Thinking Sideways: Dyatlov Pass Incident

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, So be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking sideways. I don't you never know stories of things we simply don't know the answer too. Hello there, this is in case you're

wondering thinking sideways. We are the people who take on unsolved mysteries and we solved them world and you know, and sometimes you know, I don't know. To solve them, we have to sort of make stuff. But now actually we've tried to solve them. But we usually don't succeed anyway. My name is Joe, and in this podcast we're going to tackle our toughest mystery ever, which was why did anybody ever buy a pet rock? Okay, okay, just kidding, and if you're one of those people, please don't be kidding.

All right, Well, we're actually going to talk about is a little incident that one of our listeners recommended to us, uh, the Outloft Pass incident, which happened in Russia and the Ural Mountains back in It's one of those big mysterious things that's rocketed around the Internet, and of course it was rocketing around before the Internet existed, so there was a lot of speculation even way back in the day as to exactly what did in these nine intrepid ski

hikers in Russia. A little background. These guys were their Their leader was Igor I'm not gonna try to pronounce his middle name, Igor the out Loft. He was twenty three years old. He was the organizer and leader of the group. Uh. And there were nine other people, one of whom dropped out due to illness, seven men and two women, and they headed off into the northern Urals

to a place called the Mountain of the Dead. Yeah, it's like one of those things, Hey, what do you say you want to go for a little hike to the Mountain of the Dead, and you're like, yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah, Now it's apparently it's it's actually Dead Mountain and the local dialect of the local natives there, and it doesn't really mean like you're gonna eye if you're gonna go there. It's not quite like

Skull Island. Apparently, it means that it's kind of a place where nothing's really going on from their point of view. If you know, if you can't go up there and kill animals for food and pelts, then it's really kind of useless. So they called a dead Mountain because this wasn't so good. I know, I know, I love Mountain of the Dead and all that stuff. That was that

was very cool, Yeah, I know, it's very cool. The expedition was actually to reach a mountain somewhat beyond the Mountain of the Dead, and this was just a little waist, a little just a little stop over for the night on their journey, and they were practicing for a more arctic expedition. They were actually getting a little practice for a serious, serious, like really kick ass expedition. Uh. And

it was really tells you something about these guys. They must have been really hardy people to go off and just say it's gonna be a little practice run and then head up a mountain side of deep deep snow and camp overnight and all this stuff and we were gonna be gone for days in the winter time. That they did this too. Yeah, yeah, it was that was

they actually was they let in. They actually set out in late January, and they were due to arrive back in about February eleven, and of course they were overdue getting back, but people were too alarmed because expeditions like this can be laid obviously, and so but after a while people started sending out the alarm because these guys had not returned, and so eventually a search party was organized and sent up there. Eventually involved aircraft, helicopters, etcetera.

And they eventually found one of their tents. The tent was in the snow. It had been It was on the hillside, about a mile above the tree line, on the hillside of this mountain, the Mountain of the Dead. If I didn't mention that before, Yeah, And interestingly, the tents had been slashed. I think they found one tent and then they found, to believe another, And that's one of the frustrating things about about investigating this thing, is like,

I don't know how many tents there were. Some refer to just one tent, as if they all slept in one giant tent, but looking at the pictures, it doesn't look like any of the tents were big enough for all the entire groups. So I believe there were two or three or four tents, but I'm not really sure. It's frustrating. I mean, we'll have to travel to Russia

really find it. Well, it is in Soviet Russia during the Cold War era, so a lot of suppressing details that in reports that have eventually surfaced still hit and miss things missing. So yeah, I wondered that too when I saw the pictures. So how long did it take before the rescuers finally found them? It was about three weeks, and they found the tent. They went down. They found footprints radiating away from the tents heading down the hill.

Footprints like bootprints, but or like footprints footprints. You know, it's again after several weeks of exposure to whether it's it's probably a little hard to tell, but there was there has been a claim that made that appeared that from the footprints, as some of the people were not wearing shoes. Yeah, and again it's like you know, as always,

and this is always a case. Can't get around the fact that people over the years have in started their own little weird things into these stories that may not necessarily be true. On the face of it appears that they went down the hill following the footprints. The footprints eventually disappeared, but they continued on in that general direction to the tree line. At the tree line they find a big pine tree that there was a fire under. The fire was obviously burned out at this but somebody

had built a fire there. There was that the branches of the tree had been torn off to about fifteen feet up. Some of the accounts of this had talk about the sheer panic that these people must have been in because they were running from some incredible horror that's scared about of their tent made him run down the hillside in their underwear without boots on, and then they tried to scramble up this tree and tore off branches up to fifteen ft high, okay, so that they found

a few of the bodies there. They were nine overall. Three of the bodies they found further up the hillside between the campfire and the tents, and they appeared to be headed, had to have been headed back up towards the tents. The four remaining bodies were found in a nearby ravine. Those bodies had suffered quite a bit of trauma. According to Soviet investigators, the cause of death was quote

a compelling natural force unquote. In other words, as their chests to make a couple of chests have been crushed, skulls cracked, etcetera. Yeah, and so that has caused intense intense speculation about things like you know, the abominable snowman uh Soviet military tests. One theory is that the local natives, I forget the name of the local natives had were offended that they there, they trespassed into their territory, and

so they had like brutally killed them. One of the one of the bodies, one of the women that was found in the ravine, was missing her tongue, so speculated that the same tribesmen had cut her tongue out before pushing her into the ravine. What how? What? What was the proximity of the ravine to the camp, to the camp and to the campfire. It's like, so if the campus up the hillside, then you go straight down the hillside, you find the campfire. If you go left from there,

you go it's like several feet and there's a ravine. Yeah, not not far away. The people found in the ravine were wearing pieces of clothing that had obviously been taken off the other the bodies of their compatriots. It appeared that they died the last of all of them because they were out in the snow and the freezing cold,

because it was sub zero. It was sub zero. It was sub zero, and these people, after their friends had died of hypothermia, then they took their clothes obviously because they needed to survive, and then stumbled off and god knows exactly what they intended to do. Uh So, anyway, other other theories to see, there is a condition that when you when you go into deep hypothermia, you stopped thinking correctly need things like taking your clothes up because

you think you're too hot and things like that. So that's another possibility. These people were just disoriented because of that? Was there any other weirdness about the bodies? Some supposedly they scanned the clothes for radioactivity and three articles of clothing out of all the articles of clothing and there

were radioactive. Now I'm not really sure. There's been a little bit debunking about that whole thing, and apparently some people say that the whole radioactivity thing was basically just inserted into the story later and it would never actually happen.

I'm not really I mean to me that the whole thing about it was is if the clothes were if three articles of clothing were radioactive, if they had been exposed to radioactivity, then shouldn't been Yeah, shouldn't all their tooth for example, the feelings in their teeth should be highly radioactive. And so so I'm not really sure, And so that leads me to be that leads me to be a little skeptical about the radioactivity thing. Sure, and

you know, correct me if I'm wrong. But I remember reading about this and they said that some of the bodies had a weird orange que to them and their hung Yeah, and you know, I don't know how much of that is just if you lay on your son I mean, I'm not sure what the effects of exposure in and of itself are, but it has been said that they might have been deeply tanned because they were laying in the sun for weeks and they lit out their shirts on. So so that's that's quite possibly what

it is. Discolored, not rotting because it's too cold, but discolored. Yeah, And I'm not sure what the effects of prospite on your skin would be and if that would that would discolor your skin also, well they usually goes back, well if if it lasts long ago, but if you die, if you die, yeah, if you die before then, it might just discolor you a little bit. So I you know, So I'm not really sure. But apparently as some of the family members did did say that they were sort

of orange colored. They might have just eaten all the carrots in the previous weeks. I don't know. So the what are the theories? Can you really lay them out for? Well, the most compelling theory is um they went to bed. Nobody knows exactly when they when they went to sleep, but it appears that this incident that set them down the hillside happened sometime between seven and eleven o'clock and

that evening. I'm not sure how anybody managed to extrapolate that, but okay, we'll take them with their word for that. I remember reading that what they had done is they examined the contents of their stomachs, and they figure, you're hiking in the day and you're gonna make camp before the sun goes down the point you're gonna eat and then go to bed. So if there's less than eight hours of digestion, then they can kind of give it

a time frame. That's how I'm guessing they know what the time frame is because a lot of things that I saw a reference that they looked at their stomach content. So anyway, so in the night, they were presumably asleep in their tents or tent. What happened They heard a noise, somebody turns on a light and in the doorway to their tent there's standing a cara. This is actually, this is actually. Uh So anyway, they are of course terrified that now there's it's not this is a theory that's

out there. You're not just making this up. Well, we'll get to that. It's okay, okay, So it's unknown whether the cheap a Cabra admitted a hideous cackling laugh or not. But what is heard. But what is what is what is intensely speculated, is at that moment the cheoper Cabra, without even asking if it was okay, pulled out a cigar and lit it. Now we all know about the dangerous effects, so second hand smoke, Steve, so I can tell you if he's making this up or yeah, you

know I'm making it up. Okay, Okay, So let's get back to Mr Chipikabra side. Okay, there has been talking about speculation, of course, about UFOs um and I'm not I'm not really sure with the background. I mean, what what have you found that people have said supports the UFO theory. I haven't found anything to support the UFO theory. I mean the radiation, but I don't. I don't, so I don't really think that that's supported by the evidence.

And you know, I've I've seen stuff that said that people had reported for months that they had seen weird orange glowing lights and that there was another group that was out at that same time, fifty miles away that had seen an orange light flying around in the direction of the mountain that they were on on that very same night. Yeah and so and so, you know, speculation could be that a UFO shoes and shows up, Lily Green Man pop up in their in their campsite, and

they flee and terror. But the problem I have with this theory is that it's five degrees below zero, and so if I've got to say, if I have to choose between the possibility that the Little Green Man is going to eat me, which is just a possibility, and the certainty that if I run off into the into the arctic cold with my no clothes on, that I'm going to die. I'm gonna I'm gonna hang out and see what the Little Green Man's attentions are. I mean, it's it's not the it's not you know, to me,

it's not credible. Okay, So I want to run down this path. There's some research that I came across that I'd like to to flesh out on this supposed UFO sighting in the area. Yeah. Uh, And I don't have the location markers to reference on this article that I found, but I think it was at the time they were testing there, it was a nuclear missile, the R forty

seven is what I want to say, hauled. And they were launching it from a site that if you were to look at it on a map for where this other camp fifty miles away was where this group of skiers was at, and then the launch point, the launch point sent it directly across all of them to what was known as a testing ground for nuclear missiles. So it's very valid that this other group said we saw the strange George Lightnings guy, You're right. It was a rocket.

It was the biggest rocket you had ever seen, and they had no idea because it didn't have any running like to on. They see this orange glow. It's just rocket obviously in very very low orbit because it's going let's say a couple hundred miles only to then explode, and they're going to test it. So that's why this other group of campers thought they saw the strange glow it was a nuclear test. Yeah, not even a nuclear test, just a rocket test. I mean, I'm sure they didn't

have a warhead on that thing. That Yeah, it was testing. They were shooting it, yeah, yeah, so yeah, it could easily have been that. I Mean, the thing about you about UFOs is there's all kinds of stuff flying around up there. I mean there's airplanes and helicopters and rockets and meteors and all kinds of stuff. Other theories, let me see, we did I talk about the cheoper cabra. Okay, I did? Okay, right, Yeah, it's always a damn cheoper cabra.

The other, well, you know, the other theories is that they were confronted with some hideous something god knows what. Um there was that talk about. You know, why would they why would they leave? Why would they flee their tense You know, they've left without footwear, without you know, their parks, without all conso, so why would they do that unless they were they cut their way out of it.

They did. There was evidence that they cut their way up from the inside and then and then fled, and then fled and tear down the hillside from whatever hideous unknown thing it was, and then tore to a bunch of branches off this tree trying to climb the tree to get away from whatever this thing was. But of course there was a campfire right there they tried to build.

So I mean, I think that it's pretty obvious the branches were torn off because they were desperately trying to get as much firewood as they possibly could to get a fire going. Well and crappy if I'm wrong, But the two that were found at the tree that the first ones to die, weren't their hands completely mangled from cold and then trying to break wood off, and they just they cut the holy hack out of themselves and

tore their hands to pieces. Yeah, and one and one, yeah and one version of this the story is telling they tore their hands to pieces because they were that scared of whatever it was that was after them. But but really, and more likely, the tore they has to pieces because they were that desperate to get some firewood, right damn now, because really what it was and so and and and of course the weakness of that theory too is that it just speculates as some hideous unknown Well,

and they were still with the sprints. Yeah, it's hideous creature, which lends creators to the troupe of copper theory. Well, the cidious creature left no footprints, isn't There Also, and I think that you briefly mentioned this, which is also falls apart in the face of no footprints, is the fact that the local natives that were blamed for In

one version of it, we're blamed for killing them. Uh there a there was no other people footprints or at those people that same tribe helped in the search for them. And again in the tellings that are fantastical about well it's the you know, the yetie or whatever it is, Well, that creature punched them and broke their bones, that it was people doing it. It was too much force for a human to have exerted on another human were leaving

like repeated beating marks or something. So but again this is all debacked by the fact that there simply are no footprints, no physical others whatsoever that any of this happened. And frankly, motive is kind of missing. Well what there is? Have you come across about why her tongue was gone? Small animals or medium sized animals? Yeah, my theory is that you know, they died. You know, the big mystery for me is this, like, first, why did they flee

their tents? Because I think the timeline the I can totally understand the motives. Right, you're building the fire, You're cold as hell because you've got hypothermia. You know, some of you were in certain states of more undressed than others, you know, so you're like, all right, the threat is gone. We're going to go back up there, you know, freeze to death on your way up or whatever happened to them,

you know, the other ones freeze down here. Everybody's just trying to survive, and then an avalanche comes along kills these last four people in this ravine. They fall into ravene or you know whatever. I expect an avalanche and small you know, she dies with her mouth open. Small animal comes along and it's like, well, that's an easy thing to eat, exactly, gnaws it out of her mouth

first frozen. I'm not sure about the avalanche. Like, for example, I came across the site that supposedly deep at all all of this stuff and said the shredding and a tent for example, was consistent with just an avalanche. But the fact of the matter is is they found the tents, and so if they've been spared by an avalanche, you know, I don't think that they would have been found every Yeah, so that was kind of my my thought at the beginning was that they heard an avalanche coming, so they

you know, bailed. But it was my original understanding of this story. I had never heard the part about the the fire down below that had survived whatever they originally fleet. It was my understanding that in the flight, you know, everybody died in some no actually some of them for a while for a while. Yeah, So it was my understanding that I was like I, I always thought, well,

this is obviously just an avalanche. You know, it could have torn the tents up a little bit, it could have been smaller up there and gained well, wanna, I actually have got to say that personally, the avalanche makes the most sense to me, and me flesh this out. Okay, Um, so have we've all lived in areas where it's snowed a lot, so you've seen ice shifted and big snow chunks move, and it's sometimes it's not a giant, giant, traumatic,

dramatic thing, and precisely it could be. Right. So here's here's what I I've seen the photos where because they recovered the cameras that they were taking pictures of themselves with, and somebody took a photo of them making camp, they didn't set their tents on top of the snow. They dug into the snow. They dug in what looks like a good two to three feet. What do yeah, what

you do? Okay, there hadn't been any heavy snowfall in that area for a couple of weeks, so now it's evidently been I'm guessing relatively for the area temper weather,

and now we get more snow. What happened to me would be that it wasn't a massive avalanche like you see on television, but more of this huge let's just say, five chunk of ice that's buried down suddenly shifts and drops a couple of feet and shakes everything up and scares everybody, and snow piles up and their tent kind of gets buried, so they have to cut their way out. That yeah, okay, it's a massive avalanche, but it's enough movement to get everybody in a panic where I want

to take time to put all my clothes on. Oh gosh, the big ones coming and we gotta get I guess I just think that like in that circumstance, if they're at all seasoned mountaineers of any kind, especially in Russia, right where as cold as hell, you grab something parker, you grab your boot, you grab your sleeping bag. But in the panic of the moment. But you know that is the thing too, is I was I was speculating.

It was exactly what you were talking about. Their tent got a little bit buried to where they had to hack their way out of it, and they were all scared. But at the same time, these people should be rational enough to know that, uh, we're not moving anymore. There might be a couple extra seconds, Yeah, there might be. There might be an avalanche right about to smack me. But if I run away now with no clothes and no shoes, I'm going to die for sure, you know.

And so you're you're putting rational thought into a very irrational senses. So I wonder, actually, I have this question every time I've ever gone camping. You take a bottle of camping whiskey with you, right, do you take? Or if you're in Russia, maybe you vodka, you know whatever. So I don't know if they found if they were inebriate at all, you know, they had made camp for the night, maybe they were, you know, having a drink

or two. I think that if I were a little drunk woke up to what I thought was an avalanche, you know, I would probably I would be more prone to believe that these people would just bail because I think that, you know, it's my impression that if when an avalanche comes, you can kind of hear it coming.

So if you wake up in the middle of the night and it's shifted but everything is still still and quiet, you cut your way out and you're like, gosh, it's cold, you know, and I don't hear anything, I don't see anything.

You kind of assess your situation. And I have been in situations in the outdoors of survival before, just personally, and I know that if you were at all trained, if you're at all seasoned, the first thing you do when you're in that situation is, you know, to take the like five extra seconds to analyze your situation, unless you're drunk, yeah right, you know, like it's built in its second nature for you to take that extra five

seconds to say, am I in absolute immediate danger? Or am I you know, screwing myself over in the future? And you know, that's really all it takes. And I don't know, you know, avalanches happened really fast, and that's totally fair. But I think that if they had any kind of experience with this, they would know, well, enough in my mind, at least they would know well enough

to just say, I'm grabbing something a backpack. You would think something you would think, and it's it's It's also possible that if they if their turk got buried for a while, then they were and they were buried under icy snow, then you know they were already by the time they cut their way out, experiencing hypothermia on top of being drunk. So that might have interfered with their thought process is just a little bit. But but what it does appear that they fled in panic, probably because

they thought an avalanche was coming. They ran down, they tried to build a fire, and they built a fire. They succeeded in that, but then they realized fire or not, they were screwed unless they got back and got their stuff. Three of them headed back up the hill and never made it. And those three when their bodies were found, they weren't found together. Yeah, that was what why they didn't when when they initially found the camp and then they found the tree, they didn't find those three bodies

along the way. Those three people were like a hundred meters apart or something. Yeah, probably right, they were spread out like one dropt and I I gotta go, and then finally, you know, I can't do it anymore. Which were the three that were found? Were one of them? One of them? So that one some credence to that theory, if you know, if the guy who's leading it, who's probably the most clear minded, says, all right, it's mean

like you two, we gotta go. You guys can and you guys stay here and keep the fire going and tear branches off the tree by the way and keep it going, and so and then as for the other ones, apparently they had taken clothing articles off the people that were left there by the campfire and who were wearing their underwhere, so they must they must have all found each other. But then these guys, I don't know why

I took off wind up. I think, in my opinion that you're you're thinking about an avalanche as possible, it's also possible they just fell into the ravine and sustained you know, massive traumatic injury. Well that's the thing with ravines, especially when there's snow and ice covered. You don't see them, especially in the dark. Yeah, yeah, I guess, okay, And then again I'm just gonna keep poking holes in these theories.

Is that I know, mountain climbers and the way you go anywhere is you go on a single file line, right, So like you're walking behind, I've been there, right, and he goes down, You're not going to be like, well, I'll just keep walking, right because he's just like die. Unless your mind is followed from hypothermia, keep forgetting the hypotheria. Yeah, yeah, I mean, think about what's the best way to prevent hypothermia. Huddled together and you hold and you share body warmth.

So if you're trying to forward through the snow and you're bunched up together and one person falls and you're all tangled together, you'll all go over together. That's entirely possible to so know I any other thoughts, you guys know, I I personally I leaned towards the avalanche idea. Yeah, really,

I think the mini avalanche. I mean obviously it wasn't, yeah, but that's been my thinking, is that it's just a small avalanche bared them, scared the hell out of them, and yeah, I think an ice sheet underneath where they were just shifted and you know whatever, for whatever reason, panics and that's that's the one that I go, Yeah, I'm willing to accept that with the added caveats, either alcohol or they were experiencing hypothermia a little bit from

cold Barry Games. I still understand why they were sleeping in their underwear. But yeah, I guess when you're when you're camping out in the freezing weather, I understand that you take your shoes and socks off so you get good circulation when you're in sleep. But yeah, you keep your long Joan's in. Heck, when it's really cold, I will sleep in pants and all a sugar too. So I don't understand the they were not in. So I can tell you what my theory is to add to

your theory. My theory has to do with their events prior to them going to sleep. You know they had dinner, right, You think they were having no, I think they were having their drinking vodka. I think they got drunk. And when you're drunk, like and you're with a bunch of people,

what do you do? Sometimes people do you know if you're if you're getting drunk or you like get in and you're suffering because you like get your hot flashes or whatever you're getting your thing and you take off your clothes because who knows, but I think that there I think I suspect heavily that there was some kind of alcohol involved. And even if they and if they were taking clothes off, it was getting colder, they weren't feeling it because of the alcohol, and then they weren't

feeling it because of the hypothermia. You know, one of the symptoms of hypothermia is that you actually think that you're hot, often so you start to peel clothes off

severe hypothermia. Yeah, an, the reason, the reason they were wearing it just or underwears, and and this is something I learned years ago camping as a boy scout and a kid and everything, is that you actually stay warmer if you stripped down, if you keep your clothes on, for some paradoxical reason, you will actually be colder than if you're wearing your underwear. Yeah. No, it's just totally the truth that it goes against everything I've ever learned

in survival. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, well, that's a whole subject for another episode. Yeah, I mean, because yeah, that is like that was at least back, you know, two or three decades ago. That was the accepted wisdom is that you will stay warmer if you stripped under your shorts, that if you keep it then if you keep all your clothes on. So that's my speculation as to why they were in their shots. All right, Okay,

so mystery Salt. Congratulations you guys. Good job. Actually yeah, yeah, I think this one is not not exactly up in a shut, but I think we came close to it. Yeah. Uh. Anyway, if you'd like to contact us, and I know you do, our email addresses Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Uh, if you'd let check our website. It is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com anyway, So anyway, check out our website

for lots of links on it. It's got links to the show and lots of other unsolved mysteries out there if you haven't listened to us before. Okay, and also a shout out to Andrew, our listener who suggested this topic for tonight. Yes, thanks again that this was a good one. I had, I know, when we talked about before, I hadn't heard this one, and this was definitely a really interesting you know, it was actually an amazing coincidence.

I stumbled across this like a week before we got the suggestion from Andrew, and that was like the first I had ever heard of it, an interesting little mystery, which of course we solved. I like getting you know, listeners suggestions. Yeah. Absolutely, people find things all the time that we don't know about. I love to hear from folks.

I mean, we've we've gotten stuff before, so it's great. Absolutely, and Andrew, after you've heard what we have to say about it, if you think we're full of it, we'd like to hear from you again. Please. Anyway, that's it for now. I'm Joe. Goodbye, bye, bye bye,