Freddy, thanks for making the map – you’re right, it is interesting that no one we’ve found has described this experience visually, not until your effort!

Andy

How are you?

I would be very interested to see a topographical map of the position of the bodies found as well any original documents from the official investigators reports. I believe that, as has been suggested, the many years passed since the initial event would quite naturally allow for some speculation to work it’s way in amongst the facts and the only real killer here may have been an unusually cold snow storm.

The tent may have been ripped by animals scavenging for food and unless it was possible to tell whether or not it had been torn or ripped from the inside I feel that the facts and evidence are rather flimsy and misplaced.

As for the lack of bruising, I am in no way a doctor or anybody qualified such as a mortician would be to the make the assumption, however, if the body was unusually cold and a strong injury was sustained, I would chance to reason the slow moving nature of the blood would be enough to prevent substantial bruising.

If anybody has any more precise links to the original information I would be interested to know more of what, regardless of reasoning or links to the paranormal or supernatural, is still a very tragic event.

Here is the wikipedia account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

Kind regards

Rob

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It’s an intriguing mystery. I’ve seen a bunch of explanations, but they all seem to ignore or can’t explain some small facet of the evidence. Let’s start with what didn’t happen:
1. No bears or other people frightened them away, since no tracks were found other than those of the original party.
2. It wasn’t thermobaric weapons. A blast powerful enough to break 12 ribs of a human four feet above the ground would leave signs on that ground. If even footsteps were preserved for the 2 weeks it took the rescue party to arrive, the bomb signs would also have been preserved. No such signs were found.
3. It wasn’t an avalanche. An avalanche that would crush skulls and 12 ribs would have to be pretty darn huge and would also leave signs. No such signs were found. In fact the snow was firmly packed when the search party arrived.
Whatever theory we build must take into account certain facts:
1. None of the 9 were fully dressed. Not one of them was wearing two boots. Some had 1 boot, some had none (only felt inner shoes or socks, some were barefoot). When the accounts say some were better dressed than others, that’s all they mean, a bit more clothing. No account says that anyone was fully dressed as they would have been normally during the day. This discounts any theories that perhaps some of them got dressed and left earlier. They all show signs of a hurried departure, because no one who wasn’t in a hurry would fail to put on both boots.
2. Their different clothes are explained by what they wore to bed. Some may have taken off outer clothes to let them dry out, others didn’t. Nothing in the account indicates that they weren’t wearing what they slept in. Of course they may have grabbed whatever was handy when they left (like 1 boot), but there was obviously not enough time for much more.
3. The accounts say they pitched their tents about 5 p.m. This seems natural (sunset on that day at their location was 4:03 p.m., it probably stayed a bit lighter for them because of altitude and the reflective snow). Without electricity, people don’t stay up long after dark. Hikers through rough terrain don’t carry tons of fuel oil either. So the chances are they pitched their tent, cooked and ate dinner, talked for a bit, then went to sleep by 8 – 9 p.m.
4. Autopsies showed they died 6 – 8 hours after ingesting their meals, so they died between about 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. The moon would have risen at 3:15 a.m. that night, but they may have died before that. Even if not, the moon was 4 days old and barely rose a few degrees above the horizon. Light must have been fairly poor.
5. Something happened to make them leave the tent in a hurry. Whatever it was, it was likely NOT the cause of the injuries on the 3 people. This is because the injuries were very severe and it’s unlikely that a party of 9 with 3 critically injured would plow through 1.5 km of knee deep snow. Also, the injured girl had a rib piercing her pericardium, so she couldn’t have lived more than 20 minutes after the injury. Also, she had a cloth wrapped around her leg which was actually the woolen pants removed from another guy in the party. Since it doesn’t make sense to wrap the leg of a dead girl, she must have been alive when it was wrapped. Since it also doesn’t make sense to remove the pants from a guy who’s already freezing, it seems likely that this guy died before the girl did. All of this makes it extremely unlikely that the girl was injured near the tent, her injuries happened later, after another guy in the group was already dead.
6. The group reached a pine tree at the forest edge, where they stopped to break branches and build a fire. This is where the first two bodies were found, clothed in underwear only. It seems likely that these were the first two to die, and that their clothes were then scavenged by others.
 
This leaves 3 main questions in my mind:
1. What made them all run away from the tent?
2. Why did they separate into groups?
3. What accident happened to one of the groups that resulted in those horrible injuries?
 
This is how I reconstruct it. Something scared them away from the tent. I don’t know what it was, but I’ve offered some evidence for what it wasn’t. Nobody was injured then, except maybe one guy who cracked his skull a bit when they were running away. All of them ran downslope for about 1.5 km through knee deep snow, and stopped when they reached the edge of the forest in the valley below. They ran northeast, that is, away from the direction in which they had come to the tent site (they had arrived from the southeast).
They built a fire under a pine tree, using its branches for fuel. Someone must have had matches. Not surprising, if some of them had been sleeping in their coats. Coats have pockets. The fire was apparently pretty good, made with thick pine branches, but it wasn’t enough to keep a bunch of half-clothed people alive without shelter in -25 weather. Soon after the fire was made, two of them died of hypothermia. These two were the ones who were wearing the least amount of clothes. I say they died after the fire was made because one of them had his hands charred by the fire. Nobody builds a fire on top of a dead man, but a man who’s still alive and leaning very close to the fire for warmth might fall into it when he or loses consciousness.
After they died, their clothes were scavenged by the others, leaving them just in their long johns. This is where it gets interesting. The remaining 7 people didn’t stay together, they split up into 2 groups. Three of them (the relatively less clothed ones) tried to head back to the tent. The other four (who had the most clothes out of all 9 people), went east along the ravine instead (as we can tell from where their bodies were found).
The question is, why did they split up? We know from the tracks leaving the tent that they were together for at least the first 500 meters of their run. It makes little sense to me that they would split up then. And as a matter of fact we know they didn’t split up then, because the girl in the second group had the trousers of the man under the pine tree wrapped around her leg. So they must have stuck together at least until they were under the pine tree.
It seems likely to me that they split up when the 2 guys in their group died. Perhaps they had a discussion on what to do next, and disagreed. Three of them decided to head back to the tent. Four went eastwards. Assuming these 4 weren’t just confused and lost, why would they go east? Well, east is how they would get back to their PREVIOUS camp, if they wanted to avoid the mountain they had just run away from. They could have followed the ravine east to avoid the mountain, then cut south. They probably knew this.
Why did they know this? Well, the accounts say they ended up on the mountain because they misjudged their direction, and swung too far west. That eastern route was their planned route to begin with. They had probably discussed this just the previous evening after they made camp.
So here’s the hypothesis. These guys really, really didn’t want to go back to their tents. Without the clothes in the tent, they couldn’t survive. So rather than go back to the tent, they decided to go back to their PREVIOUS camp, where they had also left supplies. This previous camp was quite a ways off, and hella risky to attempt, so they must really have hated the idea of going back to the tent. The best dressed 4 therefore decided to head back to the previous camp. The other 3 were wearing much fewer clothes, so for them it would have been suicide. They were therefore forced to stay. They may have decided to risk running to the tent to grab some more clothes and blankets, and then returning to their pine tree and the fire to wait for the other 4 to send help. But they never made it to the tent, they died on the way.
The other four didn’t make it far either. They went eastwards, but their bodies were found about 75 meters away. Three of them were massively injured. Obviously, some major accident happened. The likeliest answer is they fell down a cliff/slope. The fall could well have caused the injuries. But it doesn’t explain the 4th member, whose body was also found there but had no mortal injuries. At any rate, something bad happened to kill them all.
This theory doesn’t answer the questions, but at least it provides some constraints on the course of events. It’s possible that there was really no threat, something just happened to panic them all and they ran around lost until they died.
However, it’s not a comfortable explanation. These guys didn’t act like they were just running around like idiots. They built a fire. They exchanged clothes as appropriate. They split into two well defined groups, one heading back towards the tent (they must have known where it was, otherwise how could they head that way), the other all staying together and heading east. Further, the topology of the area doesn’t let people be confused for long. These were experienced people, remember. They knew they’d been camped on a mountain slope, they knew they ran downhill from the tent. It doesn’t make much sense to think that the 4 people heading east didn’t realize that if they wanted to get back to camp, they should head up slope, not along a ravine in the middle of a valley. Fact is, 3 of the 9 knew where the tent was and were heading for it. There is no reason to suppose the others didn’t. In all likelihood, they’d been together all that time.
So it seems to me like a deliberate decision to split up. I think they knew very well what they were doing. What I don’t know is WHY they were doing it. What was it about that mountain that made them want to avoid it so much.

While the terrain was steep enough for an avalanche, apparently they were very uncommon in the area.  Dyatlov and Zolotarev are very experienced ski-hikers, and wouldn’t have chosen to make camp anywhere they thought had a real avalanche risk.  
Maybe a freak avalanche did happen. Or maybe the military was in the area, and were testing conventional ordnance (not nuclear).  If it was a bomb dropped from a military aircraft, that might explain the sightings of orange lights or spheres in the sky.  Say there was a bombing run much higher up the mountain, triggering an avalanche that hits the tent.  The tent is pitched crosswise to the slope, so a heavy mass of snow hitting it would have collapsed the middle first; the poles were still upright but were pulled inward.  Dyatlov’s crew wakes up to the thunder of explosions and their tent collapsing in the middle under a minor avalanche; they panic.  Half the crew gets out the front entrance, half are trapped at the back and cut their way out. 

Dyatlov and Zolotarev are smart enough to know you don’t escape an avalanche by running downhill.  Maybe they see the explosions farther up the mountain and decide the first thing to do is get to the nearest cover, which happens to be the tree line downhill.  Dyatlov placing the flashlight on the tent seems to indicate he’s still thinking clearly, so it was a conscious decision to run for cover rather than head across to the ridge.  Or maybe the whole group just panics, and runs downhill because it’s the fastest way to get away, and Dyatlov has no choice but to follow and stay with them.

The rest happens pretty much as Dave’s much earlier post describes.  The radiation is a red herring; several possibilities have already been posted, and it likely had nothing to do with the incident itself.

Also is there anything about if the tracks indicated they were walking or running from the tent? If they left without clothes even in a panic I’d think someone would hold onto their blanket or something, so maybe they were marched out.

The threat from the air was probably from those orbs. And those orbs were stationary from what I gather, and they didn’t explode and disappear like a bomb or the neighboring campers would have noted this.

It could also be some kind of gas or bio weapon in the air which makes you go crazy when you inhale.

The lights reported by the other campers must have had something to do with it. Maybe someone knows more about the light? Like did they vanish instantly indicating a bomb? Or stay there floating indicating aliens or military.

Bears sleep in winter.

The 1st question, i believe everone agrees on its why did they flee and further more why not by exiting normaly but cutting open and improvised exit.
I beleive they must have been surprised by a creature posing an obvious deadly threat, being the brown bear the most likely candidate. Not common on those regions, its not at all impossible one might have wandered by and settled in the region, having defined that area its hunting region. In that event, it would instictivly track and drive out any intruders. It in its attacked, it had engaged the camper in their tent blocking the entrance, cutting an alternative exit would be logical. That would explain not only that but the lack of clothing. You dont stop to put on your jacket with a 600 Kg bear on your heals.

But why didnt the bear persued, killed and eat at least one of then?
Well, if the bear was well feed and the issue was merely intrusion, once the intruders where driven away, they tend not to further persue unless provoked.

But why didnt they return?
It would be at all dificult for someone, even experienced camper and hickers to lose thenselves in a snow florest. They had no compasses, no maps, no equipment at all having flee in a hurry. Further more, i believe event 2 was or came into play. A snow storm. Lack of visibility, would make the task of returning to the camp even harder.

Why did the semi naked one died all together and the clothed one went all down the ravine?
Well, this would be a case of natural selection. The semi naked ones would die 1st due to hipotermia. Below zero conditions, with freezing winds, that would be extremely fast i supose. The survivors did what needed to be done to survive. They prolly took what little clothes they dead had and tried to reach the camp.
In low visibility conditions, you tend to walk very close to your partners, prolly even holding hands or grabbing the belt or coat of the front person. If the 1st one fell down a ravine he failed to notice, it could cause the all party to fall down.

What about the injuries? The non fatal head wound on one of the hipotermia victims?

Prolly mauled by the bear.

And the broken ribs and skull of the ravine casualities?

Most likely caused by the fall. Its higly unliky they would survive that sort of wounds if caused by the bear.

And the missing tongue?

It is intringing indeed. I supose it could also been severed during the tumble down the ravine and eventually carried away by some small scavanger creature.

Finaly, what about the “tan” and radioactive clothes?

Here, come that thirth factor. WW2 had ended a decade and half ago. But there were still new technologies to find out, especialy nuclear power. URSS was without a doubt developing new weapons. Could there have been an undeclared recent test in the vacinities. I am not talking a nuclear explosion. Prolly something else involving nuclear power, that leaked in the area.

Well… this is my theory. Prolly, it is totally wrong and something totaly different happened and we will never know. Meanwhile, i guess its fun to speculate. Pardon my English.