Dyatlov Pass is known to be the site of Russia’s most speculated hiking mystery.
Soviet researchers / Creative Commons
Incident of the Dyatlov Pass in Russia has been the subject of great speculation and scientific analysis for more than half a century, after a team of nine hikers perished wildly in mysterious circumstances on the slopes of the Ural Mountains in 1959. The mystery has made the area a popular tourist destination for experienced hikers. but supposedly hit again.
According to Newsweek, a team of eight unregistered hikers allegedly disappeared during a hiking expedition in the area. Tourists from Moscow were due to return from the slopes on Wednesday morning, but their current whereabouts are unknown.
A local source said: “They were supposed to leave at eight o’clock in the morning. But they still haven’t returned and there is no contact with them.”
The group was unable to register with the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Sverdlovsk region, which told the newspaper Izvestia that it was only in contact with three registered groups on the mountain.
Tourists are believed to have visited the passage to honor the nine original victims of the 1959 mystery.
What happened at the Dyatlov Pass in 1959?
In January 1959, a team of experienced Russian mountaineers was taking a hike in the Ural Mountains, on a slope known as Kholat Saykhl, or “dead mountain”. That is, until they died in mysterious circumstances.
Personal diaries and films discovered at the site confirm that the team had set up camp, but something caused hikers to flee in the middle of the night, making their way out of the tent and crossing the mountain – poorly dressed, despite the sub-zero and thick temperatures snow layer.
When a search and rescue team finally found them, weeks later, scattered through the passage, they found that while six of the hikers died of hypothermia, the remaining three were killed by extreme physical trauma. Body parts were missing – one walker’s eyes, another’s tongue – and severe skeletal damage to some of the skulls and chest.
Recent studies by the Snow Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, showed that the culprit was likely to be a short, impactful avalanche, trapping hikers between a hard board of snow and their own skis.