Summary: Today's mystery comes to us all the way from Siberia in the super classy nation of Russia. Actually, if we want to be super accurate, this mystery actually took place in the Soviet Union, because the year was 1959. Just a side note here: the phrase the "Soviet Union" gives me chills...I mean, it was a pretty terrible regime, but the dudes really knew how to name a country. Like I said, we are going to be in Siberia today, which is the last place on earth I ever want to visit because, as far as I can understand it Siberia is only ever cold and miserable. Seriously, I spent a ton of time researching today's case, and I'm pretty sure I shivered the entire time I was reading about it. However, the unfortunate victims of today's story did not have the same sensibilities that I do. The people we are going to talk about today are people who made hiking in the Siberian wilderness their hobby, which I think is part of the reason that they are the subject of a mysteriYES episode and I am not. The name of today's story is the Dyatlov Pass Incident and is named after a 23-year-old college student named Igor Dyatlov. Along with most of the victims of the incident, Igor was a student at Ural Polytechnic University in Sverdlovsk, Russia’s fourth largest city, which is now known as Yekaterinburg. A descendant of a family of engineers, Igor was described as having a scientific mind and was a radio engineering student at the university. In addition to his technical acumen, Igor was also considered an expert hiker and cross country skier at the university, and would often lead groups on expeditions through Siberia. However, not just any old hiker could join a Dyatlov Expedition; only those skilled hikers who had earned their spot were invited along with him. Igor was also described as a totalitarian commander, and would have stringent rules such as no smoking and no drinking (which is very un-Russian), as well as requiring his comrades to regularly wash their feet, even when there was no heater or hot water. In January of 1959, Igor and eight other UPI students, who were all experienced hikers and skiers, planned to complete what was known as a Grade III expedition, which was the highest level that a hiker could attain in Soviet Russia. The parameters for what qualified as a Grade III expedition were as follows: at least 186 miles of hiking with a third of this being done on rough terrain, and must last at least sixteen days with at least 8 days spent in uninhabited regions, and at least six nights sleeping in a tent. In order to prove that their expedition was, in fact, worthy of a Grade III certification, the hikers had to thoroughly document their trip through journal entries and photographs. Because of this stipulation, we have quite a bit of information from the hikers about how their trip went leading up to the fateful night of their demise. The hikers planned to hike to Otorten Mountain in the Northern Ural Mountains. Because they would be making their hike in the heart of winter, the Dyatlov group could expect subzero temperatures and multiple feet of snow—which sounds like hell itself to me, but is apparently a somewhat desirable environment for these fine, upstanding Communists. The original group was made of seven men and two women in their early twenties. The men were Igor Dyatlov, Yuri Doroshenko, Alexander Kolevatov, Rustik Slobodin, Georgy Krivonishchenko, Koyla Thibault-Brignoles, and Yuri Yudin. The women were Lyuda Dubinina and Zina Kolmogorova. Just before the group got on the train out of Sverdlovsk, a thirty-seven-year-old acquaintance of Igor’s joined the group. His name was Sasha Zolotaryov, and even though he was quite a bit older, heavily tattooed, and a World War II veteran, he seemed to fit in with the rest of the group well. The group left Sverdlovsk on January 23, and had to make stops at several staging points before actually taking off into the Siberian wilderness.
