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Was that accidental given the condition they're in? In hypothermia now absolutely setting in? Did they just accidentally burn themselves or was it something else?
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. Filmmaker Liam Legueu was fascinated with the mystery surrounding the deaths of nine experienced Russian hikers in the Ural Mountains in nineteen fifty nine. Paul Holes and I talked about this case on Buried Bones, but Liam really really dug into the mystery. He has his own opinion and he shares it in his documentary
and unknown compelling force. We rarely do this, but we had to make this interview a two parter. So this is a story that people had recommended that I look at for quite a while, I never did, and when I finally did, I just thought, how come nobody's done
anything really big? It felt like, you know, on this story because it is such a mystery, and you know, I shows her true crime based and this is so fascinating to people when you know, they reached out from after we aired our episode of Buried Bones about it. When they were reaching out, people were mesmerized by the story. What drew you to it?
Yeah, well, like you, I mean, it's such a fascinating story, and I was. I listened to a podcast about it, and it'd been on my radio. I'm always interested in mysterious stories, so I'd heard about it before and listened to a great podcast talking about it, and it was all just, you know, everyone talking about ideas, but no one had really studied it and went there and tried to like really understand this. So I thought, this's gotta
be a documentary on this. So I googled around and there were a couple of TV show type episodes, but not really an in depth study, and I thought, this is crazy. Why doesn't someone just go there? There are so many wild theories. Why doesn't someone go there and just figure this out and like at least debunk some of the craziest ones. And so I thought, well, why don't I go? And so that was the beginnings of really the idea to having this idea to make this
film and to going there. Was only a couple of months. I saw this window of opportunity, got in touch with some people, and I was on a plane and it just unfolded so quickly.
We're going to hear in a little bit you'll describe what the conditions were like for this group, But tell me, how do you even approach getting to this location? Is it easier now than it was for them?
No, it's still very difficult. It's still remote where you know, we're one hundred tommi kilometers deep in the ural mountains, sub polar conditions. And so one of the reasons why I had to go so quickly was I wanted to go at the same time of year that they went, because I wanted to experience the conditions, because the conditions do play a part in this story and so if I went there in the summer, it wouldn't have the same effect. I wouldn't really get the idea of what
they were doing. So I managed to find a guide breathe or stupid enough to take me to the Datlove Path and we did an a nine day snow expedition to the Datlove Pass in sub polar conditions. So it's quite an advent.
So was it just you and this guide or did you have and you had crew?
Yeah, so very small crew. So we had essentially the filmmaking crew was myself and my my fellow camera friend Corey, and there was really just the two of us went to Russia, and then the crew that took us there was a team of about five or six people. There was actually two other guys on snowmobiles with us, and we took snowmobiles through part of the journey, and then there was actually a dog sled team following behind us, kind of a backup in case of emergencies. So yeah,
there was there was a couple of options. But there's a there's a moment in the film where I say, you know, what, what do we do if we get into trouble? What happens if someone gets hurt, what do we do. We're in the middle of nowhere, and he says, well, we have a GPS communicator and we can call someone to bring your body back.
Gosh.
So it was wasn't for the faint of heart.
And of course, you know we had heard in the past about the avalanche that happened in California and how horrific that was. Describe to me how that must have felt, knowing that things can turn on a dime in a place like that and you can be hit by an avalanche, Am I assuming right, with just no warning whatsoever?
Yeah, avalanches can certainly happen. I mean the research i'd done, which at that point I was only a few months into it, was perhaps limited, but from what I understood it, it was very unlikely that an avalanche can take part take place in this area. And so we'll get into that in a moment, because an avalanche is a big theory, but it's very unlikely an avalanche took place there, and
so I wasn't too concerned about avalanches. But when you're just that remote in incredibly cold temperatures, you know, that's the biggest concern. You could get hurt by falling off the snowmobile. And actually on our return journey, we did have a moment where the snowmobiles got stuck in too much powder. We couldn't get them going, so we were
all getting very cold, and that was a concern. I saw my guide getting worried, and he said, look, why don't two of us or three of us start walking just to keep our body temperatures up whilst they try and dig out the snowmobiles, because hanging around for very long at those temperatures will kill you.
Man. Tell me what the lowest temperature was when you were there, and how much snow? What's the maximum amount of snow that you experienced.
Yes, there's a moment in the film where we dig a tent really close to the Diatlov site and we're going to camp for the night and attempt to make it to the Datlov pass area the next day. Whilst that was happening, a snowstorm came in and I can't remember the exact temperatures, but we were and you know, I'm British, so I lean into Celsius, but we were like minus thirty something in Celsius, which is incredibly low.
I mean and the storm was coming in. There's a moment where I'm walking around thinking, oh, we're were kind of in trouble right now. So it was really a night where we had to hunker down the tent and just hope for better weather the next day. But it was that masses of snow, several feet of snow dumped on us that night that we were like that put the snowmobiles in trouble for our return journey.
Well, now let's go back to when this happened in nineteen fifty nine. Knowing this, this group of hikers would have known all of that, right that this was the kind of danger what motivates them to do this?
Yeah, so this is the interesting thing. So they were actually incredibly experienced outdoors people, and they were going for their Category three certificate, which is the highest category in training in this Soviet Union at the time, for their outdoor education. So they'd done a lot of this before.
They weren't amateurs. They knew what they were doing. They were many of them were members of the polytechnic school and they'd come from that area and they were students, most of them, and they knew what they were doing. They were out there they wanted this highest category. They'd already done the previous two categories. They'd done this before. And so yeah, as I said, they knew what they
were doing. And so these weren't amateurs, so they knew what to expect and they knew how to handle problems when they arose.
And had there been many people who had explored this area before they went there. This cannot be on some big route of mountaineering, I imagine.
So the exact route they were taking was fairly unique to them. It wasn't super explored. The maps at the time weren't super explored. They were actually heading to the mountain that they found on the tragedy happened on I say mountain, it feels more like a hill, actually a big hill, But they were actually going for a different mountain, mount or Tartan. That was their goal. They never reached
that goal, unfortunately. And yeah, this route so at all ten had been explored before, but this route that they were taking was fairly unique.
Tell me about potential. I don't know if predators is the right word, but what are the animals that they could encounter? Besides worrying about hypothermia and exhaustion, what were the animals they might encounter, and were there any people that they might encounter that they'd have to be concerned about.
Yeah, so, I mean, yes, there are bears out there. Bears are definitely an option in the theories that come up. So was this an animal attack? Bears are probably the only real animal that realistically could have been out there to harm them, but it's also unlikely. They're not not known for that, and when we get into the details a bit little later, there isn't There is not evidence of an animal attack. And in terms of people, so this is an interesting thing. So there are a number
of indigenous people that live in the area. There's two sort of known indigenous people, the Mansi people and the Khanti people, and they are known to be in and around the area. Now would they be cautious of them? There had historically been troubles with Soviet rushing people moving into the areas that were traditionally Mansi and Khanti people's areas, and there are some documented cases of violence between the
two peoples. But that's to say that at the same time, certainly in the area they were in, there were a number of Manti people who were involved in the search team, and they were actively helping and trying to help this whole matter. So, yeah, I wouldn't want to group a whole group of people and sort of, you know, sort of put a bad name to whole group of people. But were there individuals out there, unknown individuals? Yeah? Possibly, And again I can come to that a bit more in the moment.
Okay, well let's start from the beginning. How do they make this decision? And who are the but we're talking about? I think, you know the cases that I've done, this is the largest group that I've ever you know, that I've ever kind of tried to dig into and figure out what the personalities were, Like, how do you approach this in the film? How do you differentiate between all of these people?
Yeah? So I had this opportunity to go to Russia and try and speak to the people that knew them. Now, there was a gentleman who ran the foundation for trying to tell this story, a gentleman called Yuri Kunsfitch. It's another year. There's can be quite a few yuries in this story. But I met him and I stayed with him and his wife, A really wonderful gentleman who taken upon himself to really tell the whole story of the doubt love past story. And he explained to and showed
to me that, you know, these were real people. There were young students. They were ten hikers in all that went on this journey. Nine of them were young, between twenty and twenty three years old. One member was older. He was thirty seven years old. I believe he was an ex military guy who'd been through World War Two, so he's kind of an anomaly. And his name kind
of appear a little bit later. His name was a Sasha or Semyon's solitary off nickname Sasha, And just because he was older and ex military, he comes up in some of the kind of conspiracy theories, but we can get to that. But the rest of them were all students, They all knew each other, they all wanted this certificate, they all excited to do this, and they'd all done
it before. So how it approached it in the film was to really try and speak to some of the people that knew them and get them to tell some of their stories. And there were young people. There was some romantic relationships amongst the young people. It was it was two girls and seven guys, one guy and one girl had a relationship at some point and then they had it had called off, and she felt a little
bit upset that that happened. Maybe, But they kept diaries, and I should say that they kept diaries of this journey, and so this is how we know this information. And every night in the tent they would update their diaries, and so we got a fascinating insight as to who they were as just young people enjoying the great outdoors.
Sometimes I think about this, and when I interview people authors or filmmakers who use diaries, because I've used diaries too, of course, I often think about, you know, the people who are who are writing in these pages, it certainly would not have been thrilled about having their inmost thoughts broadcasted out. And I think about that, the responsibility of
picking and choosing the right things that are relevant. Did you ever have to really think about that with, you know, with these people who were out and they die mysteriously, and when you look in the diaries, you're looking for maybe clues, but really ways to illuminate them as people. But that responsibility is great, I think, yeah.
I mean, I think we're fortunate in this case that the diaries were mostly fairly brief and fairly factual because they were on the hype. They were writing in the tent at night, and you know they were they were they kept it kind of this is what we did today. These are the people we met along the way. That
it was fairly like that. But there are a few moments in the diaries that were just before the trip, particularly where one of the girls, Zena, she mentioned that her relationship with this other chap Rustam had had called off and she was a little bit disappointed about it, and she hoped that it wouldn't get weird on the trip. And so there's not too much information there, but it says something I think humanizes them and reminds us he's just young kids, just having a great time out there.
Were they well prepared from what you can tell her what experts have told you, knowing whatever was in their inventory list. And I know there's lots of photos, which is wonderful.
Yeah, So the photos are a key part of this mystery and the evidence that we have, and we we use a lot of those in the film, which is really good to kind of see them and see their journey. You see them having a lot of fun along the way. You know, they're goofing around in the snow and it's it's a great moment. But yeah, they were well prepared as you can and be in nineteen fifty nine. Obviously, the technology that we have now for outdoor wear and
tents and is so much better to me. Their tent looked horribly rude of entry to my eyes as an outdoors person myself now, but it worked. It was functional, and they had a stove that they would burn fuel on, like wood, and that was inside the tent, and it had a functional kind of chimney hole that would go out, and so they knew how to keep themselves warm. And as I said, they've done this many times before. They
were going for their highest category. This would allow them to be tutors and guides of their own right, so they could go out and take other students out with this category. So they knew what they were doing and they were prepared.
Yes, so they start out with ten, right, but then that changes at some point.
That's right. Yes, So one of the members, uri Udent, just about five days into the trip, he had to count. He had to kind of get out and head home. He suffered from like a psciatica back pain and it flared up and he just realized he couldn't go any further. And so they reached a logging community where they'd stayed for the night, and there was you know, local people working out in this area, and they said, hey, we can take you back. We've got a horse and cart somewhere.
We can give you a ride home and he can head back. So he had and there's that moment was actually captured in their photographs. They really took a lot of photographs with him hugging and saying goodbye to his friends, you know, fully upset to mister trip, but realizing, you know, he'll see them in a couple of weeks time and they'll catch up and everything will be great now. He
unfortunately he'd passed away before I went to Russia. But he really spent his whole life kind of feeling lost by this tragedy and not knowing what happened to them. And at his request, he asked to be buried in the same cemetery right next to and along with his friends in your kettering Berg in Russia. So yeah, it was a part of his life that really affected him.
So now once he is gone, the trip continues on. Are they on track where they end up is where they anticipated going, or does something go awry that turns them in a different direction.
They are pretty much on track. They're heading in the right direction, the heading where they're supposed to be going for sure. There's a little bit of debate as to why they decided to head up this mountain at this time, because what happens is on the night that this event happened, the weather did turn bad, and by the sounds of it, they didn't get very far from where they camped the night before, and to where the tent was eventually found
was not very far at all. So it looks like they'd hoped to go further over the ridge that day and maybe even push all the way to the mountain they were aiming for. They didn't make it, and so they decided to camp on this hill. And so they decided to camp on this hill, which this wasn't part of the plan as far as anyone could tell, and it's not the ideal place to camp. I think they were pushed into camping there because the weather had turned against them, and it probably was a white out blizzard.
And there are a few photos of them pitching the tent for the last time, and you could tell the conditions are very very bad. It does look like they had very poor visibility. So yeah, this was they forgured they'd make the best of it and camp here for the night.
Did somebody know what their planned root would be? Was there some sort of like manifest or itinerary that someone else had back at home?
Yeah? Absolutely, So their whole routemate had to be approved, planned out and approved by the governing body that was tracking and giving them certificate, and so this was discussed and approved in advance. So this was an approved route. There a little bit of deviation to it, which side of the ridge you may or may not go up on because it was fairly unexplored, and so you know, you have to make the best of it. But yeah, ultimately they were they were pretty much on track.
You know, I don't know if you spoke to family members or friends. I think you probably did. Of the people in this group, did anybody in their personal lives express trepidation about them making this trip knowing that it was a largely unexplored area. Were there people worrying about.
Them Honestly, I'd never got that vibe from anyone. I think they all understood this. They'd all done this. They were they did a lot of these hikes before, and their friends also did hikes before. One of the friends I spoke to had planned to be on this trip and just missed out. He couldn't go last minute, so he just got away with it as well, and he said, we'd done these hikes before. I mean, it was unique.
It was a little bit venturing into the unknown, but not so much that they didn't know what they were doing. So yeah, none of them really seemed too concerned about it.
So what was their check in procedure? Like are they writing letters to people at different posts or what's happening?
No, that's an interesting point. I mean, we don't have any of the communications we have today, right, so it's very hard. There are no Once they left a couple of the logging communities, they were expecting not to meet anyone else for at least a few days. So in fact, the polytechnic school that they were supposed to report back to, we're not expecting to hear back to them until February twelfth,
I believe. And the events that this took happen were on February the first, so it was the alarm wasn't raised really until the fourteenth or fifteenth, I think, and so two weeks later. No one was expecting anything was out of the ordinary for at least two weeks.
So they do not get to where they want to be on that particular day, they hit bad weather and they are pitching the tent. And I know you have photos of that. Will you describe what it looked like. I remember from the photo it's just vastness everywhere. I mean, it was like it was like an ocean of snow to me. But I'm sure have a better description than I do.
Yeah, So it isn't as I mean, you're definitely out there. There's there's no there's no houses, no buildings, no structures, there's no help. Right. But but where it was and where we managed to make it to that tent site, it's it's on the side of a hill. It's you can tell that they weren't one hundred percent sure where they were. They were climbing up to a ridge and they were going to follow this ridge around the hill
onto the next mountain. So they were more on the side of the hill than on top of the ridge. They were neither halfway up halfway down. So it felt like they were like, Okay, we we're a bit lost right now, let's put the tent here, wait until the weather gets better, and we'll figure it out in the morning. That's that's the impression I got. But when you go there,
for them, they didn't know exactly where they were. But when you go there, you can look down down the hill and uh, there's a tree line at the base, and so yeah, in clearer weather it makes a lot more sense. But they didn't have that clear clear weather.
Okay, so they've pitched this tent, and I guess at this point is it mostly based on the evidence and the photographs that they took of what the inside of the tent looked like. And I know that the tear that we'll discuss too, that was in the tent. The rest of this is this conjecture or is it hobbling together? You know what they think happens after this just based on where the shoes were where, you know, all of this stuff.
Yeah, so there's there's not too much evidence beyond this point. So they pitched the tent. There are a number of photos. There's one highly debated unusual photograph that looks like some unusual lights in the sky. This gets talked a lot about in conspiracy theory. Is this one of the last
photos ever found on any of the cameras. They didn't keep any diary notes that evening, so there's no solid evidence of what happened next other than the fact that you know, they go missing and then eventually the bodies are found, and they're found in a very spread out area, which is in itself evidence. And yeah, so from here on in we have to kind of piece this puzzle together.
And there are so many completely weird beyond out their mysterious things that make it hard to make this story make sense.
So they have the tent and let's, I guess just freeze real quick and talk about when people think something has gone wrong, and then you know, when you have people show up and they start putting together the clues, then we can talk about the various conspiracies that are happening. So when does this become alarming? Is it when the governing body realizes after the fourteenth they haven't checked in.
Yeah, so from around that date they haven't checked in, And I think they send out the Actually the alarm was on the sixteenth of February, they would you back on the twelfth, so four days after the alarm was raised, and so they somewhere in the next couple of days they start sending out search parties, so that involves planes going out, people being sent out to try and get there and just try and retrace the roots. And it
takes a few more days. It takes a couple of weeks. Actually, I think it's not until Februy twenty sixth the tent is found, so there would you back on the twelfth. It's not until the twenty sixth that they find the tent, and the tent is empty, no sign of the hikers, So this is one of the unusual moments. There is some snow around the tent and on the tent, but it's not completely covered. In fact, one of the photos clearly shows that one of the front tent poles is
still standing. And then they find the hiker's winter jacket, the outer layer jacket, and most of their boots in sorry, all of their boots the tent, which is highly unusual. And you know, anyone who's been in these conditions and I can say this, you realize very very quickly. You keep your full body covered up. You feel the pain within minutes of the chill getting to you, so you
don't leave those things lightly. That's highly unusual. And then also there's a debate that there's a cut in the tent. It looks like and it's suggested by the case reports at the time that they cut their way out of the tent. Now that's important that fact is now debated, and I speak to someone in the film to go
into this moment for a bit. I speak to a Russian forensic expert who studied the case files, and she makes a point that they only measure, They only photographed and tested the area of the fabric in the center of the cut, not where the cut pierced the tent.
So that makes a difference because when the blade goes in, it pushes the fabrics one way, but then if you drag the blade out, it pulls the fabric the other way, and so you can't tell which way the blade went in unless you see the start of the cut of the tent, and that wasn't documented or photographed. So the idea that they cut their way out of the tent is not fact. It could have been cut from the.
Outside, and I was wondering, you know, when you were talking, I was just thinking of this year, number of sails and like ship sails and flags that I've seen ripped just from wind. I wondered if that was going to be an option too, that because of just the horrible conditions that there had maybe been like a little hole and it just got ripped apart, and it wasn't even somebody doing it, it was just the conditions.
I think they were all confident that the cut was too much of a straight line, and it was it was cut by a blade, So I think the confident was cut by a blade. But whether or not it was cut from the inside or the outside, we no longer have that evidence. We can't tell because they didn't keep the tent. The tent's been disposed of, and the insert point for the blade wasn't documented.
What difference does that make, do you think as far as these theories go, whether it was cut from the inside or the outside, well.
Come to a little bit later on whether or not people were involved, whether or not weapons were involved, and that makes a difference.
I think. Okay, tell me what they find inside the tent when they go in, because it feels a little Pompeii to me, it's like moment frozen in time.
Yeah, So they would store their jackets and their boots near the front of the tent, the exit point, and that's where they found them, lined up dishes from things that had been eating, and stuff were still laid out. I mean, the tent looked like it would look like if you were just you know, making the best of a cold evening and just trying to get through the night. So they left in a hurry, no doubt. To me, one of the most unexplainable things is why you wouldn't
grab your jacket and your boots. Again, I can't stress enough that when the temperature drops and the wind hits like that, you feel that temperature biting against your skin, and so you would grab those things because they would have no doubt that they're not going to survive for very long without those items. So something made them not to grab them.
Well, and I was wondering, and probably I just skip ahead too much, But as you talk, I start thinking about is this what happens that phenomenon with hypothermia where you feel like if you take your clothes off, you'll get warmer for whatever reason. Is that part of one of those theories.
Yeah, that's one of the theories. So the theories is if you start to completely suffer from hypothermia, you feel your body feels warm, feel hot, you start to take off all your clothes and you throw them off and you run out. Hypothermia doesn't work like that to nine different people instantaneously. If one person would have started to feel it, they might have started to have these crazy actions.
The others would have stopped them and told them to put their clothes on, and then they would have all started to put on their pets and clothes. It doesn't happen. It's not an instant switch and they all get it. They all rip off their clothes and run out of the tent. That's not how that works. So, you know, if it was one person, it's very feasible, but nine people then that doesn't make any sense.
Is there the theory that they were cooking something inside the tent and something you know, smoke went out of control and they cut from the inside to let the smoke out again.
That's been definitely been a theory. It's been discussed There wasn't any evidence of any burning to the tent, so it didn't catch fire anywhere to the tent. There's no evidence of that. Could some gases or smoke, you know, cause them to get out, I mean that's possible that that can happen, But why rip the tent when you
can just go out the front door? I mean it's they use light not and maybe one of them could have ripped the tent and gone out from one side, but the others would have went out the front door, you know, it's and then they would have grabbed their clothes. I keep coming back to this. Unless they were completely insane from some chemical thing, then, unless they were out of their credible minds, they would have grabbed their boots in their jackets. So something was stopping them from grabbing
those things. And I don't think, you know, there isn't proof that. Again, a carbon monoxide or something like that could force nine people to instantaneously go completely insane and make decisions that will kill them all. That's not how that works. Again, it could happen to one person, but nine people all at the same time. It doesn't work that way.
Well, let's take care of the carbon monoxide theory part of it, because they when they do end up discovering the bodies, they do all the chemical testing right, and carbon monoxide doesn't show up in anyone because it sticks around a long time.
Yeah, there wasn't The autopsy reports, at times somewhat details, other times not that detailed. There were certainly somethings missing. I did have a retired county foreign enough for the Marin County in California, looked at these autopsy reports and read through them and gave me his kind of take on this. And I told him nothing about my research to this point. This is just his honors take on them. And he said there were definitely errors and there wasn't
really any information talking about any toxicology. There was no chemicals mentioned. But he also wasn't clear if it was one hundred percent tested.
For Oh wow, okay, Now, did you think that the way they exited the evidence that they could see in the snow, did that seem unusual? The way they were Were they running like they were scared of something or what was that?
Right? So, this is the thing that all of these theories before that we talked about would explain that they were panicked they were in terror. They were running. They ran out this tent. Something really scared them. They had to go right away. They do find a small section of their footprints walking down the hill side by side, at a pace that suggests they were kind of kind of arm in arm, keeping themselves together, walking quite calmly
down the hill. They weren't running, they weren't scattering in different directions, is what would happen in a real panic event. They kept themselves together, and they walked somewhat as far as the footprints can tell us down the hill calmly, which is incredible. So I've now just said something forced them to make a horrendous decision to leave their boots in their clothes and they go out to jackets, and then they somewhat calmly walked arm in arm down the hill.
Now we only have this information of their footsteps for a small section, and it's this weird geological anomaly where all of the area around the tent you cannot see any footprints. It was all blown over by snows. There was no evidence where those footprints were. Somewhat further down the hill one hundred feet or so, they found this trace of a few meters of their footprints, and it's just because in this section the snow was wind blown over.
So what happened is their feet because they didn't have boots on, pressed deep into the snow, compacting the snow down to form these kind of ice footprints that got compacted and pressed down. Now, when the wind blew the top layer of snow over, it actually left these footprints, not as indentations, but as columns that were actually sticking up out of the snow. So that's how they found them.
And it only happened is one unique area where the wind must have funneled through and caused this thing to happen. So we have a small section of their footprints as evidence there was It only showed the hiker's footprints. There weren't footprints of anyone else that was there along with them, So that's somewhat in onant. But yeah, we know which actually we're heading, and we know they walk down together in a controlled fashion and say that.
So I'm picturing Is it all nine of them in a line next to each other, linking.
Arms, Yeah, shoulder to shoulder. There's some debate as to whether or not it was the full nine set or only eight set of prints, but towards the edges it blurred a little bit and it's harder to tell whether or not there was more or not, just because of the way the wind went. So we can somewhat assume all nine of them were found laid down the hill. We can somewhat assume that nine of them went down together, but there is an anomaly that potentially one might not
have been there. I don't look too much into that myself, but because of other information. But yeah, at least eight of them walk down the hill together.
Okay, what do we know happens after that? They are linked arms, and they're going down the hill and they're not wearing their jackets or their boots, inexplicably dressed, you know, essentially to walk out and die at some point they have to know, unless they're assuming they can scramble back up and get back to the tent. There's no evidence of an avalanche or anything hitting the tent. Is that right? It's not totally buried.
Yeah, So according to the autopsy reports and all of the case file reports, there's no evidence of an avalanche wrot together. There's a little bit of snow over the tent, but one part of the tent pole is still standing. And yeah, there's not a sign of an avalanche, and it's not a steep enough hill to have a fall. When you see there's big signs of massive mountainous avalanches that wouldn't exist there. There isn't that. We will come back to the idea of a slab avalanche in a moment,
but I'll come back to that in a moment. So, yeah, the hikers they go down the hill and it's not until the as I said, the twenty sixth of February, they found the tent. Officially found the tent. There's actually a clue that it might have been found earlier, and come back to that. But the the following day they found the bodies of the first four hikers, including Ego the outlaw. Two were initially found by a cedar tree, and that's kind of considered like the point where they
must have all reached. Now, this is important. The cedar tree where the first two bodies were found was pretty much a mile down the hill from the tent. This is very important because a mile in those conditions, well a mile in good snowy conditions would take about an hour to walk They even say in their own in their own diaries that they're working walking about one mile an hour in heavy snow, So the fact that they'd
be walking slower and it's difficult. I think it could have even taken a little bit longer than an hour to get down the hill, but at least an hour. So two bodies are found by the cedar tree, and then a little bit later that day the bodies of Xena Comogorova. She was found heading away from the cedar tree, heading back towards the direction of the tent, and then a little further beyond that was Eagle Diatlot, also heading
away from the tree and back towards the tent. So it looks like they moved down to the cedar tree, some of them stayed there, and then some began to try and walk back to the tent. So now we've got this question of why did they leave the tent and why do they now feel it was safe to go back to the tent. Around the cedar tree area, there was some indication that they had built a fire, so they were trying to keep themselves warm with a fire.
And actually the two of the members that were found around this area did have some burnmarks on their body and on their clothes. So yeah, we're not sure what to make of that. Was that accidental given the condition they were in and hypothermia now absolutely setting in. Did they just accidentally burn themselves or was it something else?
And they were all wearing clothing at this point, nobody had taken off more clothing.
No, so they hadn't taken off more clothing. What had happened was they were still wearing their sort of inner layer clothing, the clothing that they'd be wearing inside the tent at night on a normal evening at night. So what also says that they were relatively comfortable in this tent even in those conditions, because they weren't wearing their jackets inside the tent. The tent, the jackets were folded up, some of them were in their bags, some of them
folded up where they would normally be. So so they were comfortable enough in the tent before whatever happened to them, and they were still just in their regular sort of inner clothes. Some of them had light jackets, and I believe Eago Diatlov and Xena Cormogroover were both slightly better dressed than the others. So maybe a light jacket, not their outer layer jacket, but a lighter inner jacket maybe, which is why perhaps they decided they might be able
to make it back to the tent. And these were just the clothes that they would have kept on inside the tent.
So we've talked about four of the nine, is right, two by the cedar tree and two trying to come back. What were the injuries on them when they were discovered? And it must be a nightmare to figure out what was caused by the cold or whatever post warnem versus you know, before they died.
Yeah, so this is an interesting thing. So the next group of hikers have the most extraordinary injuries. They were found quite a bit later on, actually, But this group of hikers had injuries on them, but most of them not catastrophic injuries, not injuries that in themselves would have caused death. But they had injuries that included things like in fact, almost all of them to a point, had injuries to their knuckles and to the outside of their hands.
They had injuries to the face and around the lips and the eyes, all consistent. And again when I spoke to the experts that I spoke to in my film. Also, these in trees are quite consistent with people that were in a punch up. They were in a fight, a physical violence, and this consistently came back that it's possible that they could have gotten these injuries from falling over and hitting themselves, but on the back of the hands and on the knuckles is highly unlikely. When you fall over,
you put your palms down, And it was consistent. These injuries were found across all of them. Now on one chap, Yuri Durushenka was found in the middle and sorry I said four those four that I mentioned were found, there was actually a fifth that was found as part of this group. Now this is Juri Dorushenka. He was found again heading towards back to the tent. I think he was found later that day or he was found slightly separate from the others in the chronology. That's why I
separated him. But he was found heading back towards the tent. He's an important character in the evidence because he had a large or a massive impact to the side of his head, to the temple of his head that the coroner that I spoke to, the California coroner said this impact would have probably rendered him unconscious in that position, like he suffered that injury at that location and would have been rendered unconscious there. At most he may have
staggered a few feet and then fell over. So what I'm saying is this is in the middle of the hill. It's not at the bottom of the seat of the tree, and it's not at the top where the tent was. It's somewhere closer to the middle. So half an hour's walk in any direction to these two locations, and yet inexplicably, with no one else around, he suffers a massive impact to hit the temple of his head that essentially kills him.
Now he is the most important piece of evidence in my mind as to what happened to everyone else, because other elements can be explained potentially, but nothing would explain how this chap got this injury to the side of his head on the middle of a hill where there is no avalanche, there are no pits to fall in thereon, there's no reason to have this injury.
Come back next week to listen to the second half of this interview. If you love historical true crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books The Sinners All Bow the Ghost Club, All that is Wicked and American Sherlock, and don't forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already. This has been an exactly
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