They had cut their way out of their own tent from the inside, their personal items and
even a fresh meal perfectly laid out and ready to be eaten.
They fled in a panic, most shoeless and some without even socks, and with none of their
cold weather clothes despite the temperature being -13 degrees (-25C).
A few hundred yards away, two bodies were found.
Several hundred yards past them, two bodies were discovered under a tall tree clothed
only in underwear.
One of the bodies had third degree burns and a chunk of flesh from the right hand was in
its mouth.
All bodies found were covered in bruises, cuts, and scratches.
The rest of the bodies wouldn't be found until months later, and the shocking details only
deepen what is the greatest mystery to ever come out of the Soviet Union
Late January, 1959, and a group of nine college students and recent graduates are embarking
on the trip of a lifetime.
The group is made up of experienced hikers and skiers, but they've plotted a route that
no Russian had ever taken.
The trip would take them on a sixteen day trip across the Urals and through territory
of the native Mansi people.
It would be a grueling ordeal, exposing the group to bitterly cold temperatures and high
winds, but the route avoided the dangers of trying to cross mountains in winter by sticking
to the lowlands.
The trip would require great endurance, but the group of young Soviets was well-prepared
for the ordeal The Ural Polytechnic Institute's sports club
had sponsored the trip, brainchild of Igor Dyatlov, who could have no way of knowing
that his name would go down in infamy as he dreamt up the expedition.
Right before leaving however, the university administration mysteriously added a new member
to the expedition, Semyon Zolotaryov.
At thirty seven years old he was fifteen years older than most of the rest of the group.
A hardened World War II veteran covered in tattoos, Zolotaryov cut an imposing figure.
His inclusion to the trip is never explained by the university, despite suspicions that
Zolotaryov was actually KGB.
On January 23rd, the group leaves for Sverdlovsk, their jumping off point for the expedition.
Using personal journals and one communal journal discovered with the remains of the tent, investigators
are able to piece together a very detailed picture of what happened in the days leading
up to the mystery that would claim all their lives.
Photos recovered from the group's cameras painted a perfect picture of a young group
of happy-go-lucky college students and grads, out on a grand adventure.
As the group nears Sverdlovsk, Yuri Yudin has a painful flareup of sciatica.
The crippling pain forces him to abandon the trip, much to the group's dismay.
Yudin hugs his friends goodbye, having no idea he's just cheated death.
On January 28th, the group heads off into the mountains.
They are never seen alive again.
Eight days after the group's expected finish date, frantic family members and loved ones
begin calling the university and local bureau of the Communist Party.
Search parties are immediately sent out, assisted by local Mansi hunters.
Fellow students, prison guards, police, and even the Soviet military join the hunt for
the missing trekkers.
Five days later one of the search parties stumbles onto one of the greatest mysteries
of the 20th century.
The group's tent is discovered on February 26th, after following their ski tracks for
a full day (use photo: https://i.insider.com/602daf9f42b84000192f4188?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
The tent is above the tree line on a mountain the Mansi called Kholat Syakhl- or Dead Mountain.
It's partly buried in snow, and most mysteriously- all of the group's equipment is still neatly
laid out as if they had just settled in for the night.
Ski boots and equipment is stacked by the door to the tent, and even food is laid out
as if about to be eaten, completely untouched.
What's not found is a body.
Even more mysteriously, the tent has been slashed open on one side.
Police wonder if someone slashed their way in for some reason until a seamstress visiting
the police station where the tent is stored stuns investigators by pointing out that the
tent was cut open from the inside.
That would explain the missing bodies.
But what in the world could cause nine healthy, strong Russian hikers to slash their way out
of their own tent, apparently in such blind terror that they left behind all of their
vital cold weather clothing, including boots?
Further investigation of the scene revealed the trackway of the hikers as they made their
way to the tree line below.
The prints clearly show that almost all of the group had not put on their boots as they
fled the tent, and some were walking barefoot.
The prints continue for several hundred yards until they vanish at the tree line.
There amongst the trees, two bodies are discovered under a tall tree.
The bodies lay next to the remains of a small fire, and yet mysteriously they are clothed
only in their underwear.
Even stranger, twelve to fifteen feet up in the tree investigators find bits of torn skin
and clothing on the trunk, along with some broken branches.
One of the bodies has blackened fingers and third degree burns on the shin and foot.
Inside of the mouth is a lump of flesh bitten out off the right hand.
The other body has burned hair on one side of the head and is wearing a charred sock.
Next, investigators find two more bodies back up the slope facing the direction of the tent
It's clear these two were trying to make their way up back to the tent.
A fifth body is found a few days later, also apparently trying to get back to the tent
This one is found with a small fracture on the skull.
All of the bodies however are covered in cuts, bruises, and scratches.
Investigators are now assuming a homicide has taken place, yet none of the evidence
points to the presence of anyone not from the original group.
No murder weapons are found, and no signs of foul play.
Toxicology reports come back clean.
Investigators hope that the discovery of the four missing bodies may help shed light on
the mystery.
They would be wrong.
As the snows begin to melt, a Mansi hunter discovers the remains of a makeshift snow
shelter two hundred and fifty feet from the tree where the two burned bodies are found.
Inside the shelter is bedding made out of branches, along with black cotton sweatpants
missing one leg, and the left half of a woman's sweater.
Authorities begin to probe the snow in a search for the bodies, and soon discover the four
missing bodies buried under ten feet of snow on a rocky streambed.
One of the bodies has a head injury so severe that pieces of bone have been driven into
the brain.
Two others have crushed chests and multiple broken ribs.
One has a hemorrhage in the right ventricle of the heart, another is missing its lips,
and a third is missing the eyes, tongue, and part of the upper lip.
The medical examiner remarks that the injuries would be similar to what would be expected
if the bodies had been found at the scene of a bad car crash.
The bodies are also discovered to be wearing pieces of clothing removed or cut from the
five bodies discovered earlier, indicating these four survived longer than the five first
found.
Greatly deepening the mystery, several of these clothing items emit very high levels
of radiation, and a radiological expert testified that as the bodies had been exposed to running
water for several months, the original radiation levels must've been much higher.
The investigation is abruptly closed on May 28th.
The original intent had been to determine if a homicide had taken place, and whatever
happened to the group of nine, it was clear they had not been murdered.
At least not by anything human.
Independent investigations are immediately launched, with dozens of different theories
offered on what exactly happened to this group of seasoned hikers in great physical shape
up in the Ural mountains.
What could possibly have caused nine people to cut their way out of their own tent, flee
into a raging blizzard with no cold weather gear or even shoes, and then be discovered
with high levels of radiation, broken and mangled bodies, and third degree burns?
Theories fly wild and free.
One investigator discovers burn marks on several trees and concludes that some sort of heat
ray was used on the hikers.
He backs this conclusion up with reports from locals of having seen strange balls of light
in the sky in the area.
The very last photo in one of the group member's camera is of strange flares and streaks of
light against a black background- though this is common of the final photo taken with a
film camera.
The possibility that the group was attacked by a Yeti is also raised, as one of the other
group member's photos shows a dark, hulking figure amidst some trees.
Yet no tracks except for the group's are ever discovered.
Perhaps the Americans did it.
Why was 37 year old Semyon Zolotaryov attached to the expedition at the last minute by the
University?
His service record contains large gaps indicative of someone who likely was in fact working
for an intelligence agency such as the KGB.
Could the group have run afoul of CIA operatives or American mercenaries, after a deal gone
wrong with Zolotaryov?
The most popular theory however is that the group inadvertently wandered across a test
of a secret Soviet weapon.
It's believed that some sort of missile launch went wrong and rained debris down on the tent,
forcing the group to flee.
That would explain the third degree burns discovered on two of the bodies, and perhaps
even the presence of a potential KGB agent, perhaps attached to the group to monitor them
as they passed through a secret military testing site.
Yuri Yudin, who was forced to abandon the trip due to his sciatica, would go to his
death claiming that the group was removed from the tent at gunpoint and killed- either
by American CIA agents or the Soviet military.
Now however, we finally know what really happened on that fateful night in 1959.
In 2019 the case was reopened for investigation, and Andrei Kuryakov, a prosecutor, was put
in charge.
Using photogrammetry from the original investigation's photos of the scene, his group was able to
better estimate the real location of the tent several hundred feet from where it was originally
believed to have been located.
This would prove crucial to understanding what happened that night.
This new location placed the tent on a much steeper section of the mountain.
Weather reports from the night in question show that winds had been gusting at up to
sixty five miles per hour (105 kph), with temperatures at minus thirty degrees.
Photographs from the hikers show that they had cut deep into the snowpack at a right
angle to the slope as they pitched their tent, trying to shelter themselves from the incredibly
strong winds.
What would normally be a smart survival move would prove to be fatal.
The group's cutting into the snowbank had inadvertently weakened the entire snowbank.
As the blizzard raged, additional snow was heaped onto the structurally weakened snowbank.
Sometime in the evening, the snowbank gave way, and a three-foot thick slab of snow slammed
into the tent from above.
With up to a thousand pounds of snow smashing down on the skiers, immediate injuries would
have been severe for those in the most unfortunate locations inside the tent.
The incredible weight would have also prevented the group from getting to most of their gear,
but even more importantly the sudden shift in the snow would have triggered an instinctual
fear familiar to every mountaineer in the world- avalanche.
This would explain why the hikers cut their way out of the tent and fled into the night,
downhill and towards the tree line.
The suddenly shifting snow would have appeared to them as the beginning of an avalanche,
and their only hope of survival would have been amongst the trees.
There was simply no time to retrieve any clothing or cold weather gear.
The group eventually took shelter under the cedar tree where two of the bodies were discovered.
They built a fire, but somebody was forced to climb up the tree to find dry branches
nearer the top, explaining the skin and bits of clothing found on the trunk.
With massive wind gusts however, no fire could warm the ill-equipped group, and it would
not have taken long for two of them to succumb to hypothermia and die.
The third degree burns discovered on the body could have been from a desperate attempt to
get warm, or from falling over into hot coals after death.
The flesh discovered in one of the corpse's mouths was likely a result of delirium, the
individual biting savagely into his own hand.
The seven survivors then cut the clothes off their two dead comrades, explaining why they
were found in their underwear.
The group now split up, with three of them- likely the strongest- heading back up the
mountain to the tent to attempt to retrieve their cold weather gear and supplies.
At this point the group likely realized an avalanche was not coming, but in the driving
snow and dark of night, there would have been little hope of them finding their way back
to the tent.
Thus the three froze to death on the slope of the mountain, only a few hundred yards
from the salvation of warm clothing.
The other four decided to build a snow survival shelter and huddle for warmth, likely to wait
out the night and seek out the tent in the morning.
However, the group hit yet another stretch of bad luck, as the spot they picked to dig
lay right above a stream.
This particular stream doesn't freeze in winter, and instead hollows out a deep tunnel under
the snow and ice through which it flows.
As the group dug down into the snow, they accidentally breached the tunnel causing it
to collapse.
The four fell to the stream below and were buried under fifteen feet of snow, the crushing
weight of it causing the injuries discovered on the bodies.
From here, scavengers discovered the bodies and ate the various missing parts of the corpses'
faces.
This still left the mystery of the high levels of radiation though, but that too could be
solved with some background info on the skiers themselves.
One of the hikers had actually worked at the site of the world's third worst nuclear accident,
the Mayak nuclear complex.
An explosion of radioactive waste had spread a plume 200 miles north into the east Urals.
This hiker had even helped with the cleanup, and one of the other hikers lived in a village
inside the contaminated zone itself.
High levels of radioactivity would thus be likely amongst the personal clothing of both
these individuals.
The explanation has not satisfied everyone, but to date remains the most realistic and
plausible explanation of what happened to the nine hikers on that fateful night in the
Urals.
Ultimately, the only people who know the truth tragically died in the prime of their lives,
and if the Soviet government was truly involved then they've kept the secret of their deaths
for sixty years.