The year is 1959. Nine hikers from the Soviet Union embarked on a trek through the Ural Mountains, only to vanish. A search party was assembled weeks later to find out what happened, but what they uncovered only led to more questions.

The hikers’ tent contained their protective clothing, maps, and food. The tent had been slashed open, presumably to provide an urgent escape. But what of the nine missing hikers?

The first two hikers’ bodies were found near an extinguished campfire, presumably having frozen to death. Three more bodies were found in the same general area, one of which belonged to the group leader. The rest of the bodies were found in what was believed to be a makeshift shelter near a ravine.

The reason the Dyatlov Pass incident is so infamous and well-known is not because of the fact that nine hikers met their end in the mountains, but rather the details that accompanied the tragedy:

The snow outside the tent contained bare footprints. The hikers had left their tent without their boots; as mentioned, their apparel was found inside by the search party. The first two bodies which were said to have frozen to death exhibited, quite strangely, burn marks. Among the other men’s bodies, physical anomalies persisted. Two had fractured skulls, two more had shattered ribs, two were missing their eyes, one was missing their eyebrows, and one had lost their tongue.

If you weren’t already, try imagining what kind of series of events must have taken place to result in such a scene. The prosecutor covering this case would come to, perhaps out of utter bafflement, attribute these hikers’ deaths to “an overwhelming force.”

What in the world happened to these hikers in 1959? Why were they so desperate to escape their tent that they not only slashed their way out, but went running through the snow in their bare feet with dangerously little clothing? What caused the horrifically precise wounds, such as the missing eyes and tongue? An “overwhelming force” indeed would be necessary to fracture the hikers’ skulls and ribs.

Let us also make sure to note that these hikers were not what you could call amateurs. They were experienced members of the Ural Polytechnic Institute. This fact should be considered whenever one tries to reason the cause of this horror story.

Now that the details are out of the way, the central question still remains: what happened? Naturally, there are many, many theories. Some of these theories are based solely in science while others are much more outlandish.

One idea suggests that an indigenous group living in the region, the Mansi, may have murdered the hikers for trespassing. This would help explain the brutality and precision of the wounds. However, this claim has largely been denounced by credible sources.

Other theories connect the incident to the military or espionage—for instance, the idea that there was a connection between the KGB and the CIA which necessitated the group’s removal. While a nice plot for a thriller movie, this begs the question of why the bodies were damaged the way that they were, and why more effort wasn’t put into covering up the evidence. Interestingly, earlier this year a new theory attributing the tragedy to a failed rocket launch and nitric acid fog was actually backed by some relatives of the late hikers.

A very popular—if somewhat boring—theory is that the hikers fell victim to an avalanche in the mountains. Panic from the avalanche could have led the hikers to fleeing without proper equipment. The weight of the avalanche could have also potentially caused the brutal wounds suffered by the hikers’ skeletons. Yet even then, one Vladislav Karelin, a researcher who was involved in the original 1959 search, does not buy into the avalanche theory. According to him, the scene the search party came across lacked enough snow to suggest a recent avalanche (Newcomb, 2023).

It seems like the truth regarding the Dyatlov Pass incident has still yet to be uncovered, if it ever will. With enough research and study, however, it’s possible the mystery may finally be cracked in our lifetime. Until then, we mustn’t forget that this event was still a tragedy. This group was made up of people in their twenties with their entire lives ahead of them, only for it to be snuffed out by something we still have yet to identify. We can only hope that their last moments, whatever they entailed, were not spent in suffering.

The Dyatlov Pass incident is one of the most famous wilderness mysteries of the past century. If you’d like to learn more, there is a wide array of websites, news articles, YouTube documentaries, and podcasts discussing the topic in greater detail.

— r

Further reading:

If you’d like to look more into the many theories surrounding this incident, I’d recommend reading one or both of these articles by Sky History and Meilan Solly (2021).

For more about the rocket launch theory I mentioned, you can check out the article written by Tim Newcomb (2023).