Many people ask why, with a sick heart, I stepped on the Dyatlov Pass. The reason was not at all that I personally wanted to understand the mysterious circumstances of the death of Igor Dyatlov's group at this pass 56 years ago. No. Actually, I didn't go there for that at all. The real reason is under the cut.

I also edited a video of our "assault" of the Dyatlov Pass. I hope it will make it more clear what happened there and what the weather conditions were like:

I consider Manpupuner to be the greatest natural landmark of Russia. At the same time, I have not been there yet, although I have already tried to get there by helicopter twice. Both times there was no weather and we did not fly away.

More reliable way to get there - by snowmobile, through the Dyatlov Pass. So for me this trip was training. Next year I want to come back here again, but go further. To the Manpupuner plateau:

The photos are not mine and honestly stolen from someone. If your authorship - then write. I will gladly sign:

The death of a group of travelers who conquered one of the Khanty-Mansiysk peaks has become one of the most mystical incidents in Russia. The place of death is now known by the name of the leader of the campaign - the Dyatlov Pass. What really happened is one of the most mysterious mysteries of the 20th century.

A brief excursion into what happened

The sequence of events of the most mystical of the Soviet tragedies is as follows:

1. At the end of January 1959, a group of students from Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) went to conquer the Ural peaks;
2. On January 25, they reached the village of Vizhay, where they stayed at a hotel;
3. The next day they were picked up by a truck and brought to the village. They spent the night in a hostel;
4. The ski trip starts on January 27th. One of the expedition members, Yuri Yudin, was forced to return home for health reasons;
5. Four days later, the tourists approached the top of Kholat-Syahyl and unsuccessfully tried to climb it;
6. On the evening of February 1, it was decided to stop for a halt and continue trying tomorrow;
7. After the mysterious events that took place at night, all members of the expedition were dead.

All events are restored according to diary entries. The investigation and search operation began only 10 days after the death, when the students were supposed to descend to Vizhay.

Dyatlov Pass: versions

Until now, no one knows for sure what exactly happened in the Northern Urals on the night of February 1-2, 1959.

The uncertainty surrounding the terrible tragedy gives rise to many conjectures :

• According to the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, that night was especially windy. Strong currents of air could demolish tents and freeze people alive;
• In the early 1990s, there was a popular theory about the sudden descent of large masses of snow on unsuspecting people. So the physical injuries on the body of some participants in the campaign became clear;
• The tent could not withstand the snow cap and suffocate its inhabitants;
• Meeting with a dangerous predator (bear, wolf, etc.);
• Climbers have become victims of one of the atmospheric phenomena little known to science. Candidates for such may be ball lightning or a thunderstorm that happened in severe frost.

Although the bodies of travelers did not have stab wounds or bullet wounds, the theory of anthropogenic influence was developed along with the others.

Who killed the Dyatlov group?

One of the popular versions is the inventive and cold-blooded murder of ordinary tourists for various reasons.

The investigation and journalists suggest that:

• The crime could be committed by criminals who escaped from places of detention. The prosecutor's office dismisses this possibility due to the lack of information about escapes in the vicinity during that period;
• The hand on the unarmed could be understood by representatives of the indigenous people for those places - the Mansi. However, this small nation was not noticed in interethnic conflicts with Russians;
• A quarrel between the participants of the campaign. It is possible that a fight could have broken out on the basis of alcohol abuse or a love polygon;
• Attack by police officers involved in poaching. Thus, they got rid of unnecessary witnesses to the crime. Thanks to the presence of an administrative resource, the fact of a brawl could be successfully forgotten;
• conspiracy theory. Dyatlov associates were none other than undercover state security officers on a mission. The foreign spies who came to the meeting "removed" the scouts.

Alien invasion conjecture

In September 2016, there was news about the discovery of a fragment of unknown origin at the pass.

This discovery was the reason for another journalistic investigation:

• According to interviewed military pilots, the wreckage is not related to any known aircraft model;
• The part cannot be recognized as a spare part for a rocket or a rocket launcher;
• Specialists of the Moscow Aviation Institute refused to give specific explanations on this matter. The scientists cited the need for more research on this topic;
• The journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda made a risky assumption about the extraterrestrial nature of the artifact. In favor of this version, the suspicious silence of representatives of the Ministry of Defense inclines. Probably, the latter have information about visiting these places by an extraterrestrial civilization.

It should be noted that such innuendo about the supernatural is not the first of its kind. There have been theories about Bigfoot, holes in time, and so on.

More than half a century has passed since the incident, but public curiosity does not think to cool its ardor. The place of what happened today is a profitable "amusement park" for the unsophisticated public. An all-terrain tour around the place of death can cost several tens of thousands of rubles.

Masters of liberal professions found in what happened an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The number of works of art of different quality on this topic reaches double digits, and the activity does not weaken over time:

• The most famous literary works about what happened belong to the pen of Yuri Yarovoy, Anna Matveeva and Donny Eychar;
• In 2015-2017, Komsomolskaya Pravda published a series of reports about the incident. However, the quality of journalistic work caused a flurry of criticism;
• The TV channel "Russia 1" shot a documentary, which received no less critical reviews.

However, the most famous creation is the Russian-American film "The Dyatlov Pass Incident" (with subtitles):

Film by Renny Harlin

The 2013 film by Hollywood director Renny Harlin was also called upon to shed light on the events of many years ago. The horror film put the tragedy in an unusual light and made people talk about it again. But the impression of viewing was spoiled by numerous blunders:

• Free treatment with real events. According to the script, all the tourists were discovered at the same time, and the name of the protagonist sounds like Peter. Both of these are not true;
• The plot is generously stuffed with spreading cranberries, cliches. Russians behave as they should behave according to American stereotypes;
• All residents of the Urals know English perfectly;
• Despite the high level of radiation on the dosimeter, a group of searchers stayed there for the night;
• The involvement of the insidious Soviet secret services is far-fetched;
• Computer graphics do not stand up to criticism.

As a result, the film's fate was sealed, and critics from Rotten Tomatoes gave it only 53 out of 100%.

Accidents with travelers in the mountains, unfortunately, are not rare news. But all of them do not show even a hundredth of the interest that the ill-fated Dyatlov Pass has. What really happened, only those who know the killer of Kennedy and Princess Diana know.

Video: what happened at the Dyatlov Pass: the end of the story

In this documentary, historian Stanislav Lozhkin will tell about the final version of what happened on that ill-fated pass in the Ural Mountains:

Greetings, friends. What is the most mysterious scary tale of the last century, about which, perhaps, everyone has heard? "Dyatlov Pass"- words that instantly evoke eerie thoughts and an understanding that we can only guess about the true causes of the tragedy. Let's try to restore the events and figure out what really happened. We will not put forward our own versions, we will leave you the opportunity to draw your own conclusions.

What Happened at the Mountain of the Dead

It happened in 1959. A group of ten people went on a ski trip to the mountains of the Northern Urals: among them were young guys - students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, as well as one thirty-seven-year-old graduate of the Minsk Institute of Physical Education, a participant in the Great Patriotic War - Semyon Zolotarev, who for some reason asked to be called Sasha. His participation in the campaign is the number one mystery! But more on that later.

There were two girls and eight boys in the group. In the article we will call them students. All of them were experienced tourists who decided to make a route of the third degree of difficulty during the holidays. This is the highest difficulty at that time. According to the plan, they had to ski about 350 kilometers in sixteen days.

One of the students left the race prematurely due to a cold and leg pain due to aggravated rheumatism, which also raises certain questions among the researchers of this tragedy, you will read about this in more detail below.

None of the remaining nine students returned. All died under unclear circumstances in one night. The investigation into the case was closed a long time ago with a note that no signs of a crime were found.

However, the criminal case has not been destroyed so far, although according to the law, criminal cases are destroyed after 25 years, and after all, more than half a century has passed, and it is still stored in dusty archives.

Criminalists, investigators, scientists and even bit by bit recreated the route, but no one gave an exact explanation: who killed the students. They all died on the same night under very strange circumstances.

In one of the last shots found, students are preparing to set up a tent to spend the night on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl. What happened after no one knows. They tried to reconstruct the events from the bodies found.

Dyatlov Pass: Chronology of campaign events

The events described below took place in 1959, which became fatal for the guys. All the events of the campaign were restored from photographs developed from the students' cameras found among their belongings, and from records from personal diaries hikers.

• On January 23, a group of ten people, led by a fifth-year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering Igor Dyatlov, boarded a train and left Sverdlovsk. All members of the group were experienced skiers and athletes. Not only did they previously pass similar routes, but they themselves led groups.

• On January 25, the students arrived in Ivdel, from here they went by bus to the village of Vizhay, where they spent the night in a hotel.

• That night, the guys slept in the loggers' hostel in the village. The next day we went to the second Northern mine. In this abandoned village there were no inhabitants, no one at all. They found a house more or less suitable for spending the night, lit a makeshift stove, and spent the night there.

• On January 28, Yuri Yudin decided to return back, as his leg ached unbearably. The rest of the Dyatlovites went on skis from the village along the Lozva River, on the banks of which they stayed overnight.

Let's make a small but interesting digression from the chronology of events. According to some researchers, it is in the second Northern mine that one should look for the answer to the mystery of the death of students. They point to several unexplained mysteries.

First: when deciphering the pictures that the guys took in the second Severny, one of them, clearly taken when the group left the village, shows a person in the distance, either clearing snow or skiing. Question: who is this person? Who remained in the village, because it was deserted? In the same pictures, some researchers "see" a tower with searchlights, which also remains a mystery.

Another mystery: did Yuri Yudin really come back because of the pain in his leg and a cold. After all, he felt unwell several tens of kilometers ago, and decided to return only now, how could he go this way with a sore leg and a cold? Maybe he saw or learned something and even then understood that the guys were in mortal danger, but for some reason he could not warn them, but preferred to return?

Yuri Yudin

But other researchers break down such pseudo-mysteries to smithereens and answer: Yudin remained in the village, who later left it. The so-called towers with searchlights are nothing more than photographic defects. And the disease really forced Yudin to interrupt the campaign, it progressed, and the guy realized that he could not cope.

• On January 29, tourists marched along the Mansiysk trail from the place of the previous parking lot to a halt on a tributary of the Lozva River;
• On January 30, they moved along the above path along the strip left by the reindeer team (according to one source) and the ski tracks of the Mansi hunter (according to another version).
• January 31 - students approached Mount Holatchakhl (Goose's Nest, translated from Mansi as Mountain of the Dead). After the tragedy, this pass was named the Dyatlov Pass. The guys planned to climb the mountain, but they did not manage to do this because of the strongest wind. In his diary, Dyatlov wrote that the wind speed was comparable to the air speed when an airplane took off. They had to return to the Auspiya River and spend the night on its banks.
• On February 1, the students decided to try again to climb the mountain. They left things that it did not make sense to take with them in a makeshift hut (storage): heavy food, an ice ax and other things.

They started climbing the slope of Mount Holatchakhl after lunch - too late, according to some researchers. They did not have time to cross the eastern slope: it was getting dark, and the wind was picking up. Igor Dyatlov decided to pitch a tent in the saddle of the mountain under the slope of the northeastern stockade.

The tent of the Dyatlovites was built from two standard-sized tents, its length was about 4 meters. To install it horizontally, a flat place was required no less than the length of the tent itself. It was difficult to find such a site and the guys had to cut the slope.

Dyatlov experts consider the decision to pitch a tent in this place a mistake, it is actually the top of a mountain, an open place, while other scientists do not see anything supernatural in this decision. Be that as it may, this night turned out to be the last for the Dyatlov detachment ...

What really happened: a terrible mystery shrouded in darkness

The Dyatlov group planned to finish the trip in the village of Vizhay, notify the sports club of the institute about its successful completion, and on February 15, the Dyatlovites were supposed to return home. It is clear that neither the telegram nor the guys were waiting at home. Relatives of tourists and another tourist group that went on a hike on the same day as the Dyatlovites, only along a different route, began to worry.

Staying on a ski trip is a common thing. But when there was no news from the guys on February 17, a rescue operation began.

The search parties found a tent, which was cut and torn in some places, and they tore and cut it from the inside. One thing became clear: people were running from a specific danger they could not explain. What made the guys run away? They threw everything: things, products. They ran barefoot, some ran in one shoe, some in someone else's socks.

It was an uncontrollable wild panic. Moreover, people who knew the guys say for sure that they were not shy. They could not be frightened by something that was inside the tent. It was something outside of her. A simple flash of light, a shot, a shout or loud noise could not scare them so much that the students were in such a hurry to get out, cut the tent from the inside and rushed to run barefoot in the frost for a kilometer and a half.

Obviously, they were seized by a horror that they were not able to control, in which they were not even able to think that they were running towards their death. If they had the slightest opportunity to return, they would have returned, why didn't they do it and froze under the snow?

Almost one and a half kilometers from the tent, the bodies of three of the guys were found. They had almost no clothes, except for underwear, the bodies were burned in places. Further, not for the faint of heart.

A little further, the bodies of two more tourists were found, including Igor Dyatlov, who led the campaign. The remaining four were found only in May, when the snow melted in the Urals. There were terrible marks on their bodies: two of them had crushed chests and no eyeballs, one of the girls also had no mouth and tongue.

One of the tourists had a broken skull, in the absence of external injuries. Death, according to medical experts, came from freezing. Three of the guys were declared dead from injuries inflicted by a force comparable in power to an explosive wave. Four tourists had an unnatural orange-red skin color. The reason for this could not be established.

Dead birds have been found nearby, and the last shot from a member of the expedition's camera is causing a flurry of controversy. It shows a blurred luminous ball on a black background. Some scientists argue that this is just a filming defect, others see in it the very danger that forced the guys to run barefoot through the frost to their death.

In addition, there is evidence that the location of cadaveric spots on the bodies of the first three students found does not correspond to the position in which they lay. This allows us to conclude that they were turned over by someone. Neither in the tent nor near it were found signs of a struggle, or facts indicating the presence of strangers. The position of some bodies was such that their heads were directed towards the tent, that is, it turns out that death caught them not on the way from the tent, but on the way to it.

These terrible facts awaken an endless field for conjectures, conjectures, and assumptions. What versions have not been put forward: starting from Bigfoot, aliens, and ending with a love triangle. Further, read the main versions of the tragic version of the death of skiers.

Rocket version

There is a reliable fact that in February 1959 a luminous ball was seen in the sky above these places. At that time, new ballistic missiles were just being tested. It is quite realistic to say that a fragment of a rocket or the rocket itself flew into the area where the participants in the campaign led by Dyatlov were located and caused a shaking of the soil. In those places, indeed, fragments of metal were found, which scientists identified as fragments of rockets.

It is quite possible that after the guys had already gone to bed, a rocket with a sodium torch was flying in the sky above the mountain. Let's say it exploded in the air, for example, a self-destruct device worked. She took off in the air, and below were students in a tent.

The explosion of the rocket caused an avalanche or a snow landslide that fell on the edge of the tent where the guys whose bodies were found with injuries (fractures of the ribs, skulls) were sleeping, and those who slept in the far part of the tent did not have serious bodily injuries.

Hearing the explosion, seeing the wounded comrades, crushed by the melting snow, plus, starting to suffocate from the oxygen scorched by the explosion, the students began to tear and cut the tent from the inside. Traces of eight, and not nine pairs of legs are explained by the fact that one of the guys died immediately after the avalanche hit. He was carried by hand. Going to run to the storehouse, the guys in a hurry went in the other direction. They tried to light a fire, but because of the lack of oxygen, they could not do it.

Cedar branches were broken off at a height of five meters. In the cold, they tried to warm themselves with their bare hands, climbing a tree and picking off branches to throw them into the fire, but everything was in vain, the flame did not flare up, there was not enough oxygen.

The rocket version is also supported by the fact that the soldiers who were the first to arrive in search of the missing tourists found many dead partridges in the mountain near the fatal place, which died, apparently from lack of oxygen.

But even here there are serious inconsistencies, for example: there was no oxygen in open space for more than an hour, because, it is known that there is atmospheric pressure, and the resulting vacuum is immediately filled with oxygen. Second: how could the guys run such a distance with broken ribs. Third: if an avalanche had descended on the tent, then it certainly would not have crushed the students selectively, but would have covered the entire tent, in addition, a flashlight was found on the roof of the tent during the rescue operation, the avalanche would have filled it up for sure, but it was lying on top .

In the film shown on the RenTV channel, the version is consecrated, according to which nuclear weapons were tested in those places. The followers of this version refer to the conduct of secret tests at the Uralmash plant. Then meteorological rockets were made there. Exposure to man-made substances could well have caused similar damage in humans.

Versions of the murders, American sabotage and others

There are versions according to which all participants in the campaign were killed by people who were specially trained for this. They killed students methodically and in cold blood. However, signs of the presence of strangers at the scene of the tragedy were not found, or are they carefully hidden?

Some authors defend the version according to which American saboteurs are to blame for the death of the guys. They insist that the tragedy at the Dyatlov Pass is the result of a so-called "controlled delivery" and some of the members of the group were privy to the case. You can read more about this in the book by A.I. Rakitin. This version is especially fiercely criticized, however, like all other versions of this terrible tragedy.

The author E. Buyanov adheres to the version that an avalanche descended on the tent. In the works of these researchers, however, there are blank spots, which not only do not confirm their version, but also become the causes of new questions.

Someone connects everything in a love story: there were two girls and seven guys in the group (not counting the departed Yuri Yudin), supposedly the students crippled themselves. This version does not withstand any criticism. They add to it the version of the use of psychotropic substances, which could have an unpredictable effect on the psyche of students and this explains their behavior: they fled from the tent previously cut from the inside half-dressed, in severe frost, they tried to climb a tree.

But how then to explain that one of the girls, when they were found, had no tongue, mouth, and eyeballs, while the other guys had multiple injuries of internal organs?

Someone explains the tragedy by the formation of a snow cornice over the site where the tent was. Allegedly, this snow cornice crushed the tent, six participants were injured. But how then to explain that one of the participants had a broken skull, and the soft tissues were not damaged? The medical examiner found no explanation for this. All versions of what happened do not stand up to scrutiny.

Some researchers adhere to the version that punishment came from the sky, that is, tourists were killed by aliens. Someone puts forward mystical versions.

In short, with each version, the veil of secrecy, covered with darkness, does not open, but, on the contrary, is overgrown with even more mysteries, conjectures and questions. We will discuss some of these facts below.

Psychics and clairvoyants about the tragedy, a new death

This story never ceases to haunt the minds. Films are made about the Dyatlov detachment, books are written. Psychics and clairvoyants are asked to shed light on the mystery. The Siberian hermit-clairvoyant Agafya Lykova was shown photos of living children, and then terrible pictures of their corpses.

The old woman replied that the students saw a fiery serpent. She said something terrible had happened in the mountains. She explained that there are places where demons live and kill people. The guys did not die by their own death, they, according to Agafya, were killed by a deadly force or an infected mountain. The hermit repeated more than once that one should not invade the secrets of the mountains and Taiga, it is very dangerous.

Her words are interpreted in different ways, some believe that they are simply taken out of context. And someone finds a hidden subtext in them: the participants of the campaign invaded the sacred place of the Mansi peoples, perhaps this was the reason for their death. This is another, and again probably not confirmed version of the death of tourists.

On the program "The Battle of Psychics" they also tried to unravel the causes of the tragedy that happened at the foot of the Mountain of the Dead. Clairvoyants, by the energy of the inverted photographs of the expedition members, felt cold, horror, fear, pain, unmistakably identified a photo of a living person (Yuri Yudin) among the dead. Did the psychics manage to unravel, or at least get closer to unraveling the mystery, what shocking facts they cite, see the video.

Another tragic event, the language does not dare to call it an accident, happened not so long ago in the same places that became the last refuge for a group of students in 1959. In January 2016, not far from the Dyatlov Pass, law enforcement officers found the body of a man who died of hypothermia. There were no signs of violent death or bodily harm.

We also promised to tell you what mystery is the presence of Semyon (Sasha) Zolotarev, a mature man, among young guys and girls on this ill-fated campaign. The fact is that, as you know, he died with the rest of the guys under the same unclear circumstances. Only now, after his body was presented to relatives for identification, they were very surprised - the man's body had tattoos that they had not seen before.

What's this? The inattention of relatives or a reason to think: Was Zolotarev buried with all the other participants in the campaign? In addition, Semyon's acquaintances later said that he was very eager for this campaign, was directly burning with impatience and claimed that this campaign was very important and the whole world would talk about it. He promised that when he returned, he would tell everything. He was following a secret. Zolotarev turned out to be right: the whole world started talking about the campaign, but Semyon himself could not return and tell what secret pulled him to the Ural Mountains.

With each version, the veil of mystery, covered with darkness, does not open, but, on the contrary, is overgrown with even more mysteries and questions. And what do you think, which of the versions is the most plausible, what caused this mysterious inexplicable death of people at the foot of the Mountain of the Dead? Share your thoughts in the comments, subscribe to our updates. We wish you all the best!