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At the end of January 1959, a Russian cross-country ski team ventured into the Northern Ural Mountains. Their expedition was intended to be a week-long skiing adventure, with the goal to reach a mountain in the Urals called Oroten. But though they set out from Vizhai—the last inhabited settlement that fat north—on January 27, they never came back. Or at least, they didn’t come back on their own. Numerous attempts have been made to reconstruct the events that had led to what has now become known as the DYATLOV PASS INCIDENT, with varying degrees of success. The trouble, you see, wasn’t that the team disappeared. It was the state they were in when they were found.
Here’s what we know: Led by Igor Dyatlov, the ski team consisted of eight men (including Dyatlov) and two women: Yuri Yuden, Alexander Zolotarev, Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle, Yuri Doroshenko, Yuri Krivonischenko, Rustem Zlobodin, Alexander Kolevatov, Lyudmila Dubinina, and Zinaida Kolmogorova. Nearly all of them were either students or graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute. On January 25, they arrived by train at Ivdel. From there, they took a truck to Vizhai.
They left Vizhai on January 27; the next day Yuri Yudin fell ill and returned to Vizhai, cutting down the group’s numbers to nine. Diaries and cameras found around the last camp they ever made show that they arrived at the edge of a highland area on January 31 and readied themselves for a climb. They cached food and equipment for the trip back in a woody valley. On February 1, they began to make their way through a mountain pass, evidently with the intent to cross over the pass and camp on the opposite side. However, due to heavy snowstorms, they lost their bearings and veered west, landing them on the eastern shoulder of a mountain known as Kholat Syakhl. Upon realizing what had happened, they made the decision to stop there and set up camp.
And then: Nothing. Dyatlov was supposed to send a telegraph to the team’s sports club as soon as they returned to Vizhai– no later than February 12, he had said– but February 12 came and went and no telegraph appeared. Initially, there was little fuss made over the missing skiers; given the snowy conditions of the Urals, delays were a common occurrence. Worried family members, however, were not content simply to wait for their loved ones to return, and they spurred the Ural Polytechnic Institute into action.
On February 20, the first of the rescue parties went out to search for the skiers. When they came up with nothing, the military and the police are involved. Six days later on February 26, the team’s camp was finally spotted from an airplane. The camp was deserted.
The tents were badly damaged. Footsteps led down from the camp to the edge of nearby woods, but they disappeared, covered by snow, after 500 meters.
At the edge of the forest, there were the remains of a fire– along with the bodies of Yuri Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko. They were lying under a cedar tree, buried in snow. 300 meters from the fire, searchers found the body of Igor Dyatlov, lying on his back with his head pointing towards the tents. He held a branch from a birch tree in one hand; with the other, he appeared to be shielding his head. 180 meters away from Dyatlov’s body was the body of Rustem Slobodin. Slobodin was face-down in the snow.
Another 150 meters away from Slobodin, searchers found the body of Zinaida Kolmogorov. Of these five, most were wearing little to no clothing. It was another two months before the other four members of the team were found, but on May 4, Lyudmila Dubinina, Alexander Zolotareva, , Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle, and Alexander Kolevatov were found. They were better clothed; however, they were also in a ravine buried under four meters of snow.
The fact that they were all found dead is both strange enough and tragic enough as it is; but things truly took a turn for the bizarre when forensics got their hands on the data. The first five bodies found were determined to have died of hypothermia– perhaps unsurprising given the lack of clothing, though that is a mystery in and of itself. But that cedar tree that Krivonischenko and Doroshenko had been found under? It wasn’t just a tree.
The branches had been broken off the tree at a height of approximately five meters, and traces skin and other tissues were found embedded in the trunk. The implication is not only that the two skiers tried to climb the tree, but also that they were so frantic that they kept scrambling at it in spite of the broken branches until their hands were literally raw. Furthermore, Slobodin and Thibeaux-Brignolle both had skull fractures, and Dubinina and Zolotareva both had broken ribs. And let’s not forget that Dubinina, Zolotareva, Thibeaux-Brignolle, and Kolevatov were found in a ravine some distance away. Kolevatov was found to have died of hypothermia. Dubinina, Zolotareve, and Thibeaux-Brignolle died due to their wounds.
Oh, and Dubinina was missing her tongue.
Initially, it was thought that perhaps indigenous Mansi people might have attacked and murder the group for trespassing on their land; the apparent lack of a struggle, however, discredited this theory. The lack of clothing may have been due to something called “paradoxical undressing”: Already suffering from moderate to severe hypothermia, a person may become disoriented and confused, at which point they may begin shedding their clothing.
But still other clues were harder to explain: The tent, for instance, had been ripped open from the inside; the footsteps around the camp indicated that all the group members had left the camp of their on accord, though the positions of the bodies Dyatlov, Slobodin, and Kolmogorov showed that they had been trying to return to it; the injuries of the group found in the ravine could not, according to Dr. Boriz Vozrohdenny, have been caused by another human (“It was equal to the effect of a car crash,” he said); and what little clothing had been found on the bodies all demonstrated a high level of radioactive contamination.
Yes. The clothing was radioactive.
But late in May in 1959, the inquest into the deaths of the nine skiers ceased due to the absence of a guilty party. The final verdict declared the group died because of a “compelling unknown force.” The files pertaining to the inquest were packed away carefully and sent to a secret archive. And that, as they say, was that.
Here’s the scariest part: All of this is absolutely, 100% true. The pass they were found in was named Dyatlov Pass, after the team’s leader, and the unknown events of February 1 that led to the group’s tragic fate have been dubbed the Dyatlov Pass Incident. A few of the claims that rolled in later on, however, may or may not be true. What claims? Try these on for size:
After the funerals, many of the victims’ relatives said that the victims’ skin had turned an odd brown color.
The source of the radiation was never found.
A group of hikers about 50 kilometers south of the Dyatlov team reported sightings of strange orange spheres in the north—the direction towards Kholat Syakhl—on the evening of February 1.
Large amounts of scrap metal were reportedly found in the area around the camp.
These claims have led many to believe that the Dyatlov Pass Incident was caused by either the paranormal or the government. The spheres point to the paranormal; the other pieces of information point to the possibility that the government or the military had used the area and were now involved in a cover-up.
...but one thing I am sure of, I'm only speculating).... 
