the wind. I thought about those who talk, sitting in warm apartments, about what could and could not happen: about hurricanes and the difficulties of the route, about sub-zero temperatures, about wet sleeping bags, about a wet tent.
The fire that was lit near the cedar, if it was not a signal fire, was most likely built in a place where it was easier to gather wood for kindling. As winter nights have shown, green spruce burns best, flares up and burns like gunpowder, but dry trees that have been under the snow burn poorly, so that such firewood would require diesel fuel, they stubbornly did not want to flare up. At first, while there were a lot of branches, there was enthusiasm, because around the fire, even in severe frost, it quickly becomes warm. Once you warm up a little, you don’t want to leave the fire. Very quickly it becomes clear that such fuel will not last long, because it burns instantly, and for new branches I had to climb higher and higher and break them off with the weight of my body.
People who find themselves in such a situation must set themselves a specific goal, do this and that, then all actions will have meaning. If you understand that you will certainly die when the available branches of the cedar run out, then very soon you will no longer want to do anything, realizing the pointlessness of actions.

6. Sequence of deaths.
I come to almost the same conclusion as in the first part. Three tourists died almost immediately, six people went down. Two more died under the cedar, and four on the flooring lived longer than the others, because they had everything to survive: they had a good organization and one leader, they were wearing shoes and clothes, they were sheltered from the cold and wind, they could wait until morning and go to a tent or storage shed for skis and clothes. Everyone who could disrupt the unity of the group and decision-making, namely Kolmogorova, Dyatlov and Doroshenko, was no longer alive. But for some reason they didn’t go, but were found with broken ribs and faces changed beyond recognition, with radiation on their clothes. Although it is complete nonsense, the conclusion suggests itself that at that moment, when a group of four tourists took refuge in a ravine, that ill-fated snow slab came down on them (an explosion occurred with the release of radiation), which killed the survivors.
If the sequence is this: three got lost and died, two lit a fire and waited for those three, hoping that they were alive, and four hid on the flooring. Here there is a division of the group into smaller groups of people: Kolmogorov and Dyatlov, separately from them Doroshenko, separately from them Zolotarev and the people who joined them. This is exactly how they should have parted if it was about love and sharing power. Dyatlov could not be next to Zolotarev, Doroshenko could not be next to Dyatlov. Here you have a close-knit, similar, carefully selected group of people.
The four from the deck really could have lived, and maybe they did, longer. Zolotarev could have left for help altogether. I realized how hopeless everything was and left. And the criminal case into the death of tourists was opened on February 6. This means that someone reported that the tourists had died. Although, this person could not have been Zolotarev, but Sasha Kolevatov. There is almost no debate about it on websites. And Sasha was also a leader of tourist trips and had the qualities of a leader.

7. Put forward versions, do not discard the facts.
But no matter what versions we consider, we must not forget about the main fact that stirred up and intrigued the public. And, ultimately, I was not left indifferent to that old story. The faces of the dead were unnaturally orange. On the Internet you will find disputes and forums regarding the name of the color. The skin color of the dead was given to me as a child and it was orange, not brown or burgundy-red. Most likely, everyone had this skin color, but it was the first five tourists found and buried that attracted the attention of the public (a large number of people).
On the Internet you will find many different opinions about the skin color of the dead, saying that search engines and people who came to the funeral could not correctly describe the color of the skin because they did not deal with frozen people, did not have experience, and the skin color of a frozen person might seem unnatural to them, but in fact, this is natural and normal, and it’s not a matter of poisoning or radiation. But I think that on the contrary, among those who came to the funeral there were people who were well acquainted with what frozen people look like, it was they who were surprised by the unnatural color of their skin, and so surprised that 17 years later, in the story told to me, this was the most important and frightening fact.

There are several stories similar to this one. The story of the Korovina tour group (the tragedy on Khamar-Daban), where 6 people died and only one girl survived. In March 1963, a group of the Moscow city tourist club “Spartak” passed the Chivruay-Lada pass in the opposite direction - from Umbozero to Seydozero (everyone survived). Sergei Sogrin’s group also found itself in a “cold” critical situation in the Subpolar Urals. As a result of a stove fire at night, part of their tent burned down; the group lost their home at night (everyone remained alive).

8. New finds.
I am constantly interested in new ideas on a topic. I see how people explore and find new ways to develop the investigation, how new facts arise, inconsistencies are found, new questions are born.
We found a document that says that during the search operations there was not one tent, but several. The document says tents. It is also possible that extra people were found. They said that Dyatlov dragged his wife on himself, and her arms and legs were broken. Kolmogorova and Dyatlov were found in different places. Student Nikitin is also buried next to the Dyatlov group.
Researchers find oddities in photographs of those involved in the case. I can attribute the oddities to the poor quality of the photographs, but in some cases I agree with the researchers.

9. Non-standard versions.
Why do seemingly delusional versions arise? Because there is nothing to explain the injuries of three tourists (multiple fractures).
While watching films, I came across non-standard ideas that talked about experiments on people. An American film about the Dyatlov group touches on this topic. Everyone who has seen the film talks about the stupidity of the storyline. I do not think so. I was a reader and the first science fiction works did not seem so fantastic to me: “The Head of Professor Dowell” (1925), “Amphibian Man” (1927), “Heart of a Dog” (1925). Do you know what these works were about? They were about human experiments. The main part of the storyline was built on the fact that human-animal hybrids ran away from the experimenter and lived their lives as they wanted.
No science fiction is born out of nowhere, a person is not capable of inventing anything on his own, I know that for sure. Experiments on people were carried out in concentration camps during the Second World War, and then carried out in the USSR, but were classified. If you are interested in this topic, you will find articles about experiments on people in the Gulag camps (not for the faint of heart, I watched the video, I was shocked by what I saw). It is precisely these experiments that the American film talks about. This film says that the Dyatlov group stumbled upon a secret base where such experiments were carried out. Nonsense? Don't tell me. The Americans put forward a very bold version (and perhaps they knew more than we do). This is not an anomalous version, not parallel worlds, not fairy-tale elves and giants. These were experiments on connecting a person and an animal (monkey), the severed head of a dog lived connected to devices with blood circulation, one dog was sewn to another, the corpses of dead people were revived. I don’t want to believe in such versions; it would be better if they were blown away by the wind, and then thrown and thrown around the mountain until everyone died.
Where is the base where the tourists snuck in? In Mount Otorten. And not at the Dyatlov Pass. That’s where no one is looking, that’s where you need to go and look.

10. Dramatization.
And the latest version - everything connected with the Dyatlov case is a dramatization. In a country where people were imprisoned for collecting ears of corn from the field, people could be killed for a small crime, or because of the suspicion that they had done something that threatened the disclosure of state secrets. And then, when popular unrest began, they decided to stage the freezing. Back then, the people who were doing this didn’t try very hard. That’s why there are so many inconsistencies in the case: mixed up clothes, strange position of the corpses, lack of wounds on the feet, although they ran almost barefoot along the kurumniks, it’s unclear how they made the flooring when there was only one knife, what they used to dig up the snow to make a windward place, complete leapfrog with the dates . The series of inconsistencies is reinforced by woodpecker experts, fueling interest in the matter.
This business is an endless source of income. Thousands of articles, television programs, videos.

I think that the search for the missing tourists was carried out on such a large scale and was classified because Georgy Krivonischenko was an engineer at a sensitive facility in the Chelyabinsk region, where they worked with plutonium, a substance intended for the creation of nuclear weapons. Rustem Slobodin also worked there. It was assumed that the young people wanted to fly abroad and sell the secrets of the enterprise.
The more I read, the more mysterious this story becomes. The more questions. After all, they deliberately confuse us, and all important documents were removed from the case. And although these may be coincidences, there are too many of them in such a strange, complicated case. And the existence of radioactive things is an irrefutable fact, things that, for unknown reasons, were included in that campaign, but it is clear that if they were prepared for transfer, they were never transferred.
In my reasoning, I do not want to hurt their memory, or somehow humiliate or elevate any of them.
Blessed memory to all those who died on that fateful day, may they rest in peace. Happy memory to all tourists who died from avalanches and other natural phenomena.

Many terrible, inexplicable and mysterious stories are known to mankind. One of these chilling tragedies occurred in the middle of the last century in the USSR, in the Urals. The tragedy known as the “death of the Dyatlov group.”
In 1959, in the last days of January, a group of nine tourist skiers set off on a previously planned hike in the north of the Sverdlovsk region with the subsequent goal of climbing the Oiko-Chakur and Otorten mountains. None of them returned back. Searchers found an empty tent on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl, and then the bodies of all the participants in the hike. The young people were undressed, brutally mutilated and were located at a distance of one and a half kilometers from the tent.
Back in 1959, investigators trying to find out the circumstances and cause of the death of Dyatlov’s tour group were faced with a huge number of inexplicable and strange facts. The investigation materials were later confiscated and classified. The tragedy was prohibited from being covered in the media, and the facts available to the investigation were prohibited from being widely publicized. And only in 1989 the secrecy was lifted, but only partially. The official version is as follows: “The death of Dyatlov’s group occurred as a result of an avalanche or other irresistible natural force.” There are several unofficial versions of the death of the Dyatlov group - from the version that the tourists became victims of special services to various paranormal versions.

BEGINNING OF THE STORY

So, January 23, 1959 a group of young people - members of the tourist club of the Ural Polytechnic Institute of the city of Sverdlovsk - went on a ski trip across the Northern Urals.
Initially the group consisted of ten people - eight young men and two girls. Six of them were UPI students, three were graduates of the same educational institution. And the tenth was the club instructor - the oldest of all in age. The group was led by Igor Dyatlov, an experienced tourist, 5th year student at UPI.

Despite the youth of all members of the group, they were already experienced tourists-skiers, experienced and hardy people. Here are their names:
Dyatlov Igor, 23 years old,
Kolmogorova Zinaida, 22 years old,
Slobodin Rustem, 23 years old,
Doroshenko Yuri, 21 years old,
Krivonischenko Yuri, 23 years old,
Thibault-Brignolle Nikolay, 24 years old,
Dubinina Lyudmila, 20 years old,
Kolevatov Alexander, 24 years old,
Zolotarev Semyon Alekseevich, 37 years old,
Yudin Yuri, born in 1937

Yuri Yudin is the only member of the Dyatlov expedition to survive. Just before entering the active part of the route, he fell ill and was forced to stay in a small taiga village, parting with his friends just a couple of days before their death.
The ski trip that Dyatlov’s detachment went on was timed to coincide with the upcoming 21st Congress of the CPSU. It belonged to the third (highest) category of difficulty according to the classification of sports hiking trips in force at that time. The goal of the hike is to ski a huge distance of almost 350 km through the forests and mountains of the Northern Urals in 16 days. At the end of which, climb the mountains Oiko-Chakur and Otorten. On Mount Otorten (translation from Mansi - “don’t go there”), Dyatlov’s group intended, according to established tradition, to leave their beacon and an Information Letter - a reminder.

THE MISSING EXPEDITION

According to a pre-developed plan, Dyatlov’s detachment was supposed to reach the final point of its route – the village of Vizhay – on February 12, from where it would send a telegram to the tourist club. And on February 15, the guys were already waiting at home - in Sverdlovsk. The tourists did not show up on the appointed days, so it was decided to start searching.
On February 22, a search party was sent along the group’s route. Search and rescue operations began.
On February 26, in the area of ​​an unnamed pass (later named after Dyatlov), on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (Kholat Syakhyl), a tent of tourists was discovered under a layer of snow. Right here, 1st of February the group stood up for their last night. One of the walls of the tent, facing down the slope, was cut from the inside in several places, although the entrance to the tent was open. A fur jacket was stuck in one of the cuts. All things, shoes, food, documents and maps - everything was in place. Everything except the people themselves.

SCARY FINDS

The next day, February 27, 1500m from the tent, the first bodies were found - Krivonischenko and Doroshenko. The bodies had numerous injuries and burns. A little further they found the body of Igor Dyatlov. And there are also wounds and abrasions on him. Three hundred meters from Dyatlov’s body was Kolmogorova’s body. On March 5, the body of R. Slobodin was found. He was less than two hundred meters from the bodies of Dyatlov and Kolmogorova. The body color of these three guys was reddish-purple. Further, as a result of phased searches from February to May, the remaining four bodies were found.
All nine bodies found had terrible injuries and wounds. Experts have established that these injuries were received by the boys while they were still alive, but what caused them is not clear. The appearance of radioactive substances on some parts of the clothes of the dead children also remained a mystery.

MANY VERSIONS

The many incomprehensible, mysterious facts of this tragedy have haunted researchers for more than fifty years and are the cause of the most controversial versions of the death of the Dyatlov group. Lots of unanswered questions:
The nature of the terrible injuries received by the tourists is unclear, as is the orange-red color of the skin of several of the bodies found.
It is unclear the reason that forced the tourists to leave the tent in a hurry, leaving all their belongings and food behind.
How did the tourists’ tent end up in this exact place, since the hike plan did not include entering Mount Kholatchakhl?
Whose, found near the tent, traces of shoes with heels (all tourists were found barefoot) and things that did not belong to the expedition - an extra pair of skis, a fabric belt, an ebonite sheath, a piece of a ski.
Why were criminal proceedings started on 02/06/1959 - earlier than search activities?
There are a considerable number of volunteers trying to understand the details of the case. But it is still not possible to find out the whole truth. But the facts available today are quite enough to excite minds and lead to the most fantastic versions of the death of the Dyatlov group.
None of us will most likely ever be able to fully understand all the circumstances of the death of the Dyatlov group and its true causes.

: lomov_andrey wrote - It’s also interesting to read about the Dyatlov Pass. The topic is dark and I was even wondering if you could find something previously unknown, I don’t want to wait a month, so if I may ask a question from me: The Mystery of the Dyatlov Pass.

Having looked at how many of these versions there are, I decided that let’s collect here very briefly the maximum number of them. Where possible, links will lead to their more expanded interpretation. And you are required to choose the most likely version in your opinion in the comments (if you are reading this on infoglaz.rf) or by voting at the end of the post (if you are reading this on LiveJournal). In the meantime, I’ll briefly tell you what happened at the pass:

On January 23, 1959, the group went on a ski trip in the north of the Sverdlovsk region. The group was led by experienced tourist Igor Dyatlov. The group left for the starting point of the route in full force, but Yuri Yudin was forced to return due to pain in his leg. On February 1, 1959, the group stopped for the night on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (Kholat-Syahl, translated from Mansi - “Mountain of the Dead”) or peak “1079” (although on later maps its height is given as 1096.7 m), near an unnamed pass (later called Dyatlov Pass).

On February 12, the group had to reach the final point of the route - the village of Vizhay and send a telegram to the institute sports club. There is a lot of testimony from participants in search operations and UPI tourists that with Yu. Yudin leaving the route, the group postponed the deadline to February 15. The telegram was not sent either on the 12th or 15th February.

An advanced search group was sent to Ivdel on February 20 to organize searches from the air. Search and rescue work began on February 22, with the dispatch of several search teams formed from students and UPI employees who had tourist and mountaineering experience. A young Sverdlovsk journalist, Yu.E., also took part in the search. Yarovoy, who later published a story about these events. On February 26, a search group led by B. Slobtsov found an empty tent with a wall cut from the inside, facing down the slope. There was equipment left in the tent, as well as shoes and outerwear for some of the tourists.

This is how the Dyatlovites’ tent was seen during investigative actions.

On February 27, the day after the discovery of the tent, all forces were pulled into the search area, and a search headquarters was formed. Yevgeny Polikarpovich Maslennikov, Master of Sports of the USSR in Tourism, was appointed head of the search, and Colonel Georgy Semenovich Ortyukov, a teacher at the military department of the UPI, was appointed chief of staff. On the same day, one and a half kilometers from the tent and 280 m down the slope, next to traces of a fire, the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko were discovered. They were stripped down to their underwear. 300 meters away, up the slope and in the direction of the tent, lay the body of Igor Dyatlov. 180 meters from him, higher up the slope, they found the body of Rustem Slobodin, and 150 meters from Slobodin, even higher, of Zina Kolmogorova. There were no signs of violence on the corpses; all people died from hypothermia. Slobodin had a traumatic brain injury, which could be accompanied by repeated loss of consciousness and contributed to freezing.

The search took place in several stages from February to May. On May 4, 75 meters from the fire, under a four-meter layer of snow, in the bed of a stream that had already begun to melt, the corpses of Lyudmila Dubinina, Alexander Zolotarev, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolle and Alexander Kolevatov were found. Three had serious injuries: Dubinina and Zolotarev had broken ribs, Thibault-Brignolle had a severe traumatic brain injury. Kolevatov did not have any serious injuries, except for damage to his head caused by the avalanche probe used to search for bodies. Thus, the search work ended with the discovery of the bodies of all participants in the hike.

It was found that the death of all group members occurred on the night of February 1-2. Despite the efforts of search engines, the full picture of the incident was never established. It remains unclear what really happened to the group that night, why they left the tent, how they acted next, under what circumstances the four tourists were injured and how it happened that no one survived.

Official investigation

The official investigation was opened by the prosecutor of the Ivdel region Tempalov upon the discovery of the found corpses on February 28, 1959, was conducted for two months, then was extended for another month and was closed on May 28, 1959 by a resolution to terminate the criminal case, which states that the group , apparently, faced some dangerous circumstances in which there were no signs of a crime, and was unable to successfully resist them, as a result of which she died. The investigation, first of all, studied the circumstances of the case regarding the possibility of any other people being in the area of ​​the group’s death at the time of the events. Versions of a deliberate attack on the group (by Mansi, escaped prisoners or anyone else) were checked. The task of fully clarifying the circumstances of the death of the group, apparently, was not set at all, since from the point of view of the goals of the investigation (making a decision on the existence of a crime), this was not of decisive importance.

Based on the results of the investigation, organizational conclusions were made regarding a number of tourism leaders in UPI, since their actions showed insufficient attention to organizing and ensuring the safety of amateur (the term “sports” was not yet used at that time) tourism.

The full materials of the case have never been published. They were available to a limited extent to the Yekaterinburg Regional Newspaper journalist Anatoly Gushchin, who quoted some of them in his documentary story “The Price of State Secrets 9 Lives.” According to Gushchin, the first investigator was appointed a young specialist V.I. Korotaev from the Ivdel prosecutor’s office. He began to develop a version of the murder of tourists and was removed from the case, as management demanded that the event be presented as an accident. The prosecutor-criminologist of the Sverdlovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office Ivanov L.I. was appointed as the investigator. It should be noted that information about Korotaev's role in the investigation is provided by Gushchin without any documentary evidence. The investigation materials of V.I. Korotaev are not included in the archival criminal case, which consists of one volume, an album and a package marked “Top Secret”. According to Yu. E. Yudin, who was familiarized with the case, it contains technical correspondence between the prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region and the prosecutor's office of the RSFSR, which became familiar with the case in the order of prosecutorial supervision.

According to some commentators, the investigation did not study the facts fully enough to clearly classify the incident as a crime or an accident. In particular, the identity of some of the items found and the reasons for their appearance in the area of ​​the group’s death were not established (a scabbard, a soldier’s winding and other items of unknown origin were found). Later it turned out that the ebonite sheath found near the cedar matched A. Kolevatov’s knife (a number of sources mention a second sheath near the tent). It has not been determined what kind of tool was used to cut down or cut off the trunks of the flooring found near the stream, an examination has not been carried out to establish an avalanche, an examination of traces of biological tissue on a cedar trunk, presumably left by tourists, an examination of Thibault-Brignolle’s skull injuries with an answer to the question: what object could cause these fractures and whether they were of artificial origin. The source of radioactivity in some items of clothing is vaguely identified. It remains unclear whether a biochemical examination was carried out on the blood and biosamples of the bodies of tourists, which (according to Gushchin) were selected and packaged by Korotaev in Ivdel. There are no resolutions in the case recognizing the relatives of the deceased tourists as victims, and therefore their legal representatives cannot exercise their rights to participate in a new investigation of the criminal case, if there are legal justifications for it.

In 1990, Ivanov L.I., who conducted the investigation, published an article “The Mystery of Fireballs” in the newspaper “Kustanayskaya Pravda”, in which he stated that the case was closed at the request of the authorities, and the real reason for the death of the group was hidden: “... Everyone was told, that the tourists found themselves in an extreme situation and froze... ...However, this was not true. The true reasons for the death of people were hidden from the people, and only a few knew these reasons: the former first secretary of the regional committee A.P. Kirilenko, the second secretary of the regional committee A.F. Eshtokin, the regional prosecutor N.I. Klimov and the author of these lines, who were investigating the case ..." In the same article, L.I. Ivanov suggested that a UFO could have been the cause of the deaths of tourists. Some researchers suggest that the mystical bias that prevailed in the press of the 90s, and references to such artifacts, indicate the impossibility of the investigation to clearly and in detail explain the causes of the tragedy due to imperfect knowledge, both on the part of the investigators and in the scientific community of that time.

There are more than twenty versions of why the Dyatlov group died, from everyday to fantastic

And now the versions:

1. Quarrel between tourists
This version was not accepted as serious by any of the tourists who had experience close to the experience of the Dyatlov group, not to mention the greater one, which the overwhelming majority of tourists have above the 1st category according to the modern classification. Due to the specific nature of training in tourism as a sport, potential conflicts are eliminated already at the stage of preliminary training. The Dyatlov group was similar and well prepared by the standards of that time, so a conflict that led to an emergency development of events was excluded under any circumstances. It is possible to assume the development of events by analogy with what could happen in a group of young, difficult-to-educate teenagers only from the position of an ordinary person who has no idea about the traditions and specifics of sports tourism. Moreover, characteristic of the youth environment of the 1950s.

3. Avalanche.
The version suggests that an avalanche hit the tent, the tent collapsed under the load of snow, the tourists cut the wall when evacuating from it, after which it became impossible to stay in the tent until the morning. Their further actions, due to the onset of hypothermia, were not entirely adequate, which ultimately led to death. It was also suggested that the severe injuries received by some of the tourists were caused by the avalanche.

4. Exposure to infrasound.
Infrasound can occur when an air object flies low above the ground, as well as as a result of resonance in natural cavities or other natural objects under the action of wind, or when it flows around solid objects, due to the occurrence of aeroelastic vibrations. Under the influence of infrasound, the tourists experienced an attack of uncontrollable fear, which explains their flight.
Some expeditions that visited this area noted an unusual condition that may be characteristic of exposure to infrasound. Mansi legends also contain references to oddities that can also be interpreted in a similar way.

5. Ball lightning.
As a variant of a natural phenomenon that frightened tourists and thus initiated further events, ball lightning is no better or worse than any other assumption, but this version also suffers from the lack of direct evidence. As well as the absence of any statistics on the occurrence of CMM in winter in Northern latitudes.

6. Attack of escaped prisoners.
The investigation inquired about nearby correctional facilities and received a response that no prisoner escapes were detected during the period of interest. In winter, escapes in the Northern Urals region are problematic due to the severity of natural conditions and the inability to move outside of permanent roads. In addition, this version is contradicted by the fact that all things, money, valuables, food and alcohol remained untouched.

7. Death at the hands of Mansi

“Kholat-Syakhyl, mountain (1079 m) on the watershed ridge between the upper reaches of the Lozva and its tributary Auspiya, 15 km southeast of Otorten. Mansi “Kholat” - “dead people”, that is, Kholat-Syakhyl - mountain of the dead. There is a legend that nine Mansi once died on this peak. Sometimes they add that this happened during the Great Flood. According to another version, during the flood, hot water flooded everything around, except for a place on the top of the mountain, sufficient for a person to lie down. But Mansi, who found refuge here, died. Hence the name of the mountain..."
However, despite this, neither Mount Otorten nor Kholat-Syakhyl are sacred among the Mansi.

Or a conflict with hunters:

The first suspects were local Mansi hunters. According to investigators, they quarreled with tourists and attacked them. Some were seriously injured, others managed to escape and then died from hypothermia. Several Mansi were arrested, but they categorically denied their guilt. It is not known what their fate would have been (the law enforcement agencies of those years mastered the art of obtaining recognition to perfection), but the examination established that the cuts on the tourists’ tent were made not from the outside, but from the inside. It was not the attackers who were “breaking” into the tent, but the tourists themselves were trying to get out of it. In addition, no extraneous traces were found around the tent; the supplies remained untouched (and they were of considerable value to the Mansi). Therefore, the hunters had to be released.

8. Secret weapon tests - one of the most popular versions.
It has been suggested that the tourists were hit by some kind of test weapon, the impact of which provoked the flight, and, possibly, directly contributed to the death of people. The damaging factors mentioned were vapors of rocket fuel components, a sodium cloud from a specially equipped rocket, and a blast wave, the action of which explains the injuries. Excessive radioactivity in the clothing of some tourists, recorded by the investigation, is cited as confirmation.

Or for example a nuclear weapons test:

Having dealt with the enemy’s machinations, let’s consider the version of the secret test of nuclear weapons in the area where the Dyatlov group was located (this is how they try to explain the traces of radiation on the clothes of the victims). Alas, from October 1958 to September 1961, the USSR did not conduct any nuclear explosions, observing the Soviet-American agreement on a moratorium on such tests. Both we and the Americans carefully monitored the observance of “nuclear silence.” In addition, during an atomic explosion, traces of radiation would have been on all members of the group, but the examination recorded radioactivity only on the clothes of three tourists. Some “experts” explain the unnatural orange-red color of the skin and clothing of the deceased by the fall of a Soviet R-7 ballistic missile in the Dyatlov group’s campsite: it supposedly frightened the tourists, and the fuel vapors that ended up on the clothes and skin caused such a strange reaction. But rocket fuel does not “color” a person, but kills instantly. Tourists would have died near their tent. In addition, as the investigation established, no rocket launches were carried out from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the period from January 25 to February 5, 1959.

9. UFO.
The version is purely speculative, it is based on observations of certain luminous objects made at another time, but there is no evidence of the group meeting with such an object.

10. Bigfoot.
The version of the appearance of a “bigfoot” (a relict hominoid) near the tent, at first glance, explains both the stampede of tourists and the nature of the injuries - according to Mikhail Trakhtengerts, a member of the board of the Russian association of cryptozoologists, “as if someone had hugged them very tightly " The traces, the edges of which would already be fuzzy by the time the search work began, could simply be mistaken for blows or protruding stones sprinkled with snow. In addition, the search group was primarily looking for traces of people, and such atypical prints could simply not have been paid attention to.

11. Dwarfs from the continent of Arctida, Descendants of the ancient Aryans and so on in the same spirit.
The version is that the group came across some artifacts belonging to representatives of certain legendary peoples and sects, carefully hiding from people, or met with them themselves and was destroyed to preserve the secret. No unambiguously interpreted confirmation of this version (as well as evidence of the existence of these peoples or sects) is provided.

12. Zolotarev’s secret service background (Efim Saturday’s version).

He was forced to move from place to place, hiding from those who had reason to take revenge on him (former colleagues or victims of SMERSH). Zolotarev could not turn to the authorities for help, since he had a “secret” that he did not want to share. This “secret” was the goal of Zolotarev’s pursuers. Semyon moved further and further until he ended up in the Urals.

13. Galka’s version of the crash of a military transport plane
In a nutshell, the fuel carrier aircraft made an emergency release of cargo, presumably methanol (or itself collapsed in the air). Methanol caused sliding, unusually mobile landslides, and then, possibly, an avalanche.

14. This is the work of the KGB.

There are a lot of hidden facts, evidence, alterations of information and ignoring certain facts.

15. Military poachers

It is our military that has long been the most unpunished of all possible poachers. Try to catch up with a combat helicopter yourself on a motorcycle or a regular motor boat. At the same time, often, shooting is carried out at everything “that moves,” and military personnel sometimes do not think about the problem of collecting their hunting trophies at all.

16. Crime, gold.

In the village of 2nd Severny (the last settlement), still with Yudin, who had left the group, they visited a warehouse for geological samples. They took several stones with them. Yudin took some (or all?) with him in his backpack. From Kolmogorova’s diary: “I took several samples. This was the first time I saw this rock after drilling. There is a lot of chalcopyrite and pyrite here.” Several sources note that rumors among the “locals” during the search and investigation included: “The guys’ backpacks were stuffed with gold.” In principle, some samples could look like gold. They could also be radioactive to one degree or another. Maybe they were looking for these stones (even if they were taken by tourists by mistake?)

17. Political, anti-party and anti-Soviet coloring

Ill-fated "magical power piece of paper", which gave official status to Dyatlov’s group of tourists, with all the ensuing consequences, can be compared to a plane ticket doomed to inevitable death with all its passengers.
If the Dyatlovites had gone as ordinary wild tourists along with the Blinovites, then both episodes with the participation of the police could have seriously influenced the behavior of Yura Krivonischenko, and even in the village. Vizhay there would be no special need to stop, and if we had to spend the night there, we would have spent the night “in the same club where we were 2 years ago”. They would not have to communicate with the leadership of the colony, thereby actually worsening their living conditions in the village. Vizhay. The Dyatlovites would not have had to advertise the purpose of their campaign in the village of Vizhay, timed to coincide with the beginning of the 21st Congress of the CPSU...

18. The mysterious death of members of the Dyatlov group was associated with airborne electric discharge explosions of fragments of a small comet.

Quite quickly I identified about a dozen witnesses who said that on the day the students were killed, a balloon flew by. Witnesses: Mansi Anyamov, Sanbindalov, Kurikov - not only described him, but also drew him (these drawings were later removed from the case). All these materials were soon requested by Moscow...

19. A slightly modified version of the thunderstorm based on the fact that it is lightning discharges that are a direct consequence of the death of the group, and not temperature or a snowstorm.

20 The prisoners escaped and had to be either captured or destroyed.

Fishing in the forest thickets in winter? Pointless. Destroy - with what.
No, not cruise missiles, of course, and not vacuum bombs. Gases were used. Most likely a nerve agent.

Or like this:

One version of conspiracy theorists: the Dyatlov group was liquidated by a special unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was pursuing the escaped prisoners (it must be said that there were indeed quite a few “zones” in the northern Urals). At night, special forces encountered tourists in the forest, mistook them for “prisoners” and killed them. At the same time, for some reason the mysterious special forces did not use either bladed weapons or firearms: there were no stab or bullet wounds on the bodies of the victims. In addition, it is known that in the 50s. escaped prisoners at night in the wilderness were not usually pursued - the risk was too great. They handed over directions to the authorities in the nearest settlements and waited: you couldn’t last long in the forest without supplies; willy-nilly, the fugitives had to go to “civilization.” And most importantly! Investigators requested information about escapes of “prisoners” from the surrounding “zones.” It turned out that there were no escapes at the end of January - beginning of February. Therefore, there was no one for the special forces to catch on Kholat-Syakhyl.

21. "Controlled delivery"

And here is the most “exotic” version: it turns out that the Dyatlov group was liquidated... by foreign agents! Why? To disrupt the KGB operation: after all, the student tour was only a cover for the “controlled supply” of radioactive clothing to enemy agents. The explanations for this amazing theory are not without wit. It is known that investigators found traces of a radioactive substance on the clothes of the three dead tourists. Conspiracy theorists connected this fact with the biography of one of the victims, Georgy Krivonischenko. He worked in the closed city of nuclear scientists Ozersk (Chelyabinsk-40), where plutonium for atomic bombs was produced. Samples of radioactive clothing provided invaluable information for foreign intelligence. Krivonischenko, who worked for the KGB, was supposed to meet with enemy agents at Mount Kholat-Syakhyl and hand over radioactive “material” to them. But Krivonischenko made a mistake on something, and then the enemy agents, covering their tracks, destroyed the entire Dyatlov group. The killers acted in a sophisticated manner: threatening with weapons, but not using them (they didn’t want to leave traces), they drove the young people out of the tent into the cold without shoes, to certain death. The saboteurs waited for some time, then followed in the footsteps of the group and brutally finished off those who were not frozen. Thriller, and nothing more! Now let's think about it. How could the KGB officers plan a “controlled delivery” in a remote area that was not controlled? Where they could neither observe the operation nor protect their agent? Absurd. And where did the spies even come from among the Ural forests, where was their base? Only the invisible man will not “show up” in small surrounding villages: their residents know each other by sight and immediately pay attention to strangers. Why did the adversaries, who had planned a clever staging of the death of tourists from hypothermia, suddenly seem to go mad and begin to torture their victims - breaking ribs, tearing out tongues, eyes? And how did these invisible maniacs manage to escape the persecution of the omnipresent KGB? Conspiracy theorists have no answer to all these questions.

Rakitin's version

22. Meteorite

The forensic medical examination, examining the nature of the injuries inflicted on the group members, concluded that they were “very similar to injuries caused by an air blast wave.” While examining the area, investigators found traces of fire on some trees. It seemed as if some unknown force was selectively influencing both the dead people and the trees. At the end of the 1920s. Scientists were able to assess the consequences of such a natural phenomenon. This happened in the area where the Tunguska meteorite fell. According to the recollections of the participants of that expedition, the heavily burnt trees at the epicenter of the explosion could have been located next to the survivors. Scientists could not logically explain such a strange “selectivity” of the flame. Investigators in the Dyatlov group’s case were also unable to find out all the details: on May 28, 1959, a command came from “from above” to close the case, classify all materials and hand them over to a special archive. The final conclusion of the investigation turned out to be very vague: “It should be assumed that the cause of the death of tourists was a natural force that people were not able to overcome.”

23. Poisoning with methyl alcohol.
The group had 2 flasks with ethyl alcohol, which were found unopened. No other alcohol-containing objects or traces of them were found.

24. Meeting with a bear.
According to the recollections of people who knew Dyatlov, he had experience encountering wild animals on a hike and knew how to act in such situations, so it is unlikely that such an attack would have led to the escape of the group. In addition, no traces of a large predator being in the area, nor signs of an attack on the bodies of already frozen tourists, were found. This version is also contradicted by the fact that several members of the group, judging by the position of the bodies, tried to return to the abandoned tent - no one would do this in the dark, when it is impossible to be sure that the animal has already left.

What other versions have I missed?

Which version do you think is more likely?

5 (4.2 % )

5 (4.2 % )

17 (14.4 % )

6 (5.1 % )

The death of a tourist group consisting mainly of students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (later the name “Dyatlov’s group” was assigned to it) is certainly one of the most stunning tragedies of the 20th century. There were nine of them, they died in a deserted region of the Northern Urals in February 1959. The case opened in the wake of the mysterious death was declassified (but only partially) in 1989. Some materials were removed from it and have not been made public to this day. Many circumstances surrounding the death of the nine tourists remain unexplained...

Chronology of events before death

So, on January 23, 1959, a tourist group set out from Sverdlovsk on a ski trip. The group was led by a tourist with extensive experience, Igor Dyatlov. The hike had the third category of difficulty (according to the classification of the fifties) and was dedicated to the Twenty-First Congress of the CPSU. As part of it, the participants of the trip pledged to ski at least three hundred kilometers in the northern part of the Sverdlovsk region and climb the peaks of Oika-Chakur and Otorten.

Here is the list of participants in this tour group:

1. Igor Dyatlov, 5th year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering;
2. Rustem Slobodin, engineer of Sverdlovsk NIICHIMMASH;
3. Yuri Doroshenko, 4th year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering;
4. Georgy Krivonischenko, graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, engineer at Mayak Production Association;
5. Zinaida Kolmogorova, 5th year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering;
6. Nikolay Thibault-Brignolle, graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, engineer;
7. Lyudmila Dubinina, 4th year student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering;
8. Semyon Zolotarev, graduate of the Institute of Physical Education of the Belarusian SSR, instructor at the camp site;
9. Alexander Kolevatov, 4th year student of the Faculty of Physics and Technology;
10. Yuri Yudin, 4th year student of the Faculty of Engineering and Economics.

There is no mistake, there were initially ten tourists. They traveled by train from Sverdlovsk to Serov on January 23. Then we got to Ivdel, then by bus to the village of Vizhay.

On the evening of January 26, in Vizhay, they boarded a passing truck to the village of the 41st quarter. In the morning, January 27, having uncovered their skis, the group continued the route, one might say, lightly. The fact is that the head of the logging site asked a local grandfather-coachman with a horse to help the Dyatlovites, and they got the opportunity to load their heavy luggage into the sleigh.

So the group reached the 2nd Northern mine, which was once part of Ivdellag. Here the Dyatlovites stopped for the night in one of the more or less intact huts. On the morning of January 28, one of the group members, Yuri Yudin, had an inflamed sciatic nerve, his leg hurt, and he realized that he would not be able to continue the hike. It was decided that the group would continue the route without him. Yudin, having said goodbye to everyone and giving his comrades his food and some warm clothes, returned back to the village. So there are nine of them left.

Yuri Yudin fell ill and left the route. Unlike his comrades, he lived to a ripe old age (died in 2013)

It is also known that when saying goodbye, Dyatlov asked Yudin to tell everyone in the tourist club that the group could return two or three days later (the weather and snow conditions were simply not conducive to rapid progress along the route). In general, it was initially planned that the group would return to Vizhay by February 12. From there Dyatlov was going to send a telegram saying that the campaign was completed.

But on February 12, the group did not appear at the final destination of the route. No one got in touch in the following days.

By the way, it was Yudin who was the first to identify the personal belongings of his comrades, and he also identified the bodies of Dyatlov and Slobodin. But he still took almost no active part in the further investigation of the tragedy, which lasted for decades.

What happened after the group left the second Northern mine is known only from the surviving diaries and photographs of the participants in the hike. On February 1, 1959, the group spent the night on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (translated from Mansi as “dead mountain” or “mountain of the dead”), not far from the then unnamed pass. Among the materials found later and developed during the investigation, there is a photo of them setting up a tent on the mountainside, the indicated time is around 17:00.

On the night of February 1-2 (although there are those who believe that the tourists actually died later, in the period from February 2 to 4, but we will stick to the more popular chronology) something terrible happened on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl - none of the nine tourists survived this night.

Discovery of the Dyatlov group's tent

On February 22, 1959, search and rescue activities began, and a search party was sent along the route to these deserted places.

On February 26, a tent covered with snow was discovered on the slope of Kholatchakhl. The back triangular wall of the tent was cut from the inside.

After the tent was dug up, many of the guys’ belongings were found there. At the entrance there was a homemade stove and buckets, and a little further away there were several cameras. Also found here were backpacks, documents and geographical maps, diaries of hike participants, and a bank with banknotes. Groceries and several pairs of shoes lay closer to the opposite side. Interesting finds also include an ice ax found inside the tent and a flashlight found outside on the slope of the tent. There were no people in the tent.

Traces around the tent indicated that the entire Dyatlov group had left the tent, most likely through the cuts, and not through the main entrance. People ran out into the extreme cold (it was about -30 degrees) without shoes and poorly dressed. They ran about twenty meters away from the tent. Then the Dyatlovites, in a dense row, a kind of line, moved down the slope. Moreover, they did not run away, but walked away with the most ordinary steps. Searchers noticed protruding mounds of snow - this is what human footprints look like when there is a big snowstorm in the area. After about half a kilometer along the slope, the tracks were lost...

Detection of corpses

The next day, February 27, on the descent towards the Lozva River, approximately 1,500 meters from the tent and 280 meters down the slope, the first dead were found - Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko. Both were only in their underwear. It turned out that Doroshenko’s foot and hair near his temple were burned, and Krivonischenko had a burn on his left leg and left foot. There was a fire pit near the corpses.

Later, about 300 meters from them, Igor Dyatlov was discovered dead. He was slightly covered with snow, lay on his back, hugging a birch trunk with his hand. Dyatlov was wearing ski pants, a sweater, a sleeveless fur vest, and a cowboy jacket. On the left and right feet there are different socks, on one - woolen, on the other - cotton. The body of Zinaida Kolmogorova was found 330 meters from the group leader. The girl was also in warm clothes, but completely barefoot.

In March, 180 meters from Kolmogorova, the body of Rustem Slobodin was discovered under a layer of snow. He was dressed quite warmly, with a felt boot on his right foot, worn over four pairs of socks (the second felt boot remained in the tent). A characteristic feature of the last three tourists found was the shade of the skin: according to search engines - red-orange, in forensic documents - crimson.

The other members of the group were found only in May, when the snow began to melt. Some small finds led searchers to the creek hollow. Using probes, they found and dug out a flooring of fifteen trees under the snow, but there were no people on it. They were found even lower, directly next to the stream.

At the same time, some of the bodies located here had terrible injuries, apparently received during life. Dubinina and Zolotarev had twelve ribs fractured. Later, an examination determined that these injuries could only be caused by a powerful blow, similar to a fall from a significant height. Dubinina and Zolotarev also had missing eyeballs - they were squeezed out or removed. On top of that, when Dubinina was discovered, she was missing her tongue and part of her lip. And Thibault-Brignolle’s temporal bone was fractured and, as it were, pressed inward.

Many of the deceased participants had watches on their hands, and, interestingly, they showed different times. And one more strange thing: during the examination it was discovered that some items of clothing (sweaters, trousers) emit radioactive radiation.

The whole picture of the tragedy was replete with oddities in the behavior of the Dyatlov group. It is not clear why they did not run away from the tent, but walked away from it at a normal pace. It is not clear why they needed to light a fire right next to a tall cedar tree in an open area and why they needed to break branches up to a height of five meters. How could they have received such terrible injuries? Why didn’t those who reached the stream and made sunbeds there survive, because even in the cold they could “hang on” until dawn? And the key question: what made the group leave the tent so quickly with practically no clothes, no shoes and no special equipment?

The funeral of the group members in Sverdlovsk took place from March to May. And on May 28, the investigator closed the case. The resolution stated that the cause of the death of the Dyatlovites was some irresistible elemental force - a very vague formula.

Main and most probable versions

Among the numerous versions of the death of the Dyatlovites, several main ones can be distinguished. These include the gathering of a “snow board”, an attack by prisoners who escaped from a colony, death at the hands of the Mansi, and the destruction of a group by the military or intelligence services. Some talk about a quarrel between tourists or voice versions about the impact of a powerful weapon that was allegedly being tested in the USSR at that time. Finally, there is a very specific (and conspiracy) version about “controlled delivery” - that supposedly in the mountains of the Northern Urals the Dyatlovites met with spies from another country. Each of these versions deserves a separate discussion.

Murder of Mansi

Initially, the local population of the Northern Urals - the Mansi - were suspected of the murder. More specifically, Mansi Anyamov, Kurikov, Sanbindalov and their relatives were suspected. But neither of them wanted to admit anything. They were rather scared themselves. Some Mansi said that they saw mysterious “fireballs” not far from the place where the tourists died. They not only described this phenomenon, but also sketched it. Subsequently, these sketches disappeared from the case somewhere.

Ultimately, suspicion against Mansi was lifted. The criminal case says that the Mansi, who live about a hundred kilometers from this place, are friendly towards Russians - they provide tourists with overnight accommodation, provide them with assistance, and so on. And in general, Mount Kholatchakhl is not a sacred place for the Mansi; on the contrary, representatives of this nation have always tried to avoid this peak. The slope where the group died in winter, according to the Mansi, is not very suitable for reindeer herding and hunting.

Quarrel between tourists, attack by prisoners or security forces-poachers

There is a version that the cause of the tragedy could have been a domestic quarrel or a drunken fight between participants in the hike over girls. This fight allegedly led to severe violent actions and subsequent tragedy. Experienced tourists reject this assumption. In particular, Vitaly Volovich, an expert on survival in extreme situations, spoke out against the version of internecine conflict.

As for the possibility of conflict with fugitive prisoners, this version also has drawbacks. It is not clear, for example, why the prisoners did not take money and valuables (in particular, cameras). In addition, the investigator of the Ivdel prosecutor’s office in those years, Vladimir Korotaev, says that there were no escapes during the period when the Dyatlovites died.

It is also suggested that the Dyatlovites met with officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (apparently, employees of Ivdellag) who were engaged in poaching. People in uniform, out of hooligan motives, some believe, attacked tourists, which led to their death from cold and injuries. The very fact of the attack was allegedly subsequently hidden.

Critics of this version insist that the surroundings of Mount Kholatchakhl are unsuitable for hunting in winter and therefore not very attractive for poachers. In addition, the possibility of completely concealing a clash between employees of certain special services and tourists is being questioned in the context of a large-scale investigation that has begun.

Avalanche version

This is one of the most developed versions. It was put forward in 1991 by Moses Axelrod, a participant in the search. Later she was supported by Masters of Sports (MS) in Tourism Evgeny Buyanov and Boris Slobtsov.

The meaning of the version is that an avalanche (“snow board”) fell on the tent. It crushed it with a significant load of snow, which caused the urgent evacuation of tourists without warm clothing and equipment, after which they died from the cold. It was also suggested that the serious injuries received by some tourists were the consequences of an avalanche.

Buyanov points out that the scene of the incident is classified as “areas with avalanches of recrystallized snow.” Based on the opinions of certain experts and citing relevant examples, the researcher writes that a relatively modest (no more than ten tons), but extremely dangerous collapse of compacted snow - the so-called “snow board” - could have landed on the tent of Dyatlov’s group. In Buyanov's version, the injuries of some tourists are explained by compression between the high-density snow mass and the hard bottom of the tent.

Opponents of this hypothesis point out that traces of the notorious “snow board” were not found, although experienced climbers were among the search participants. The “avalanche” origin of the serious injuries of three people is also rejected - because for some reason there are no traces of the impact of the avalanche on other members of the group or on fragile objects in the tent.

Finally, the departure of the Dyatlov group from the avalanche danger zone downwards, and not across the slope, is considered a grave mistake; experienced tourists could hardly make such a mistake.

"Controlled delivery"

The conspiracy version of Alexey Rakitin is very popular. According to this version, several members of the Dyatlov group were secret KGB officers. At the meeting, they were supposed to convey disinformation related to domestic nuclear technologies, as well as a radioactive sweater, to foreign (American) agents disguised as another tour group. But the foreign spies accidentally gave themselves away when they met, after which they decided to destroy all members of the Dyatlov group.

In the past, USSR intelligence officer Mikhail Lyubimov was skeptical about this version. He noted that Western intelligence services in the distant fifties really showed interest in the secrets of industrial enterprises in the Urals and carried out spies. But why transmit a radioactive sweater in such a deserted and remote area is absolutely not clear.

In addition, traces of radiation can be fully explained by the famous accident at the Mayak production facility in 1957. One of the Dyatlovites, Georgy Krivonischenko, participated in the liquidation of this accident.

Versions about the impact of certain weapons being tested

Some researchers believe that the Dyatlov group became a victim of some kind of weapon being tested, for example, a missile of a fundamentally new format. This allegedly provoked a hasty escape from the tent or even directly contributed to the death of people. The damaging factors include rocket fuel components, a fallen off rocket stage, a sodium cloud, the impact of a volumetric explosion, etc.

A journalist from Yekaterinburg, Anatoly Gushchin, expressed the version that the group became a victim of tests of a neutron bomb, after which, in order to maintain state secrets, the deaths of tourists were staged in natural conditions.

Some researchers also voiced a version about the influence of some psychotronic weapon on the psyche of tourists, as a result of which they temporarily lost their minds and began to maim each other. Here you should know that there is such a thing as infrasound - these are sound waves below the frequency perceived by the human ear. Exposure to infrasound could well have led to panic, all sorts of visions, and to the fact that the Dyatlov group began to take extremely rash actions.

The key disadvantage of all such versions is that there is no point in testing new weapons outside of special testing grounds. Only at training grounds can you evaluate the effectiveness of a weapon, its pros and cons. In addition, in those years the Soviet Union supported a moratorium on nuclear tests, and Western partners would certainly have recorded a violation of this moratorium.

As Evgeny Buyanov writes, an accidental hit by a rocket in the vicinity of Mount Kholatchakhl is, in principle, excluded. All types of missiles of the corresponding period are either not suitable in range (taking into account the likely launch sites), or were not launched on the days when the tragedy occurred.

Paranormal versions

This includes versions that use factors to explain the death of the Dyatlov group, the existence of which is still generally denied by scientists: fireballs, the arrival of aliens, curses and damage, an attack by a Yeti (Bigfoot), a meeting with some underground dwarfs, etc.

Memorial plaque in memory of the Dyatlov group

Ultimately, everyone can adhere to any version they want, because there is still no exact answer to how everything happened and why the Dyatlovites died. But there is a memory of this incident. The pass located next to the place where the tourists died is now called the Dyatlov Pass. And on a stone ledge near this pass in 1963, a memorial plaque was installed with photographs of nine young and brave tourists.

Subsequently, another memorial plaque was installed here in 1989. And in mid-2012, several plates with publications about the Dyatlov group in the Yekaterinburg publication “Ural Pathfinder” were additionally recorded at this place.

Documentary film “Dyatlov Pass: The End of History”