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Posted: 17-03-2013 21:37 Post subject:

I don't see why the story should be considered suspicious simply because it didn't become a widespread staple of Forteana of the period.

A group of cross-country skiers go missing in a very remote area during the depths of winter. Their bodies are found weeks later (some not until months later). Autopsies noted some serious injuries on a minority of the bodies, but cause of death is basically listed as hypothermia for all. The focal mystery isn't that their deaths coincided with something Fortean, but that these experienced backcountry trekkers fell victim to the most obvious risk - i.e., the cold - after apparently leaving their tent and equipment behind.

Even setting aside the obvious issue of it being the cold war era (when very little news from within the USSR made it into Western media), what is it in the basic story that should have made it an international sensation?

Posted: 18-03-2013 09:53 Post subject:

Why does no-one start from the top? From the very beginning... The tent.

THE TENT:
Why does a ripped tent draw the conclusion that the zipper wasn't fast enough? If this were the case and the tent was ripped open because the 2-second zipper was too time consuming, who really has an unsheathed knife at their bedside and (in a panic situation) makes a split second decision to reach for the knife rather than the zipper? They then start hacking away at the tent (destroying their main survival lifeline) just to exit for a breath of fresh air???! Must have been one seriously repulsive fart.

It's tough to believe. Almost as extreme as breaking the window out of your car instead of reaching for the door handle. It's not something an ordinary person would do, regardless of the situation. Eerie and captivating--which makes for a good story, yes, but it's not a realistic conclusion that the tent was ripped open because their situation was so incredibly dire.

2 additional points:

THE TEAM LEFT WITHOUT PROPER CLOTHING:
Probably the 2nd most intriguing aspect of the Dyaltov Pass Incident is that the team left the tent wearing very little clothing. Perhaps the moon and stars were incredible, and it was an great night (unseasonably balmy) for a twilight stroll? (kidding) But they could have fled the tent in the daytime (in the hours before sundown or early morning).

In short, fleeing the tent, if that's what happened, didn't need to happen while they were startled awake in the middle of the night (and to revisit my earlier point, it didn't necessarily happen by ripping open the tent. They could have used the zipper, and the tent was damaged for another reason altogether).

If the clothing had become wet, the team were smart enough to shed the wet clothing and build a fire away from the wind-torn the hill, down inside the cover of trees (also for kindling purposes). Possibly later, it was decided that the clothing could be dried out near the fire (which they planned on increasing in size) and so they headed back for the rest of the wet clothes.

Strangely though, the final 4 who died in a "4 meter ravine" were very well dressed. This is seldom mentioned, but certainly proven in at least 1 photo.

Why? Did they hang back at the tent to dress properly, or did they typically sleep with most of their clothes while the others hadn't?

In any case, we can conclude that the abundance of clothing worn by these 4 people did NOT primarily come from borrowing clothing from the deceased. They were well dressed from the beginning of the incident. They might have been separate from the rest of the group during the whole thing, only stopping at the campfire location to scavenge a few additional clothing items.

DEATHS OF THE LAST 4, IN THE RAVINE:
With all the snowpack for padding, they couldn't have sustained their injuries only from the short fall. Even if it were possible, how could they all have fallen simultaneously? Nearly impossible. Much like the tent zipper, this is another seriously doubtful item that is rarely questioned. The short fall could not have caused their injuries.

The lady with a missing tongue was found (according to one report) with a stomach full of blood, meaning her tongue was removed while she was alive, ruling out scavenging animals (if this report is genuine).

They were found only 75 meters from the campfire, meaning their journey was extremely short-lived after picking up clothing from the 2 deceased near the fire. If they were well-dressed and had eaten within 8 hours (according to autopsy reports), what was their main complex?

We'll need to take ALL the tiny details into account to have ANY chance at solving this one. Overlook nothing. The tent zipper, the 4 meter ravine deaths, and plenty more items that I didn't even mention.

Posted: 18-03-2013 13:24 Post subject:

Posted: 18-03-2013 15:02 Post subject:

Posted: 18-03-2013 15:26 Post subject:

I've got a contact who used to do Russian translations for me, but he is a pretty distant contact who I'm never in touch with. It would be like calling up a second-cousin to borrow money, but I could ask him to translate something if we have a specific block of text. It would be better to have a translator as part of the forum with an actual interest in this, though..

Posted: 18-03-2013 15:49 Post subject:

The tent was a do-it-yourself affair of canvas. To judge from the photos, it didn't have a zippered entrance.

Posted: 19-03-2013 13:53 Post subject:

One thing that's always puzzled me...doesn't the whole 'they had tanned skin' come from the testimony of someone who was 12 at the time and saw them at the funeral?

Firstly, would a 12 year old be a reliable witness? Was he familiar enough with the appearance of corpses to know if they were actually tanned or if it was a result of decomposition/embalming? Is his memory reliable after all this time?

Secondly, wouldn't there be other witnesses to back up his story? Morticians, undertakers, family, other people at the funeral. Why is it only him?

Has there been anymore evidence to the tanned skin beyond one person's testimony?

Posted: 19-03-2013 17:33 Post subject:

Posted: 19-03-2013 21:24 Post subject:

Posted: 20-03-2013 10:34 Post subject:

Posted: 20-03-2013 11:24 Post subject:

Some time back I pointed out that every single source I could find on the internet at the time (02-03-2008) linked back to the same Moscow Times newspaper article* - this included the more often referenced St Petersburg Times article, which is word for word the same as the former. I couldn't find a single reference anywhere that was independant of this. I also noted that, at the time, the Wiki page was up for deletion. (Is there any way of retrieving an old Wiki page, I wonder? I've tried deciphering the relevent revision history but can't find an obvious indication.)

Posted: 20-03-2013 20:47 Post subject:

I speak Russian, although far from perfectly, and I've just given the Russian Wikipedia article a (very) quick glance. The coroners reports from the incident are actually referenced in the bibliography.

All the references are in an on-line database, along with witness statements diaries, scans etc., which you can check here:

https://sites.google.com/site/hibinaud/home/akt-issledovania-trupa-kolevatova

I will stress though, it's an enthusiast's site, not an official site.

And, as for the Russian links being labelled 'unreliable', that would seem to be an issue with the policy foreign language links in Wikipedia.

Posted: 21-03-2013 11:11 Post subject:

Just my two cents - Could the tent have been torn open by an animal, or they heard a bear or wolf or some such thing and thats why they escaped so quickly and ran for it with little clothing? Just an idea....

Posted: 21-03-2013 16:31 Post subject:

The tears in the tent were relatively regular, and were concluded to be cuts done from within. It's not clear why the searchers / investigators were so confident that all the tears were cuts and all were the result of cutting from inside the tent. The searchers / investigators reported no signs indicating animals or humans other than the 9 members of the group.

There were two large rectilinear holes along one side of the tent - either of which would have been large enough to allow persons to get out. These are in the middle section of the tent wall. There was also a long vertical slash or tear at the rear end of the tent.

There are also a number of smaller elongated holes (some aligned like a dotted line) which are suggestive of someone slashing the fabric multiple times.

As far as I can tell, all the holes are on the side of the tent facing toward the valley into which they descended from the pass and died - away from the nearby mountain slope.

It's worth noting that their homemade tent was made of canvas, which will tear in a relatively straight line once sufficiently stressed.

I've never been totally convinced all the holes in the tent were cuts made by people trying to escape. I still think it's possible one or more of the holes could represent tears in the fabric (i.e., fabric failure).

It was a homemade tent assembled from two older tents to make a larger / longer one. The main holes are in the center section - the section found collapsed. This is the section intended to be supported by multiple guy-lines (as illustrated in photos of the tent earlier in the expedition). This section wasn't well supported on that final night, because they could tie any lines only to ski poles.

They'd made camp on an exposed slope during snowy / windy weather, in a location I seriously doubt they'd intended (they pitched camp around sunset, so it's likely to have been a position circumstances forced on them). I suspect Dyatlov had planned to traverse the pass and make camp down in the valley into which they fled that night, but their progress had been slower than expected and they had to give up atop the pass.

Based on photos and their journal, that tent was ill-supported and probably subject to windy conditions unlike any encountered thus far on the trip. They weren't using their stove that final night, and there are conflicting claims as to whether they even had any firewood on hand at the pass. (The purportedly official version is that they had none; there's a claim one of the search party students mentioned a single log.)

It also bears pointing out that the day before they'd built a storage place and set aside approximately 55 - 60 kg of food and equipment (to be accessed again on the way back). They only traveled circa 2 miles to get from that cache site to the top of the pass - a relatively short amount of progress compared to previous days, even considering it was an uphill climb.

IMHO the evidence suggests they were probably extra-tired from the work of the day before and had a bad day by the time they had to pitch the tent on the pass (itself a hard task, as illustrated in the final surviving photos). As a result, I'm not sure they were at their best when confronted with whatever event(s) caused them to leave their campsite.

If the tent fabric failed, they would have been effectively exposed to the elements. If the tent also collapsed, they could have understandably panicked (above and beyond probably being exhausted and stressed over the final day's disappointing progress). They weren't using their only heat source, and there's reason to believe they didn't even have any fuel on hand.

The story has typically been portrayed as the mysterious abandonment of a workable campsite for no apparent reason. Except for the avalanche (or fear-of-avalanche) theories, nobody seems to have seriously explored the possibility that their campsite (specifically the tent) had become dangerously untenable - forcing them to decide to descend into the adjacent valley to get firewood and / or set up a temporary site with fire to wait for morning.

The obvious next question becomes: "If they were trying to execute such an extemporaneous plan, why were some of them reasonably clothed and others mysteriously under-clothed / without shoes?" The variations in clothing might have resulted from a panic to get off the pass ASAP, no matter how clothed some of them were.

However ...

This also assumes they all left the tent at the same time. There was no willy-nilly rush down into the valley. The search party found footprints accounting for the entire group, all clustered together in a common path. All this proves is that whoever came last followed the path set by the earliest one(s). It doesn't prove they all left the tent together.

It's always struck me that the notion of the entire group fleeing downslope to eventually die in different states of (un-)dress, in different locations, and apparently in the course of heading in different directions was a little too odd (this impression is, after all, the basis for all the mystery). It makes more sense to me that they weren't (at least weren't _always_) operating as a single group.

For example ... What if they found themselves untenably exposed on the pass, and a party of (prepared; adequately dressed) members were dispatched to either get firewood or start a fire (the fire site under the prominent tall cedar) to which the others could evacuate? As the group leader Dyatlov would have been a likely candidate for this dispatched sub-group. The adequately-clothed bodies of Dyatlov and 2 others were the only bodies found between the cedar / fire location and the tent, and all 3 bodies were oriented so as to suggest they were heading uphill toward the tent when they expired. If they'd been delayed in returning in accordance with their mission, the ones left at the exposed campsite - quite possibly weakened / 'maddened' by hypothermia some time later - could have set off into the valley out of desperation, following the path of their footprints but possibly never finding the first party. This is one scenario that makes more sense to me than all of them leaving in disparate states of dress, with Dyatlov and 2 others being the last to die in a vain attempt to get back to the tent as the final scene (as some accounts would have it).

Posted: 21-03-2013 19:50 Post subject: