My Grandfather Knew Untold Secrets of the Dyatlov Pass Incident - Reddit No Sleep Story


On 1st February 1959, nine Russian hikers on the trek of a lifetime through the Ural Mountains pitched a tent and settled in for the night. Hours later, all nine fled the safety of the tent and perished in the freezing, snowy conditions. Some in the party succumbed to hypothermia, but others were found with grisly injuries. The 'Dyatlov Pass Incident', as it came to be known, has inspired so many dark and often outlandish potential explanations. Before delving into the most prominent theories, let’s consider the facts of the matter.

The group originally consisted of 10 highly experienced hikers who were – with one key exception – all students and recent graduates from the Ural Polytechnical Institute. The odd one out was Semyon Zolotaryov, a last minute addition to the group and, at 37, conspicuously older than the others.

In the early stages of the trek, one member of the group dropped out due to ill health. The rest carried on, taking photos of each other larking about and recording diary entries that expressed their excitement about the adventure to come. “I wonder what awaits us in this trip?” one wrote. “What will we encounter?”

Weeks later, a search party sent to locate the missing hikers found the remains of their tent on the side of a mountain called Kholat Syakhl. Inside were the hikers’ boots, clothes, and maps, along with some food laid out, seemingly for a meal. The side of the tent had been slashed open from the inside – a sign of just how desperate they’d been to get out.

Footprints made it clear the group had left the tent without any shoes. At the base of a nearby tree, next to an extinguished campfire, lay the corpses of

21-year-old Yuri Doroshenko and 23-year-old Yuri Krivonischenko. Both had seemingly frozen to death but also exhibited burn marks and multiple abrasions.

Not far away, lying in the snow, were the bruised bodies of the group’s leader, 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov, and 22-year-old Zinaida Kolmogorova. It looked like both had been trying to return to the tent when they died. Some days after this, the body of 23-year-old Rustem Slobodin was also discovered. He had a fractured skull.

The remaining hikers were found in a ravine near a shelter they’d attempted to carve out of the snow. Nikolay Thibeaux-Brignolle, a 23-year-old graduate, had a caved-in skull, while 24-year-old Aleksander Kolevatov had a deformed neck and was missing his eyebrows. The oldest hiker, Semyon Zolotaryov, and 20-year-old Lyudmila Dubinina had crushed chests with multiple broken ribs. Both were missing their eyes, and Lyudmila’s tongue was gone.

A criminal investigation was carried out by a prosecutor named Lev Ivanov, but it came to a cryptic conclusion. “The cause of their demise,” the report said, “was an overwhelming force which the hikers were not able to overcome.”

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