RUSSIA’S ‘Dead Mountain’ mystery may finally be solved thanks to new scientific research.
The infamous ‘Dyatlov Pass incident’ shocked the world in 1959 when nine young hikers went missing and were later found dead, some naked and missing body parts.
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The event was so mysterious some people have even blamed aliens but a new study suggests an avalanche was more likely to blame.
The incident is named after one of the hikers called Igor Dyatlov.
Dyatlov was one of the seven men and two women that started their hike in January 1959.
They were walking through Russia’s snowy Ural Mountains, which have a peak known as ‘Dead Mountain’.
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Having pitched their tents at the bottom of a small slope on the eve of a blizzard, they were never seen alive again.
After a month their bodies were found scattered around Dead Mountain.
Lots of them had broken bones and cracked skulls.
One woman had lost a tongue and others had eyes missing, although this could have been due to hungry mountain animals.
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The tents were found cut open from the inside and half buried in snow.
The mysterious incident was investigated by the Russians and they concluded the hikers died of hypothermia after going into the cold due to a “compelling natural force”.
However, this conclusion left a lot of room for interpretation and this has led to many conspiracy theories including people blaming aliens.
A new study recently published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment has tried to provide us with answers based on scientific evidence.
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The researchers think a small avalanche, caused by unusual circumstances, is to blame.
The avalanche could have fell on the hikers in their tents and caused them to flee into the cold night and get lost.
Lead study author Johan Gaume told Live Science: “We do not claim to have solved the Dyatlov Pass mystery, as no one survived to tell the story.
“But we show the plausibility of the avalanche hypothesis [for the first time].”
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The small avalanche theory has been suggested before but was disputed for numerous reasons including that there was apparently no sign of an avalanche when rescuers arrived at the tent site 26 days later.
Head and chest injuries on some of the hikers were also not consistent with the avalanche theory as snow impact does not normally cause those injuries.
Gaume and study co-author Alexander Puzrin address all the doubts in their new paper.
They found new information about the slope angle where the tents were located, which meant an avalanche was more likely than previously thought.
The angle of the slope above the tents is thought to have been slightly steeper than other investigations found but was disguised due to heavy snowfall after the event.
The angle of the slope near the tents and strong winds could have led to a slab avalanche.
As for the car accident-like injuries of some of the hikers, if the people had been lying on their backs in their tents when the snow hit then it’s apparently possible for a slab avalanche to break bones as the tents fell on top of the victims.
The less injured hikers are thought to have cut open the tents and dragged their injured friends out behind them in the hope of saving them.
The researchers explain: “Dynamic avalanche simulations suggest that even a relatively small slab [of snow] could have led to severe but non-lethal thorax and skull injuries, as reported by the post-mortem examination.”
While the paper isn’t concrete evidence of what happened it does go a long way to support the avalanche theory.
What is a slab avalanche
A snow slab occurs when strong compacted snow is concentrated on top of weaker looser snow.
When an avalanche is trigged this weak layer pulls down the stronger more compacted layer with it.
This can result in large slabs of ice falling down the mountain.
Thick slabs cause many fatalities.
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