59 years ago on the mighty Ural Mountains, a group of 10 scientists embarked on an expedition to the 1,895-meter-high Kholat Syakhl, known as “Dead Mountain,” to study the effects of high altitude and freezing weather on the human body.
Names and ages of the 10-member expedition. Among them, Igor Dyatlov was the leader. Yuri Yudin did not participate in the Kholat Syakhl mountain expedition due to health issues.
Only one returned alive!
The 10th member (named Yuri Yudin) was spared by a sudden illness that prevented him from joining the climb.
The nine Soviet explorers, led by engineer Igor Dyatlov of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (now Ural State Technical University, Russia), mysteriously vanished while ascending the windy, snowy western slope of Dead Mountain, in the northern Urals.
After nearly a month of searching, the scene of the nine bodies shocked the entire investigation team and the Soviet scientific community at the time: the bodies were found at nine different locations and at different times; their causes of death also varied.
Some bodies showed signs of severe internal injuries, one had her tongue missing (Lyudmila Dubinina), and another had a crushed skull. Some were found naked in the freezing snow. One was found face down, buried deep in the snow.
The group’s makeshift tents were also found strangely and inexplicably torn apart.
Despite launching a large-scale investigation, including autopsies and scene examinations, Soviet investigators at the time concluded: They did not understand what truly happened to the expedition.
To commemorate the death of the scientific expedition led by engineer Igor Dyatlov, the slope of Kholat Syakhl where the nine bodies were found was named Dyatlov Pass. Unable to explain what truly happened that winter day in 1959, people also called it the “Dyatlov Pass Incident” or the “Deadly Dyatlov Pass Tragedy.”
Nearly six decades passed. Reminders of the tragedy that claimed nine explorers on Dyatlov Pass came in the form of Hollywood horror films or later books by Russian authors. The perplexing tragedy, seemingly buried forever in the frozen snow, is now being revisited.
Specifically, RBTH (Russia) published the story of Valentin Degterev – a Russian blogger who runs a magazine specializing in unexplained and anomalous phenomena worldwide.
Writing in his magazine, Valentin Degterev believes the Dyatlov group’s death was caused by a small missile impact. The evidence is a 30-meter-wide crater on the mountainside, 3 km from the Dyatlov group’s tent site.
“I think the temperature affecting the rock slope at that time must have been extremely high to cause the granite of Kholat Syakhl to appear as if burned red. This can be easily seen in satellite images,” Valentin Degterev stated.
It’s highly likely the incident occurred at night. They were awakened by a shockwave from a missile. Moreover, they may have suffered temporary blindness due to the missile’s blinding light. This explains the chaotic scene, as they tried to escape the tent and ran down toward the forest.
Valentin Degterev is unsure of the missile’s origin or whether it was fired intentionally, but somehow it changed direction and crashed into the mountainside in the dark.
Since no radioactive traces were found on the victims’ clothing, but with evidence of a 30-meter-wide crater, Degterev considered a second hypothesis: they were attacked by a meteorite.
“I think this area needs to be thoroughly reinvestigated when the weather is warmer. If radiation is indeed found, and if there is a 30-meter crater there, then the nearly six-decade mystery of Dyatlov Pass could be solved,” Valentin Degterev believes.
However, does Degterev’s hypothesis fully explain what happened on February 15 (the day they lost contact) 59 years ago?
For months after the “Dyatlov Pass Tragedy,” Soviet investigators could not comprehend what happened to the nine young scientists. The final investigation report concluded: The expedition was killed “by an unknown compelling force.”
It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, that the Russian public learned more details about this tragedy. As the mystery remained unsolved, many conspiracy theories emerged—from secret government nuclear tests to aliens and mythical snow creatures—attempting to explain the expedition’s grim fate. Degterev’s hypothesis has received mixed reactions.
In 1990, journalist Anatoly Guschin published a book titled “The Price of State Secrets is Nine Lives,” suggesting the explorers’ bizarre deaths were linked to a secret Soviet weapons test. The book resulted from Guschin’s extensive research.
However, after publication, some researchers criticized Guschin for overly focusing on “blaming” the government and that secret weapons project. Nonetheless, due to its intriguing content, the book was well-received by the public.
One of the most circulated rumors involves the indigenous Mansi tribe. According to this theory, the expedition may have trespassed into a sacred Mansi cave. Fearing disturbance, the Mansi hunted them down at night. To this day, this remains a widely discussed but unverified theory.
Another hypothesis suggests the group drank something that caused hallucinations. This could explain their bizarre behavior, with bodies found scattered with completely different injuries.
The fact that the tents were torn from the inside, and no footprints of the nine were found outside, led many to believe they were attacked from within by an immense force that threw all nine far from the tent.
Ultimately, many hypotheses have attempted to explain the tragic events on that freezing mountainside in 1959. However, as the mountain’s name implies, “Dead Mountain” remains, and the story from nearly six decades ago must remain closed as one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.