If we combined the premise of the movies Match Point and Final Destination, the result could very well be called Yuri Yudin. This was the name of a young Soviet man who, paradoxically, was saved by a series of health issues in 1959, forcing him to abandon an expedition that would cost the lives of the rest of its members. Those companions died under such dramatic and strange circumstances that for a long time, many hypotheses circulated about what had happened, some quite far-fetched. This event became known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, and its resolution was largely thanks to another movie: Frozen.
Yuri Yudin, who lived until 2013, was 21 years old at the time and was studying engineering at the Ural State Technical University, located in the city of Yekaterinburg (the capital of the Sverdlovsk Oblast, in the central-western part of present-day Russia, then the Soviet Union) and an important industrial center, which explains the location of that educational institution. On January 23, 1959, he joined other companions—eight men and two women, all students or graduates from various branches of engineering (there was also an eleventh young man, Nikolai Popov, who also ended up not going)—for an exciting project.
The plan was to undertake a ski trek through the Ural Mountains, between the northern part of the oblast and the Komi Soviet Socialist Republic, following the upper course of the Lozva River. The objective? To reach Mount Otorten, a mountain located about ten kilometers from where they would later lose their lives. It was a route rated at Grade III, the highest level of technical difficulty (covering more than 300 kilometers), and upon its completion, all members of the adventure would receive certification for that level, as they only held Grade II until then.

The plan was designed by Igor Dyatlov, a 23-year-old telecommunications engineering student (who, in the end, gave his name to the site of the incident), to coincide with the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was to be held in Moscow from January 27 to February 5, 1959. This event is historically significant due to its extraordinary nature, as it was convened so that Khrushchev could solidify his power after an attempt to remove him two years earlier by the Anti-Party Group, which included Molotov, Malenkov, and Kaganovich, in an effort to halt the de-Stalinization process.
Documents found at the crash site confirm that this was indeed the context. Additionally, Igor Dyatlov received support from the local Komsomol section (the Leninist Communist Youth Union of the Soviet Union, i.e., the youth organization of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), and the route was approved by the Sverdlovsk City Physical Culture and Sports Committee (now Yekaterinburg). This institution issued Dyatlov—the leader of the expedition—the route book on the very day the group set out, January 23.
The ten adventurers, besides the leader and the aforementioned Yuri Yudin, were Aleksandr Kolevatov, Rustem Slobodin, Yuri Krivonishchenko, Yuri Doroshenko, Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, Lyudmila Dubinina, and Zinaida Kolmogorova, all aged between 21 and 24, except for the last-minute addition from a similar project, the Solgrin Expedition: Semyon Zolotaryov, a mountain guide and instructor, student of Military Engineering, and World War II veteran, who was the oldest at 38. All were considered expert hikers and skiers.

The group traveled by train to Ivdel, from where they continued by truck to Visa (or Vizhay), the last inhabited settlement and a usual base for mountaineers (in fact, the village had grown from cabins built by several of them), where they purchased provisions. Thus, on January 27, they began their journey toward Mount Otorten. After just one day, the first obstacle emerged: a lumbar pain—due to a previous back injury—combined with rheumatism, began to cause Yuri Yudin severe joint pain, making it impossible for him to continue walking. Later, it was discovered that he also suffered from a congenital heart condition.
Yuri could not continue and returned to Visa, leaving his nine companions behind; neither he nor anyone else would ever see them alive again. The frustration he must have felt at that moment was surely nothing compared to the realization that this unexpected twist of fate was not as bitter as he had initially thought. Everything that happened next is based solely on the documents and photographs recovered later, which revealed that, for the time being, the trip continued without problems, and indeed, the photos show everyone smiling.
According to the reports, the group arrived in a mountainous area on January 31. In a forested valley, they left supplies and equipment for the return journey, which was planned along the same route, and on February 1, they set out to cross the mountains and spend the night on the other side. However, bad weather conditions turned into a snowstorm that limited visibility, and disoriented, they veered several degrees west, ascending the slope of Jólat Siájl, a relatively low elevation (1,096 meters), but whose name in Mansi (the Ugric-Finnic language of the people once known as the Voguls, a Uralic indigenous ethnic group) means Mountain of the Dead.

That name would prove eerily prophetic, as according to Mansi legend, it was named after nine hunters from that ethnic group who got lost there during a storm and were found dead a few days later. The fact is, the expedition members, unable to move blindly, decided to camp at that very site; Yuri would later express his surprise that they did not descend a little to take shelter among the trees, speculating that they may have wanted to avoid the effort of climbing back up the next day. In the end, they did neither, as these would be their last hours alive.
A couple of weeks passed. No one had been concerned about them because, according to Dyatlov’s instructions, they were supposed to send a telegram to their sports club when they returned to Visa, with the expected date being February 12. When that date came and went, Yuri allowed for the likely delay due to bad weather they were expected to encounter in the middle of winter. But when the days continued to pass, and February 20 arrived with no news, the families demanded that the authorities do something, and a rescue expedition was organized, made up of volunteer university students and professors.
However, after three days of searching, they found nothing, and then the Militsiya (police) and the army joined the efforts, using planes and helicopters. Finally, on February 16, the remains of the camp were discovered at Jólat Siajl, in a strange and puzzling state. The first to arrive, a student named Mikhail Sharavin, stated that the tent was half-collapsed and covered in snow. It was empty, and all the group’s belongings and footwear had been left behind. The tent fabric had been slashed from the inside with several cuts, and a trail of nine sets of footprints, some in socks, some wearing a single boot, and some barefoot, led down toward the forest.

Following that trail, although after 500 meters it faded in the snow, the rescuers arrived at the base of a large Siberian pine, where they saw the remains of a campfire and two bodies. They were Yuri Krivonishchenko and Yuri Doroshenko, who were barefoot and dressed only in their underwear. The abrasions on their arms and the broken branches of the tree with blood led to the conclusion that they had tried to climb it, perhaps to escape something, perhaps to get a better view. It was the beginning of other grim discoveries, as at distances of 300, 480, and 630 meters from the pine, the bodies of Igor Dyatlov, Zinaida Kolmogorova, and Rustem Slobodin were found.
According to autopsy photos, the first lay on his back with his arms crossed over his chest (a later unconfirmed rumor suggested he was holding a birch branch, as if trying to defend himself). Zinaida, who had injuries to her face and hands, was lying on her side, half-frozen. Slobodin was found face down, with facial injuries and a fracture in his forehead. All three were barefoot, though more clothed than the others, and it appeared that they had died while trying to return to the tent. But four expedition members were still missing. What had become of them?
It took another two months of searching, until May 4, to find two of them. Although they were less than a hundred meters from the pine, they were buried under four meters of snow; in the stream of a ravine and near an improvised shelter. Lyudmila Dubinina was found kneeling, her chest resting on a rock, missing her eyes, tongue, and part of her lips; Semion Zolotariov, also with empty eye sockets; then Aleksandr Kolevatov and Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolle were found, embracing. They were wearing more clothes than the others, some even with shoes, having taken clothing from the dead to keep warm.

Autopsies of the first five bodies concluded that they had died of hypothermia, dismissing their abrasions as significant. But the analysis of the last four bodies changed the picture and sowed uncertainty; their injuries were comparable to those from a serious car accident and were fatal, though without external wounds: severe cranial trauma, broken ribs… According to their families, they also displayed an enigmatic brown skin tone, which some linked to a peculiar detail: traces of radioactivity were detected on the clothing of one of the victims.
The loss of organs and soft tissues was considered to have occurred post-mortem and was attributed to animals, given that Lyudmila’s head, the main affected area, was partially submerged in water. Yuri Yudin left an emotional phrase for posterity, “If I had the chance to ask God just one question, it would be, what really happened to my friends that night?”, and, of course, an investigation was opened to try to clarify the facts. First, the Mansi were questioned, assuming they might have killed the group for some reason; the absence of more footprints at the scene, other than those of the deceased, ruled out that possibility.
Following the hypothesis of a crime, other suspects for the authorship of the act emerged, each more imaginative and far-fetched: escaped prisoners from a gulag, a secret KGB operation to eliminate students who were actually spies, the explosion of a missile or other weapon being tested in the area (specifically, parachute-dropped mines)… Another dramatic possibility suggested was a violent argument over romantic jealousy between some of the expedition members, possibly aggravated by the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms or alcohol, which could explain the nudity.

The most outlandish hypotheses proposed an attack by a Siberian version of the yeti, a failed teleportation experiment, or extraterrestrial intervention, the latter based on sightings of a series of orange spheres in the region around that time. Other ideas were more scientific, ranging from an electrical storm to a sudden gravitational fluctuation, to a Von Karman vortex street (which could generate infrasound that would induce panic), or simply intoxication from smoke from the stove, which would have forced the group to flee the tent hastily.
All these attempts to explain the incident were insufficient, and those that didn’t fail on one point failed on another. Radioactive weapons wouldn’t have only affected one person, the internal argument theory was ruled out due to the lack of evidence of romantic relationships between them, and no drugs or alcohol were found (not to mention the strength that would have been necessary to cause those injuries), etc. The key seemed to lie more in the terrible weather conditions – temperatures reached as low as 30 degrees below zero – and the uneven terrain. Nevertheless, in the absence of a definitive theory, the investigation was closed that same year.
All case documentation was sent to a secret archive, following the usual Soviet secretive practices, until time passed and the fall of communism created a different and new scenario. Lev Nikitich Ivanov, the police officer in charge of the case at the time, wrote in 1990 that they had no idea what could have happened and, moreover, they received orders from above not to disclose the issue of the flying spheres. In 2000, a regional television station released a documentary that led to a book compiling all the data and testimonies of the case; despite being halfway between reporting and fiction, it became an important source for all subsequent works.

The declassification of the files also helped. The diaries of the expedition group became public in 2009, reopening interest in the mysterious case. Between 2015 and 2019, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation decided to review the evidence at the request of the families, identifying a series of objective factors that came together on that fateful night of February 1st, which were not known in 1959 because the rescue teams operated in good weather: a snowstorm, winds of 20 to 30 meters per second (equivalent to a hurricane), and temperatures of -30ºC.
With all this, they established a sequence of events in which the group camped on a slope without natural barriers (trees). By digging into the snow on the slope, they weakened the base of accumulated snow, causing it to slowly begin sliding down toward the tent, sweeping it away. The occupants woke up and, unable to exit through the door, which was covered by the white blanket, tore the fabric to escape outside and ran toward the forest, seeking the shelter of the trees, without worrying about dressing first.
In the darkness, those wearing less clothing managed to start a fire, but it was not enough to prevent their deaths from hypothermia. Three others decided to return to the tent (the light of a flashlight left on indicated its position in the darkness), probably in search of warm clothing or sleeping bags, but what they were wearing was insufficient against the cold, and they perished as they struggled through the accumulated snow, exhausted. The remaining four might have survived in the forest, being better dressed; however, they had bad luck and fell into a crevice hidden under the snow, crashing into the bottom of the ravine.

In 2021, a team of engineers and physicists led by Swiss researchers Alexander Puzrin and Johan Gaume published in Communications Earth & Environment a computer simulation model demonstrating the theory of a small slab avalanche (where snow breaks away in a block-like form) with a delayed effect. This theory had previously been dismissed due to the site’s low slope, but it turned out that the low slope was only apparent, caused by the snow covering it. Beneath that snow was a 30º incline (the minimum required for avalanches) and, worse, an internal layer of loose, slippery snow.
On the other hand, Dyatlov’s diary mentioned very strong winds. Experts believe these were likely katabatic winds, a frigid wind common in polar regions, which originates from a high elevation and rushes downward due to ground cooling from infrared radiation emission and lack of sunlight (typically occurring at night). Since it did not snow on the night of February 1, the wind would have been responsible for pushing the snow downward, burying the tent, much like what happened in 1978 to another expedition in Sweden’s Anaris mountain.
The tent was buried under a meter and a half of snow, which can only be seen as a stroke of bad luck since the avalanche front was estimated to be no more than four meters wide, too small to leave obvious traces. This explains why no signs of it were detected in 1959 and why doubts persisted about this hypothesis until recently. But much progress has been made in digital simulations since then, and something very curious played a role in this case: the movie Frozen.

Johan Gaume, then director of SLAB (Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory), had seen Disney’s film and was impressed by how well the snow avalanches were recreated. He contacted the animators, and thanks to their insights, he was able to reproduce the exact behavior of snow in a slab avalanche and its impact on the human body in his model, combining it with results from experiments conducted by General Motors in the 1970s on similar impacts in car accidents.
The conclusion was that the strong katabatic wind unleashed hours after the storm, combined with the vertical cut made in the snow to camp, triggered a small slab avalanche that hit the tent like a train colliding with a car on the tracks. This could also explain the injuries sustained by the nine expedition members, as they were violently thrown against the skis they were sleeping on, which acted as an anvil. In fact, it turns out that several avalanches of this type have been recorded in the area recently, even though this was unknown at the time.
Several circumstantial factors complicated the case, such as the detection of radioactivity (attributed to thorium from the flashlights), the lack of clothing (partly due to haste and partly, perhaps, due to the phenomenon known as paradoxical undressing, where hypothermia causes a cognitive bias that makes the person feel extremely hot), the external mutilations (almost certainly the work of scavenging animals), the proverbial secrecy of the authorities at the time, and so on.

The great paradox of it all is that the group members did everything right. Their experience and qualifications led them to react appropriately, following the protocol for a normal avalanche: exit the tent quickly, seek shelter among trees to slow the avalanche, and attempt to bivouac. Unfortunately, this was a small avalanche, and none of that was necessary. If they had stayed by the tent, they likely would have survived. But fate said no, sparing only Yuri Yudin.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 27, 2023: Cómo la película ‘Frozen’ colaboró en resolver el incidente del paso Diátlov, las misteriosas muertes de nueve montañeros en 1959
SOURCES
Johan Gaume y Alexander M. Puzrin, Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass Incident in 1959
Keith McCloskey, Mountain fo the Dead. The Dyadlov Pass Incident
Igor Pavlov y Teodora Hadjyska, 1079, The overwhelming force of Dyatlov Pass
Héctor Rodríguez, Ciencia para resolver el caso del Incidente del Paso Dyatlov
Wikipedia, Incidente del paso Diátlov
Discover more from LBV Magazine English Edition
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.