Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

A storm is coming, and Kuntsevich is uncertain whether it will be safe to continue to the mountain. The initial plan was to camp on Holatchahl, but Kuntsevich decides that instead, the group will do a day trip there and back, going most of the way on snowmobiles. Eichar is disappointed, though he finds the snowmobile to be good fun. The group arrives at Boot Rock, a landmark used as a memorial for the incident. There are letters and photographs tucked into crevices in the rock to commemorate the hikers. They have a toast to the Dyatlov nine before continuing on foot toward the campsite. The ground is difficult to walk on, and daylight is growing short. Borzenkov brings Eichar to the site where the tent sat. Eichar is surprised by how slight the incline is in that area and begins to doubt his avalanche theory. There have been no avalanches recorded on that slope at any point. He looks up and notes that “for some reason, [he finds] the bald dome of the summit difficult to look at” (293). He wonders why the hikers would ever have left their tent, especially if they were not afraid that an avalanche was coming.

It takes several days to get the last four hikers’ bodies down from the mountain. A forensic examination shows that Kolevatov, who also had no shoes, died of hypothermia. Sasha’s body is different: He has five fractured ribs, and there is evidence of hemorrhage. Examiners determine that Kolya died of a skull fracture. Lyuda’s body has the most severe injuries: “massive thoracic damage, with internal hemorrhaging, including that of her right heart ventricle, plus fractures to nine of her ribs” (302). Besides these injuries, her tongue is missing. Examiners class her death as “violent.” The funerals are only open to the hikers’ families, and the caskets remain closed, despite the families’ repeated requests. When Ivanov agrees to open Lyuda’s casket, the sight of her body causes her father to faint. Even more bizarrely, researchers find that several articles of the hikers’ clothing are radioactive, with almost double the decay rate per minute as the maximum allowance for people who work with radioactive materials. Given how long the clothes were exposed to the elements, the initial levels could have been higher. Ivanov closes the criminal investigation without any answers for the families, adding only the now-famous note that an “unknown compelling force” caused their deaths.

At home in Los Angeles, Eichar goes through all of the major theories to try and find a reasonable explanation for the Dyatlov incident. He dismisses the idea of an attack by Mansi people, as there is no physical evidence and no motive. Based on his own observations of the mountain, he dismisses the avalanche theory. He also dismisses high winds because the tent was intact and Rustik was still wearing his hat. The theory that a group of armed military men attacked the hikers is almost as implausible as an attack by the Mansi. Lyuda, Sasha, and Kolya’s injuries could have been caused by their fall into the ravine, and Lyuda’s tongue could have decomposed in the ravine water. Weapons testing did happen in that area in 1959, but despite some testimony to the contrary, there were no tests on February 1; all of them were from February 17 or later. The photograph on Georgy’s camera is too unclear to be definitive evidence. The clothing radiation was probably caused by environmental contaminants. Classified government documents would have been published or destroyed by now. Eichar dismisses UFOs as silly. At last, he finds a new, plausible solution: infrasound. Certain very low frequencies can cause profound psychological distress in humans. Eichar visits some experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, to learn more.

Eichar presents his infrasound theory to a panel of experts. He suggests that Boot Rock could have produced an infrasound event. One of the experts asks about carbon monoxide poisoning from the group’s stove, but Eichar points out that the stove had not even been assembled. The hikers did not drink, so they did not leave their tent while drunk and get lost. While infrasound might sound strange, it is well documented and has even been used as a form of crowd control. One expert suggests that the hikers could have experienced a “Kármán vortex street” (330), an unusual wind pattern that could produce highly unsettling sounds. Ultimately, the experts conclude that Boot Rock is the wrong shape to create an infrasound effect. Eichar is crushed and sends one of them more photographs in the hopes of better arguing his case. The expert gives a surprising answer: The dome of Holatchahl is the perfect shape to create infrasound and a Kármán vortex street. The effect, for the hikers, would have been terrifying. As if proving Eichar’s point, a few days later, a meteor explodes in the sky over Russia, damaging windows, flattening a section of the forest, and producing infrasound. It is unlikely that anyone involved in the case knew about infrasound in 1959.

Based on all his evidence and the infrasound/Kármán vortex street theory, Eichar reconstructs the night of February 1.

Once they arrive at their campsite, the hikers set up their tent with meticulous precision. It is a windy night. Putting the stove together takes a long time, so the hikers abandon it in favor of a cold dinner. As the night progresses, the wind takes on an unnerving quality. It gets increasingly loud, as though trains are rushing past the tent. The hikers start to feel deep fear and paranoia that they cannot explain. Eventually, things reach a boiling point, and the panicked hikers know that they have to get out of the tent immediately. They cut their way out and run, poorly clothed and unshod, in different directions. Within minutes, they have all become disoriented in the pitch darkness. They now have to try and survive the night without shelter. Georgy and Doroshenko manage to start a fire but, as sometimes happens with hypothermia, they fall asleep beside it and soon die. Kolya, Lyuda, Sasha, and Kolevatov fall into a ravine. All but Kolevatov are severely injured. Kolevatov sees the other hikers’ fire and makes his way to them, but they are dead when he arrives. He cuts away some of their clothes to help his injured friends, but when he gets back to the ravine, there is little that he can do. He and Sasha embrace for warmth and both lose consciousness. Igor dies of hypothermia alone. Rustik falls and sustains a skull fracture. Zina also trips and breaks her nose as she tries to return to the tent. The moon rises at 3am, by which time all of the hikers are dead.