Dead Mountain: The True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

by Eichar, Donnie

  I left my companions for a moment to explore the station. Fifty-three winters ago, the Dyatlov hikers had nearly missed their evening train leaving from Sverdlovsk. I could almost see them hurrying past me toward the platform, breathless, ten pairs of boots squeaking across the marble floors. I thought of Lyuda’s younger brother, Igor, walking here months later, after having returned from his studies in Uzbekistan. When I’d interviewed him on my last trip, he told me how he’d left Sverdlovsk in the winter of 1959, but because he hadn’t exchanged letters with his family, he had no idea that his sister was missing until he returned that April. He had only to step off the train and see his parents standing there on the platform to know that something was wrong. Though Lyuda’s body had not yet been found, her fate was written on their faces.

  I wanted to imagine that I was occupying the same space as these people I had come to know, but the truth was that this building had been rebuilt and renovated over the years, and must have looked very different in 1959. There was an even older station to the west, a candy-colored artifact of imperial Russia that predated the hikers, which was now a railway museum. This particular station was most recently refurbished in 2003, with many of the old murals having been restored and a few new ones added.

  In the vaulted waiting room, I studied the murals on the walls and ceilings, which made plain just how much had changed over the decades. There was a mural of the Romanov family’s celestial ascent, the Red and White armies positioned on either side. I would learn later that this image—featuring the seven Romanovs being pulled skyward, as if by tractor beam—reflected the family’s canonization by the Russian Orthodox Church in the year 2000. What would Yudin, who was still sentimental about Communist Russia, make of it? Even stranger was a mural reminiscent of a Depression-era WPA project. Similar in composition to the Romanov image, it featured two sets of Soviets—scientists on the left and military men on the right. Front and center were the smoking pieces of a plane falling from a blue sky, an American flag visible on a torn wing. Tumbling beside the wing was the plane’s ejected pilot, Gary Powers. Not depicted in the mural was how, instead of injecting himself with the saxitoxin-tipped needle he carried, Powers was instead captured, interrogated for months by the KGB and ultimately convicted of espionage and sentenced to ten years in prison. But less than a year later, the pilot was exchanged in a spy swap for Soviet agent Rudolf Abel. The US government had originally denied the existence of Powers’s aircraft—blaming the incident on a weather plane that had drifted off course into Soviet airspace—only to sheepishly admit to lying about the whole affair after Khrushchev declared: “I must tell you a secret. When I made my first report, I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well . . . and now just look how many silly things the Americans have said.”

  As I stood there, below the image of a U-2 spy plane falling to earth, I calculated that Powers would have been grounded exactly fifteen months after the Dyatlov hikers perished. My brain, I realized, needed to connect everything back to the hikers, no matter how tangential.

  The station was becoming busy, though I didn’t notice anyone besides us hauling around backpacks and ski equipment. The life of a tourist evidently wasn’t what it had been during Khrushchev’s Thaw, and no one here seemed to think it a good idea to go marching in the general direction of Siberia in the middle of winter. As our departure time drew near, I purchased a handful of Russian chocolate bars from a station vendor, stowing them in my pack as a reward for when we reached the location of the tent. When I rejoined my companions, I took out my point-and-shoot, intent on getting a departing shot of the station. But as I was about to snap a shot of the lobby, Kuntsevich and Borzenkov reached out their hands to block the lens. Photos were not welcome in the station, though without a translator, they had difficultly telling me why.

  Before we boarded the train, we met the fourth member of our group, Dmitri Voroshchuk, a recruit of Kuntsevich’s. Beneath his manicured beard and wire-rimmed glasses, I could see that he was in his late-thirties, tops, no older than me. In his modest English, Voroshchuk explained that he was a professional geologist who had a strong interest in the case and a love of the Ural Mountains.

  I was pleased with our four-man group, as we each had a specific purpose. As an outdoor disaster expert with an emphasis on avalanche studies, and having served as vice president of the Union Federation of Tourism, Borzenkov would be our navigator. Voroshchuk, although not a professional interpreter, knew enough English to allow us to communicate more clearly. And because he was also a geologist, he would be able to give us insights into the topography of the area. Kuntsevich, with his twenty-five years of intimate knowledge of the case, and scout leadership skills, was clearly the team leader. And finally, being the observer of the group, I was the natural pick for team diarist. I was also the first American, so I was told, to attempt this particular trek to the northern Ural Mountains in the winter.

  There were beds on both sides of the train car: bunk beds on one side, single Murphy beds on the other. We stowed our packs in the overhead racks and made our way to the apple-red benches lining the cars. Before I could take my seat, Kuntsevich cordially placed the standard white sheets and blue pillowcases, handed to us upon boarding, beneath us. We pulled out the foldout tables and poured ourselves tea from a thermos. We settled in and tried to pretend that we weren’t all completely on top of one another, and when we brought our plastic cups to our lips, we took special care not to knock our elbows into our neighbor’s tea.

  Although we were traveling in a third-class common carriage, or platzkart, our comfort level was much higher than that of the Dyatlov hikers. As Borzenkov explained to me, their carriages would have been wooden and without upholstery. Heating was available to them, but not like the steam bath we were currently experiencing in our bulky winter outfits. In addition to their having traveled on a much slower train, the Dyatlov group had to switch trains in Serov; whereas we’d be traveling directly to Ivdel with a stopover in Serov.

  As the train left Yekaterinburg, the sun was just beginning to rise, casting its glow over the cheek-by-jowl city of old and new, of pastel masonry and glass. Borzenkov wasted no time in pulling out his artist’s pad to illustrate the route we’d be taking, and how it compared with the Dyatlov route. I’d brought a small notebook and a pencil broken in half to save space. I had jettisoned my pen after Borzenkov informed me that ballpoints were unreliable in subzero temperatures; the ink would freeze.

  For lunch, Kuntsevich produced a container of what resembled a purple Jell-O dessert, but instead of fruit, it was stuffed with herring, potatoes, boiled beets and mayonnaise—all topped with slices of onion. The name of the dish, “herring under a fur coat,” was a pretty accurate way of describing how it felt on one’s tongue, and when I was offered some, I took the politest of bites. To my relief, I had a meal of my own. Olga had slipped me a bag before we left, which contained my favorite chicken dish. I downed it hungrily between gulps of tea.

  After our meal, a satiated silence settled over our group. I stared out of my window and watched old power lines fly by, their poles sticking out of the snow at odd angles, like giant crosses. I rarely travel by train in my own country, but when I have, I’ve noticed the hypnotic effect it produces. The thundering below put me in a meditative state as I reflected on the past couple of weeks in Yekaterinburg. They’d been mostly encouraging, and I had been extraordinarily lucky to get to know the famously reclusive Yuri Yudin.

  But my trip had not been entirely positive. Earlier in the week, a reporter from a Yekaterinburg TV station had shown up at Kuntsevich’s apartment to interview me. Through a translator, he had repeatedly asked me how much money I was making from my book—the implication evidently being that I had come all this way to exploit a foreign mystery for profit. Money was not a factor in my visit to his country, I told him, resisting the temptation to laugh at the idea that one gets rich in publishing. I also resisted telling him that I’d had no notion of a book
deal when I’d begun the project. And I didn’t tell him how conflicted I felt about having self-financed this entire three-year endeavor, maxing out credit cards and draining my savings account—all the while starting a family.

  The reporter had continued with his questions: “What if you don’t feel anything if and when you make it to the location where the hikers died?” and “Why would you, an American, care about Russian hikers who died long before you were born?” I had answered these questions as best I could, without getting too defensive. Still, the reporter’s interrogation lingered long after the interview ended, as if he had gotten at something I was afraid of examining.

  Over the past weeks of interviewing Yudin and reviewing my case notes, I was coming to the conclusion that the reason for the hikers fleeing the tent had nothing at all to do with weapons, men with guns or related conspiracies. Avalanche statistics were incredibly convincing: Nearly 80 percent of ski-related deaths were the result of avalanches. Wasn’t it the likeliest theory, after all? I imagined how the hikers would have heard the terrifying rumble of unsettled snow above their campsite, and would have fled from their tent in panic. But once they were outside in subzero air with a fierce wind pushing them down the slope, the elements had done the rest. Were all my efforts really leading to the simplest explanation of all? Until we were on the slope itself, there was little for me to do but focus on the journey ahead and on our next stop: Serov.

  Kuntsevich told me that we were the first hikers to be following the Dyatlov party’s itinerary, and the first to visit the school in Serov for that purpose. But because we had no address for the school—we knew only that in 1959 it bore the name School #41—it would not be easy to find. To make things trickier, Igor and his friends had stayed in Serov the entire day, whereas our stop would be only ninety minutes.

  I felt a nap coming on and claimed one of the bunk beds. My companions did the same. Before I fell asleep, I turned to the window and was reminded of the diary entry Zina had written on their first night on the train—something about the Ural Mountains looming in the distance. And then there was her final question of the night: “I wonder what awaits us on this hike? Will anything new happen?” The thick air of the car finally put me to sleep. But the slow heartbeat of the train kept my slumber fitful as we drew ever closer to the place where Zina’s diary entries had come to an end.

  Zinaida “Zina” Kolmogorova writes in her diary, Auspiya River, January 29, 1959.

  18

  JANUARY 28–FEBRUARY 1, 1959

  AFTER THEY WATCHED THEIR AILING FRIEND RECEDE WITH Grandpa Slava and his horse down the Lozva, the remaining nine hikers turned in the opposite direction and continued their trek upriver. Their path over the next few days would cleave to the rivers—first the Lozva, and then the adjoining Auspiya, which they would follow north toward Otorten Mountain. Their second day on the Lozva was not all that different from the first, and they progressed over the snow-covered ice in determined silence. But because Yuri Yudin was now gone, only the film in their cameras and the pages of their diaries could bear witness to these final days of their journey.

  When the path through the snow became particularly punishing, the friends would alternate taking the lead, with each shift as leader lasting ten minutes. Besides that, they had to pause every so often to scrape congealed snow from the bottoms of their skis. Where the ice on the river became dangerously thin, or where the water leached through, the skiers were forced onto the riverbank. But when the bank was too steep, or covered in jagged patches of basalt, they were forced to choose the lesser danger: fragile ice or treacherous terrain.

  Their progress became considerably easier when they happened upon an existing path made by skis and reindeer hooves, the telltale sign of Mansi hunters. There were also Mansi symbols painted on the trees along their route, as described in the group’s diary:

  [The symbols] are kinds of forest stories. The marks describe animals noticed, stand sites, various indicators, and decoding those marks would be of great interest both to hikers and to historians.

  In the evenings, each member of the group had his or her assigned task in setting up camp before they were allowed to gather by the stove for dinner. As on previous nights, there was music and passionate discussion. Kolya described the group’s first night in the tent:

  After dinner, we sit a long time by the fire, singing sincere songs. Zina even tries to learn playing mandolin under the guidance of our chief musician Rustemka. Then discussion goes on and on, and almost all our discussions these days deal with love.

  When the friends became sleepy, they couldn’t come to an agreement about who should lie next to the stove. An outsider might have assumed that a spot nearest the source of warmth would be the most coveted. But according to Kolya’s diary, the portable stove that divided the tent was “blazing.” While he and Zina occupied the area farthest from it, Georgy and Kolevatov were persuaded to sleep on either side of it.

  [Georgy] lay for about two minutes, then he could not stand it anymore and retreated to the far end of the tent cursing terribly and blaming us for treachery. After that, we stayed awake for a long time, arguing about something, but finally it went still.

  The next day was less eventful, and after hours of making their way up the second river, their group diary had little to say:

  Carved tree with painted Mansi symbols. The first three slashes represent the number of hunters in the group. The second symbol represents the family sign and the third set of slashes represents the number of dogs in the Mansi group, January 29, 1959.

  The Dyatlov hikers stop for a rest. Left to right: Alexander “Sasha” Zolotaryov, Yuri Doroshenko and Igor Dyatlov, eating “salo,” January 30, 1959.

  Second day of skiing. From our night camp by the Lozva River we took the route to the night camp at Auspiya River, along a Mansi path. Weather is fine, –13°. Weak wind. There is often an ice crust on the Lozva. That’s all.

  On the third day, their trek became markedly more difficult. The temperature dropped, a southwest wind began to blow, and snow fell. What’s more, the group lost the Mansi tracks. With the benefit of an already trodden path now gone, and with the snowpack almost four feet deep in places, their progress slowed considerably. Meanwhile the forest seemed to be retreating around them. The trees thinned, and the remaining birches and pines shrank to a dwarfish size and began to appear out of the ground at crooked, windblown angles. Despite the drop in temperature, the ice on the river was still too thin to rely on:

  It’s impossible to go over the river, it’s not frozen. Water and ice crust are under the snow right on the ski track, so we go near the shore again.

  Though they had lost the Mansi’s path, the hikers continued to find symbols among the dwindling trees. As the group’s diary records, they talked increasingly of the native people.

  Mansi, Mansi, Mansi. This word becomes more frequent in our talks. Mansi are people of the North. . . . It’s a very interesting and peculiar nation living in northern Urals, close to Tyumen region.

  Zina was particularly fascinated by the tribal symbols and stopped to copy some of them in her diary.

  The Dyatlov hikers travel up the Lozva River. Front to back: Nikolay “Kolya” Thibault-Brignoles, Alexander “Sasha” Zolotaryov, and Lyudmila “Lyuda” Dubinina (left), January 30, 1959.

  Maybe the title of our trip should be “In the land of mysterious signs.” If we knew their meaning, we could follow the path without worrying that it might take us in the wrong direction.

  After a late afternoon meal of leftovers from breakfast—brisket, dried bread, sugar, garlic, coffee—they continued on for another few hours before stopping for the night. But with the landscape increasingly exposed, the group had to double back over 200 yards to find a suitable spot surrounded by tall, dry trees. It had been a difficult day, perhaps the most difficult yet, and for some among the group, tempers were short. An argument erupted between Lyuda and Kolya concerning one of their chores. Zina bore witness to t
he episode:

  So they argued for a long time about who should stitch the tent. At last [Kolya] gave up and took a needle. Lyuda remained sitting. And we were fixing holes (so many holes that everyone had plenty to do. . . . The guys are awfully indignant.

  Later that night, the mood brightened as the group gathered around an outdoor fire to celebrate Doroshenko’s twenty-first birthday. They presented him with a gift that had been stowed away for the occasion: a tangerine. Tangerines had been available in the Soviet Union since the 1930s when they began to be shipped north from the Abkhazia citrus plantations near the Black Sea. They were a special fruit available only for a brief season, and because of their aura of novelty, they were often given as gifts around New Year’s Day. But instead of enjoying his present, Doroshenko insisted on dividing the tangerine equally among his friends. Only Lyuda missed out on the treat, as she was still stinging from the earlier argument and had sequestered herself in the tent. Zina wrote: “Lyuda had gone inside the tent and didn’t appear till the end of dinner.” But Zina ended her diary entry on an optimistic, if cautious, note: “So, one more day passed by safely.”

  The next day, January 31, would be the final day documented in the group’s journals. The hikers often wrote their diary entries in the mornings, which meant that they were writing about events of the previous day. Of the last day in January, Igor noted that the group set out at 10:00 AM, and that the weather had immediately worsened with an aggressive wind blowing in from the west. The sky was clear, yet it was inexplicably snowing—but, as Igor noted, the precipitation was most likely an illusion caused by the wind sweeping snow from the treetops.