Dead Mountain: The True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

by Eichar, Donnie

  I DON’T REMEMBER SHERLOCK HOLMES EVER MENTIONING what you are supposed to do when you’ve eliminated everything improbable, and nothing is left.

  The least improbable answer still seemed to lie, if not in an avalanche, then in some sort of other natural occurrence. I’d been reading up on weather phenomena, in the hope I might discover something relevant to the case, something I’d managed to miss. I’d always enjoyed reading about bizarre weather events. When you grow up in Florida, a.k.a. “hurricane alley,” obsessing about weather phenomena is a rite of passage. I had also been somewhat of a weather wonk as a teen, not because meteorology itself had initially interested me—my interest in forecasting grew out of my love of surfing. As any surfer knows, where there was intense weather off the coast, such as a hurricane or low-pressure system, there were also long-period ground swells that produced good waves.

  Among the articles I had printed out related to weather was one particular piece I thought might be related to the topic of experimental weapons—infrasound weaponry in particular. It was a piece from a Physics Today issue from 2000. The piece in question—entitled “Atmospheric Infrasound”— was written by a Dr. Alfred J. Bedard, Jr. and Thomas M. Georges. I wasn’t entirely sure what the title meant, though it intrigued me. The Bedard-Georges study examined the occurrence of sound waves that travel through the air at frequencies below those on the audible spectrum, frequencies referred to as infrasound. Infrasound is the opposite of ultrasound; it occurs below the threshold of human hearing at 20 hertz, while ultrasound frequencies fall above hearing at a threshold at 20,000 hertz.

  A pioneer in the biological effects of infrasound was the Russian-born, French scientist Vladimir Gavreau, who discovered its impact on the body entirely by accident. During the 1960s, Gavreau and his laboratory assistants started experiencing inexplicable nausea, pain in their eardrums and shaking lab equipment—all with no apparent cause. When all chemical and airborne sources were ruled out, Gavreau eventually concluded that inaudible, low-frequency sounds waves were being generated by the motor of a large fan-and-duct system in the building where his lab was located. What initially started out as a subconscious irritation, soon became a scientific pursuit for Gavreau—but it was a difficult one for him to pursue, as no traditional microphone could pick up the frequencies, and exposing himself and his assistants to the infrasound resulted in severe illness, sometimes lasting days.

  Gavreau determined that he and his assistants were suffering from the pressurized effects of infrasonic frequencies pulsing through their eardrums. These low-frequency waves can cause the eardrum to vibrate the hair cells of the inner ear. The effect of this is that, although the sound may not be “audible” to the casual listener, the excited hair cells in the inner ear send impulses to the brain—and this disconnect between apparent silence and the brain’s receiving signals from the ear, can be extremely disruptive to the body.

  I learned that man-made sources of infrasound were numerous—cooling and ventilation systems and wind farms being typical culprits—but these low-frequency waves also occurred in nature as by-products of earthquakes, landslides, meteors, storms and tornadoes. The Bedard-Georges study outlined and studied these infrasonic occurrences in nature; in particular, when winds of a certain speed encounter an obstructive landscape. I later learned that this naturally occurring infrasound could be devastating to humans, causing nausea, severe illness, psychological disturbances and even suicide—symptoms not unlike those theoretically produced by experimental infrasound weaponry.

  I e-mailed Borzenkov about the avenues I had recently been exploring, hoping that my Google-translated text would convey the finer points of the Bedard-Georges article. I didn’t expect to hear from him immediately. He had recently fallen ill, and his treatment limited his ability to research and write as effortlessly as he used to. Despite my repeated concerns and questions about his health, Borzenkov would not reveal the nature of his illness—how severe it might be, for example, or whether he had years or months to live. I knew by now that this was the Russian way. If his illness had not affected his ability to respond to my e-mails, he probably wouldn’t have divulged his health problems to me at all.

  WHEN BORZENKOV REPLIED SEVERAL DAYS LATER, I COULD sense his frustration even through the muddled translation. He had already been looking into the naturally occurring version of the infrasound phenomenon. Had I not read his e-mails on the subject? I looked back over his previous messages to me about infrasound, and how he had speculated that “infrasound had caused the hikers to leave the tent,” but the poorly translated text had not communicated the distinction he had evidently been making between wind-generated and weapon-generated infrasound. His new e-mail went on to say that he was in touch with infrasound experts in Russia—at Lomonosov State University—and the emerging theory was that Boot Rock had been responsible for creating low-frequency sound waves that had driven the hikers from their tent. I conjured up the shape of the rock in my mind, imagining fierce winds whipping past its jagged edges, hurtling infrasound waves toward the vulnerable tent on the slope. Could this really be the theory I was looking for?

  My miscommunication with Borzenkov was not surprising—trying to explain a very complex scientific phenomenon is difficult enough without language complications. I decided that in order to avoid further confusion caused by the language barrier, I needed to get in touch with an infrasound expert who spoke English, preferably in the United States.

  Further research confirmed that Dr. Bedard, co-author of the Physics Today paper, was indeed the authority in the field I needed to speak with. His area of expertise in the detection of naturally occurring infrasound, particularly in mountainous regions, could not have been better. His knowledge in the field of meteorology and atmospheric phenomena had resulted in his one hundred publications, two books, five patents, and over thirty detection devices. Meeting him wouldn’t require my flying overseas, either. He was senior scientist and infrasonics group leader at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado—only a few hours’ plane ride away.

  Although it wasn’t easy to reach Dr. Bedard, when I finally got him on the phone and filled out the whole story, he confessed that while he had never heard of the Dyatlov Pass incident, several of his Russian colleagues at NOAA were familiar with the tragedy. He had only just learned how famous the incident was to most Russians. If I came to Boulder, Dr. Bedard said, he and his team could meet with me to discuss the case further. I hung up the phone, both thrilled and a little intimidated. I was meeting with a team of atmospheric physicists, and I had better come prepared.

  CREATED UNDER PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, AND FALLING under the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce, NOAA was the first agency in the country committed solely to atmospheric sciences; in fact, it was an aggregate of three preexisting agencies: the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Weather Bureau and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. In his statement to Congress in 1970, Nixon called for a new agency “for better protection of life and property from natural hazards . . . for a better understanding of the total environment . . . [and] for exploration and development leading to the intelligent use of our marine resources.” Currently, over 12,500 employees work for NOAA across the country and worldwide, with fewer than one thousand of those stationed at NOAA Boulder.

  I arrived at the NOAA center, a federal building, on a morning in mid-February. The security was intense and incredibly thorough. I’d had to forward all my personal information for clearance before I even booked my flight, and then there were three separate security stops on the grounds themselves. After I stopped my rental car at the first station, the guards checked my ID, ran my backpack through a security machine and examined my Dictaphone. I was given a badge, which read under my name, “Escort Required.” Next, I was ushered through an airport-style security machine, before arriving at a security gate where another set of guards checked my clearance badge, rechecked my baggage a second time, and searched m
y car. After I was waved through, I finally was allowed to enter the parking lot of the David Skaggs Research Center. Upon entering the building, yet another security officer checked my ID, and called someone to personally escort me into Dr. Bedard’s office.

  My escort took me down a nondescript hallway, one that might have been in any office building in the world. I met Dr. Bedard just outside his office, where we exchanged pleasantries and a firm handshake. He looked to be in his early- to mid-seventies and stood at about six feet tall. We dropped into comparisons of the weather in our respective towns, but even in this casual bit of chitchat, there was an intensity to his overall demeanor. After our introduction, he showed me into a conference room where, to my complete surprise, a group of scientists, including four Russians, were waiting for me.

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  I INTRODUCED MYSELF TO DR. BEDARD’S RUSSIAN colleagues and took a seat. The youngest of the four men, Dr. Valery Zavorotny, who looked to be in his early sixties, admitted he’d stayed up until 2:00 AM the night before, absorbed in Russian websites dedicated to the Dyatlov Pass incident. The others agreed it was indeed a very popular topic of debate in their home country, and they were eager to hear my findings. I told them that I was far more interested in hearing what they and Dr. Bedard had to say.

  Nevertheless, I was subjected to a volley of ice-breaking questions: How had I come to be writing about the case? What had I discovered so far? Had I met the Dyatlov group’s only survivor? What did he have to say, if anything? And then Zavorotny dead-panned: “Is it true that the only survivor was forced to turn back because of diarrhea?” I laughed, but Zavorotny explained that the belief that indigestion had saved Yudin’s life wasn’t uncommon in the Russian blogosphere. After I told him that Yudin had, in fact, turned around for far more serious a condition than gastrointestinal distress, Bedard asked some questions of his own, eager to rule out every other viable angle before moving on to a discussion about weather phenomena. I counted off four or five of the most likely theories that had been put forward over the years, and why they could be discounted with near certainty.

  Bedard then proposed a theory of his own: Was it possible the hikers had been afflicted with carbon monoxide poisoning? If their tent stove had not been properly ventilated, the resulting toxic air might have resulted in acute disorientation and dizziness. I told them that the hikers had not built a fire that night, nor had they assembled their stove. The Russians then started in with more common questions:

  Why didn’t the hikers return to their tent? I explained that with the moon not having yet risen, it would have been impossible to see anything, let alone the tent.

  Might a bear or wolf have attacked the tent? No. Besides it being illogical for the hikers to flee the protection of their tent at the appearance of a predator, there had been no evidence of animals attacking the tent or the hikers.

  What about alcohol? Could the hikers have been drunk? The hikers had not been drinkers, I told them. The group had packed only a limited supply of medicinal alcohol, the contents of which were found upon discovery of the tent. Even if we supposed that the entire group enjoyed getting secretly intoxicated, the autopsies had turned up no trace of alcohol in their blood.

  When my hosts had exhausted these possibilities, I explained that this much was certain: Six of the hikers died of hypothermia after hours of exposure to subzero conditions, and the other three of internal hemorrhaging from a tumble into a ravine. What I really wanted to know was: What sent them fleeing from the tent in the first place? Though infrasound intrigued me, I was only just now investigating the idea, and was still struggling to understand it.

  The earliest public applications of infrasound, Bedard told me, had been in the early ’50s during the Cold War, when the United States began to measure infrasonic waves generated by the nuclear blasts of secret Soviet bomb tests. These measurements—along with spy photographs—helped the United States determine the extent and progress of the Soviet nuclear program. There has only very recently been a resurgence of interest in infrasonic detection and technology—almost as a form of inaudible noise pollution—but the initial interest in its capabilities years ago had to do with nuclear-bomb-testing detection. In 2009, for example, the United States used infrasound to measure a Korean “event” that turned out to be a nuclear rocket test. Bedard explained that the article I had read in Physics Today had also generated renewed interest in the topic. The article, he said, “was written exactly to re-create a community for infrasound research. Apparently it worked.”

  Bedard then told me about a scientific experiment conducted many years ago—an elegant demonstration of infrasound’s effects on humans. In 2003, London researchers looking into the symptoms of infrasonic wave exposure hid an “infrasonic cannon” in the back of a concert hall in South London. An audience of 750 people was then asked to sit through four similar contemporary pieces of music while, unbeknownst to them, two of the pieces included waves generated by the infrasonic device. Afterward, they were asked for their reactions to each piece of music. The results: 165 people (22 percent) confessed to body chills and strange feelings of uneasiness, sorrow, nervousness, revulsion and fear during the infrasonic portions; some of the same 22 percent reported accelerated heartbeat or a sudden memory of an emotional loss. Though the effects experienced by these concertgoers were on the milder end of the spectrum, the idea that infrasound was a hidden, silent instrument lurking among a full orchestra, is a fitting metaphor for how the phenomenon presents itself in nature.

  Bedard believes that some people are naturally more sensitive to the effects of these infrasonic waves, while others either appear immune or require more intense or prolonged exposure to experience damaging or unpleasant reactions. Over the years, Bedard has received desperate calls from around the world from people reporting a variety of symptoms with no apparent medical or environmental cause. Sometimes these calls come from the same area or city, such as Taos, New Mexico—in what is known as the “Taos Hum.” Similarly, the “Windsor Hum” has for years plagued residents of one Canadian border town (on the border of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, across Lake Huron), making a mess of people’s sleep schedules, mental health and quality of life. Though the cause has not been determined with any certainty, many believe the machinery at an industrial factory on Jug Island, midway between both Midwest cities, to be the source of the infrasonic waves.

  Not everyone affected by the “hum,” however, registers it as an aural sensation. “There are hearers and nonhearers,” Bedard explained. “To most people it’s a throbbing sensation with a constant feeling of anxiety and fear.” Although similar “hum” reports have also been noted in Bristol, England and Bondi, Australia, no one, including Bedard, has found the culprit source of what are believed to be “infrasonic waves.” Unfortunately, says Bedard, “Most people can’t afford to move away from infrasound.”

  There are some governments that have attempted to harness the ill effects of infrasound for purposes that, on their face, appear to be Orwellian. “The Israelis have used it for crowd control,” he explains—the idea being that when exposed to these waves, people want nothing more than to leave the area. The Toronto Sun reported an incident from June 6, 2005, in which witnesses described a minute-long blast of sound emanating from a white Israeli military vehicle. Within seconds, protesters began falling to their knees, experiencing symptoms similar to seasickness. An Israeli military source said that such tactics are intended to “disperse crowds with sound pulses that create nausea and dizziness.” Infrasound had been used by Nazi Germany to stir up anger and strong emotions in crowds assembled to hear Hitler speak. Hitler had also ordered infrasound experiments to be conducted on prisoners, who were tortured with an experimental weapon that used compressed air to generate high intensities of low-frequency sound waves.

  When I suggested that infrasound seemed like the perfect weapon for war, Dr. Bedard responded, “I’m not a believer.” In response to a suggesti
on that Soviets had developed similar weapons during the Cold War, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians attempted it, but it would be very difficult to direct infrasound because the wavelengths are so long.” I was coming to understand that infrasound as a method of short-range crowd control was feasible, but the existence of long-range infrasound weapons was implausible at best.

  Eager to get back to the fate of the Dyatlov hikers, I began to pull out my images of Boot Rock, as well as Russian contour maps of the area surrounding the rock. That’s when Bedard asked me if I’d heard of “Kármán vortex street.” I had. In fact, the Russian scientist that Borzenkov was in contact with had mentioned Kármán vortex street as a phenomenon that had likely occurred at Boot Rock the night of February 1—though, again, I hadn’t fully understood what that meant.

  While Bedard and his colleagues pored over the maps and images of Boot Rock, I was given a quick primer on the phenomenon. Kármán vortex street, named after Hungarian physicist Theodore von Kármán, is an occurrence in fluid dynamics of both liquids and gases. In the aerodynamics of weather phenomena, air vortices—or small tornadoes—are created when wind of a certain speed hits a blunt object of a particular shape and size. Geographic masses around the world are known to cause this particular pattern of vortices. When these vortices are large or when revved up at a higher speed, they can reach the destruction threshold of a tornado. For instance, when strong winds hit the Rock of Gibraltar, the powerful vortices spinning off the rock are believed to be the cause of capsized ships in the Strait. These same destructive vortices are oftentimes accompanied by the twin danger of infrasonic frequencies.