9 Russian Hikers Died Mysteriously In 1959 And I Have Some Questions
The story goes like this.
In the dead of winter, nine experienced Russian hikers went on a journey to trek the Ural Mountain range, an area that divides Europe and Asia.
You kind of can get a jist of where this might be going right? Yeah, they went missing on the appropriately named Dead Mountain, and all nine were, you guessed it, found dead many months later after a massive search party went to see what the haps was. The weird part about this story was the details of the campsite along with horrific and inexplicable injuries that the dead students were found with.
Perfectly folded clothes. Dinner apportioned out. Journals in their rightful place. A knife-slashed opening in one tent.
Oh yes, also eyeballs out of the socket. A bitten off knuckle. Some hikers were found far away from their tent stripped down naked and some were fully clothed. One was missing a tongue. Radioactive clothing.
What. The. Fuck.
Sound the alarms people, this story is real.
Since then there have been hundreds of conspiracy theories about what killed these nine poor souls, ranging from UFOs to local indigenous peoples to the fucking Abominable Snowman. Really.
Obviously, the Dyatlov Pass Incident, as it became known (named after one of the hikers), has been one of the great mysteries of the 20th century, but it’s almost an obsession in Russia. The Atlantic in a recent article on the subject said “the Russian obsession with the incident is above and beyond American internet-forum debates on Area 51 and the chupacabra…conspiracy-mongering is mainstream in Russia, a country in which 57 percent of the population believes the Apollo moon landings were a hoax.” Shocking information I know that Putin’s Russia would be very into conspiracism.
Which is why when Andrey Kuryakov of the Urals Federal District Directorate of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office (say that fast three times) released the results of an official inquiry in 2019, people were VERY VERY skep.
The official cause, according to this report? An avalanche, after which they left their tents and died of exposure. According to Kuryakov:
Having left the tent, the group, all together, without panic, moved 50 meters away. They went to a stone ridge, which served as a natural avalanche breaker. They did everything right. And here is the second reason why the group was, let’s say, sentenced to death, why they never came back. When they turned around, they could not see the tent,” he said, adding that that night visibility was from 6 to 16 meters.
I. Have. Questions.
The official report declared that “In total, the prosecutor’s office examined 75 theories … including: a UFO, a missile test, a nuclear explosion, a hurricane, an earthquake in the Northern Urals, an avalanche and even a skirmish with foreign saboteurs.” All of these were rejected.
And yet, even after the report, none of this shit adds up.
Why, if the group wasn’t panicked, would they have felt the need to slash the tent open versus just simply unzip the damn thing? How the FUCK did BOTH of this dude’s eyeballs get removed from their sockets? Why were some of them naked? I mean, no one’s sleeping naked inside a tent during a fucking blizzard. How is it possible that an avalanche can remove someone’s tongue? And if it did, where did the tongue go?
If there was such a terrible storm, enough to rip body parts right off, why were all of their belongings still EXACTLY how they left them? The scene of the campsite was more organized and neat than the home of a Kon Mari devotee.
Uh uh. Something isn’t right here. Not even close.
And even if you buy the gist of the Official Report? Think about this. A joint Swedish-Russian expedition from 2019 to the site declared the likely culprit was something called a Katabatic Wind, which makes sense, because even logical explanations for this shit has to sound menacing. What’s a Katabatic Wind? Well, it’s a “wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity” that can sometimes “blow well over hurricane force.” Like 190 miles per hour. Holy. Shit.
Which going back to the campsite, makes no goddamn sense.
Oh, yes, the other “natural” explanation? That the winds on Dead Mountain “created a Kármán Vortex Street, which can produce infrasound capable of inducing panic attacks in humans.”
Hahahaha this is so fucked up. Literally, the most logical explanation is that (according to author Donnie Eichar) a rare meteorological event produced a sound so piercing it drove the nine hikers mad, causing them tear their own eyeballs out and eat their tongues, stumbling around in a panic until it stopped and they found themselves outside in a blizzard in -40 degree weather with no clothes on in the dark of night.
Oh yes, there’s one more possible “natural” explanation. According to something called the International Science Times, the nine hikers died of something called “Paradoxical Undressing” which is not what happens when you come home with someone drunk from the bar and try to find a way to get her bra off. Oh it’s much scarier than anyone you take home at last call. Apparently, when you get hypothermic, you sometimes take your clothes off due to the fact you feel burning warmth. Really. So fucking cold you think you’re burning up and strip your clothes off. In the middle of a -40 below night. On the side of a mountain.
Unreal.
Listen, I’m not one for conspiracy theories but something is afoot here. And the whole “avalanche” conclusion makes me feel in NO WAY better about what happened. My imagination is RACING. I would much rather be told that some crazed Russian mountain man stalked these 9 students and cut their tongues and eyeballs out for a winter stew than think about the possibility of this being a naturally occurring event. Then at least I could sleep well knowing as long as I stay away from Dead Mountain, this shit won’t happen to me.
The bottom line is this. It’s now been over 60 YEARS since they died, and we're nowhere nearer to finding out what happened than before.
For those who want to go down the rabbit hole, just type Dyatlov Pass into a google search, grab yourself a drink, and clear your sched. You’re going to be reading for a long, long time.