Were the Dyatlov Pass Hikers Murdered?

who really shot JFK. One of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century is what happened to nine hikers found dead at the now named diet Love Pass in the Ural Mountains of Russia in nineteen fifty nine, And although it happened decades ago, government officials in Russia are once again working on a preliminary investigation that can ultimately reopen the case in an effort to resolve its unanswered questions and give some peace to the families who

never really understood how their loved ones died. The odd series of events started in the winter of nineteen fifty nine, when savvy outdoorsman and twenty three year old college student Igor diet Love assembled a group of ten people to go on a skiing and hiking journey through a north stretch of the Ural Mountains in what was then the Soviet Union. The adventure wasn't just a group of crazy college kids on a lark. They didn't pack booze or cigarettes.

It wasn't a vacation. It was a mission. All of them, eight men and two women, were experienced outdoorsy types with Grade two hiker certifications including ski experience, and the one hundred and ninety mile that's three hundred and six kilometer journey would qualify them for Grade three status, the highest possible certification in the country at the time. On January they set out into the cold and snow. Almost immediately, one man felt physically unwell and turned back for home.

He couldn't have known at the time that his ailments would save him from certain death. The nine others continued onward. On January thirty one, the group reached a critical way point, a valley that marked the approach to what would eventually come to be called Diet Love Pass. There they stashed extra gear and food that they need for their return trip.

The following morning, they began their ascent, hoping to push over the pass and then make camp, but a fierce snow storm pushed them off their intended route and onto the slopes of a mountain which, in the language of the indigenous people who lived there means dead mountain. The altered route meant that the team had to choose a new campsite rather than retreating to a more protected area. They opted, for whatever reason, to camp on the mountains

exposed slopes. Perhaps they simply didn't want to lose the ground they had gained. Maybe they were too cold and weary to fall back. In any case, they pitched their large shared tent, where they would soon be subjected to temperatures that nose dived to around negative forty degrees in both fahrenheit and celsius. Researchers know this much thanks to journals and film recovered from the camp, but much of what transpired during the next two days is hard to understand.

The group failed to arrive at a rendezvous point at a predetermined time, so search and rescue teams, including army units, set out to find them. Three weeks later, on February ninety nine, the searchers finally located the rue and camp amid a string of truly weird circumstances. How weird, let us count the ways. The tent was half covered with snow, torn open from the inside, was no one around the group's belongings, including vital necessities like shoes, had been left behind.

A line of footprints indicated that the nine people had walked away at normal speed, but some just wore one shoe or were totally barefoot. About a third of a mile that's about half a kilometer away, there was evidence of a campfire along with the shoelace and mostly naked remains of two group members. Within several hundred feet between the campfire and the tent, they located three more bodies, frozen in poses that made it seem as though they

were attempting to return to the camp. It wasn't until May fourth of that year that the weather warmed enough for investigators to track down the other dead, whose remains were found a few dozen feet from the chaotic campfire. Their bodies lodged in a creek bed. Autopsies show that the first six hikers found died of hypothermia, but the three found in the ravine suffered a variety of injuries, including skull and chest fractures. One woman's eyes and tongue

were missing. Yet there was no sign of struggle, which seemed to rule out foul play. Pictures recovered from cameras at the scene seemed to portray a group that started in high spirits but ended with dour and anxious faces, perhaps because they thought they were lost, or maybe there was some other danger afoot. One photo shows tree markings made by local Muncie people. Another shows an unidentified figure that some people believe could be an intruder or more outlandishly,

a yetti. Officials first suspected that the Munsey might have been offended by the trespassers on their sacred land, causing them to lash out in violence against the hikers, but in the end, investigators concluded that no one else was on the mountain when the hikers died. By the end of May, the investigation was officially ended. The causes of death were listed as compelling natural force. Some documents were then classified, and the area was closed to public access

for years following the instant. Given the circumstances, you can see how surviving family members might be unsatisfied with the government's vague conclusion. In the vacuum of an actual explanation, many wild theories took root. One postulates that there was an avalanche, extreme high winds, or a wild animal attack. Another tells of a possible lover's quarrel combined with a psychedelic drug obtained from locals, causing a wild sequence of events.

Others think deep infrasound vibrations conjured by winds roaring over the mountain pass incited panic in the group, since some of the hiker's clothes were found to be radioactive. Perhaps they stumbled unwittingly onto a military weapons experiment, And of

course there's a theory that aliens were involved. Locals later told officials that had spotted unidentified flying objects over the area the night of the deaths, though it was later revealed that the military was testing parachute mines in the

region when the group was killed. Now more than sixty years later, the cases escalated from regional authorities to a federal branch of the country's Investigative Committee, which obtained all relevant documents regarding the deaths as part of the research process. To begin the fresh inquiry, officials whittled down their list of possible causes to just three of the most likely hypotheses, all of which centered on natural causes a hurricane, avalanche,

or snow slab. The idea was that did revisit the area with those three possibilities in mind in hopes of untangling the course of events, but investigators were dealt a tough hand right from the start. None of the three possibilities seems to explain why the hikers slashed through their tent and fled without any clothes, or why there was

no real evidence that an avalanche had taken place. In fact, in more than one hundred subsequent expeditions to the area, no one has ever reported avalanches in that area, or why the hiker's footprints were visible and not covered by snow, further deflating the avalanche theory. Plus, although the tent collapsed laterally, there was no evidence of horizontal force that would have

indicated sliding snow and ice. All of the strange circumstances so puzzled Theodora Hadgitzka that she launched Diet Love Pass dot com as a comprehensive archive of many documents and images related to the case. Born in Bulgaria, she's one of the few people who's taken the time to translate the many Russian files into English and has created a comprehensive database of all the photos, evidence, and theories, making

her an expert on the tragedy. In an email interview, Hajitska said the information that's publicly available, either by ineptitude or more ominously, by design, does not fully explain what happened to the hikers. She's also far from convinced that the government is trying to truly solve the case, rather than using half measures to pacify families still yearning for answers. After years of picking through the information, she has her

suspicions about what transpired on that frozen mountain. Her take the hikers were murdered. Jetska thinks that something alarmed the group and they clambered out of the tent. Then her theory goes, armed people confronted them and there was a brief scuffle. She said the hikers were marched down to the tree line to die from exposure. They didn't know that. They thought the perpetrators were after their belongings, so they complied. She thinks that's certain that their victims would quickly perish

in the life draining cold. The murderers wandered back to the tent. Her theory goes that the half naked group frantically and perhaps miraculously managed to start a campfire. Which alerted their foes, who rushed back down the hill to finish them off. By then, the three who were wearing more substantial clothing, had moved away from the fire in a bid to create a shallow snow down in which to survive the night. But soon they two were found

killed and then dragged to the creek. A. Jitsica said, it still lacks the who and why, but this scenario explains the mysterious behavior of the hikers. It's a murder, so it doesn't have to make sense. Little can be safely deduced from the fact, but at least there's no doubt that somebody helped them die. She feels certain that the group was under attack in three separate instances, at the tent, then the tree line, and then at the

snow den. She said the whole ordeal must have taken hours, even if something scared them at the tent fireball avalanche. YETI that something had to follow them to the cedar after they had time to make the fire. That's because building a fire does take time, which means that the hikers were under the impression that they would make it

through the night. They also had time and energy to make the den she believes this hypothesis shows a pattern of assailants following the group and escalating the attack amid unbearably cold and perhaps blizzard like conditions where confusion and panic affected all parties. To date, Russian authorities have not released a statement regarding what's still considered a preliminary investigation, but they have assured the public that modern forensics and

analysis will be used during this phase. Perhaps, with new insights, they'll finally rest real answers from the grips of an icy, cold tragedy that seems frozen in time. Or maybe, just maybe those who really know what happened on the slopes of Dead Mountain will do everything they can to further bury the truth in an avalanche of half truths and lies. Today's episode was certain by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's

How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.