The Dyatlov Pass incident

The group's own diaries, photographs and the route book, recovered from the tent and preserved in the case file, fix the approach. They reached the Lozva valley by truck and sledge, cached food and spare gear in the forest on 31 January, and on 1 February climbed late onto the treeless slope of Kholat Syakhl, about 300 m below the ridge, where the last photographs show them digging the tent platform into the snow in wind and poor light⁠[1]. The tent was a long canvas ridge tent for ten, pitched with its long axis across the slope, its uphill side set into a cut in the snow about a metre deep⁠[4].

What happened next is reconstructed from the scene. The tent's downhill wall was cut from inside in several places. Footprints, preserved as raised columns by later wind erosion, led down the slope in a rough line; most were of socks or bare feet. About 1.5 km down, at the forest edge, lay a cedar whose branches had been broken off up to five metres, a small fire, and the bodies of Krivonishenko and Doroshenko. Dyatlov, Slobodin and Kolmogorova lay at intervals on the slope above, heads toward the tent. Dubinina, Zolotaryov, Kolevatov and Thibeaux-Brignolles were found on 4 and 5 May in the ravine, in a hollow floored with cut fir and birch branches⁠[1]. Vozrozhdenny put the time of death at six to eight hours after the last meal, which the diaries and stomach contents place in the evening of 1 February⁠[1]. The weather station records and the searchers' accounts give a temperature near −25 °C with strong westerly wind⁠[4].

Nobody saw the group die, so the accounts are of the search and the scene. The students, soldiers and Mansi hunters who found the tent and the first bodies gave statements to the investigators within days, and these are in the case file: the tent's condition, the standing ski poles and the ice-axe outside, the footprints, the cedar and the fire⁠[1]. Mansi witnesses described the weather and the region; several were questioned at length about whether their people could have attacked the group, and the investigators found no sign of a struggle or of any footprints but the group's own⁠[1]. Members of another touring group camped some 30 km south reported seeing glowing spheres in the sky on 17 February, and similar reports from early February appear in the file; they were recorded weeks after the deaths and refer to a different night⁠[1]. Yudin, the survivor, identified the group's belongings for the investigators and spent the rest of his life rejecting the avalanche explanation⁠[1]⁠[6].

The criminal case file, opened on 6 February 1959 and closed on 28 May, runs to two volumes: the search reports, witness statements, the group's diaries and the route book, the autopsies, the forensic examination of the tent (which established that the cuts were made from inside), a radiological examination of clothing, the investigator's conclusion, and the radiograms between the search camp and Ivdel⁠[1]. The file was held in the Sverdlovsk Oblast archive and became available to researchers in the 1990s; page scans and translations are now published by the Dyatlov Pass research site and the file itself was transferred to the Yeltsin Center in 2019⁠[1]⁠[7].

The autopsies are the hardest evidence. Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, Slobodin, Krivonishenko, Doroshenko and Kolevatov died of hypothermia; Slobodin had a hairline skull fracture that was not fatal. Dubinina had symmetrical fractures of ribs on both sides and bleeding into the heart; Zolotaryov had five broken ribs on the right; Thibeaux-Brignolles had a depressed fracture of the temporal bone and a long fissure of the skull base. The four bodies from the ravine had lost soft tissue of the face, which the pathologist attributed to decomposition and water; Dubinina's tongue and eyes were missing⁠[1]. A radiological expert found beta contamination on several items of clothing from the ravine bodies, above the levels expected from fallout; the finding has never been fully explained and has fed the military theories⁠[1].

The 2019–2020 prosecutorial review added an on-site experiment in March 2019, a reconstruction of the weather, and expert opinions; its summary was given at a press conference and has not been published as a report⁠[2]⁠[3]. The 2021 model added physics: wind-loading of the slope above the cut for the hours between pitching and the event, a slab of about 5 m length releasing on a slope the authors put at about 28 degrees, and impact simulations calibrated against cadaver tests from the automotive literature, which produce rib and skull fractures of the kind found when a dense slab strikes a body lying on a rigid surface such as the packed skis the group slept on⁠[4]. The 2022 follow-up measured the slope by drone at more than 30 degrees and filmed two fresh slab avalanches on it in January 2022⁠[5].

The slab avalanche is now the reference explanation. Its account: the group cut the slope to level the tent; wind transported snow onto the slope above for several hours; a small slab released, struck the uphill side of the tent and the people lying under it, injuring three; the others cut their way out, took the injured downhill to shelter in the forest, built a fire and a den, and died of cold when they could not return⁠[4]⁠[2]. Its difficulties are the ones raised since 1959 and listed by Gaume and Puzrin themselves: the searchers recorded no avalanche debris, the slope was surveyed at under 30 degrees, the delay between the cut and the release, and injuries not typical of avalanche victims. The paper answers each: a small slab leaves little trace after three weeks of wind, the slope is locally steeper, delayed release follows from wind-loading, and the injuries follow from a slab striking bodies on a rigid base⁠[4]⁠[5]. What the model does not explain by itself is why the group went so far from the tent; the authors and the prosecutors answer that they sought the shelter of the trees and lost the tent in the dark⁠[2].

The katabatic wind reading, proposed by a Swedish-Russian expedition in 2019 by analogy with the 1978 Anaris deaths in Sweden, holds that a sudden violent downslope wind made the tent untenable and forced the group to the forest, where cold did the rest⁠[6]. It explains the retreat and the undressing but not the three sets of crushing injuries. The infrasound reading of Donnie Eichar's 2013 book proposes that wind over the ridge generated a Kármán vortex street whose infrasound caused panic and flight⁠[8]; it has no physical test and the same gap on the injuries.

The human-agency readings (Mansi hunters, escaped prisoners, a military team cleaning up a weapons test, or an operation involving Zolotaryov and Krivonishenko) rest on the radiation finding, the facial injuries and the strangeness of the scene. Against them: the investigators found only the group's footprints, no sign of struggle, nothing taken, and the facial damage was judged post-mortem⁠[1]. The military-test readings (parachute mines, a rocket) rest on the 1959 sphere sightings and on Ivanov's later statement that he was told not to pursue them; no test on that date and place has been documented⁠[6]. The 2019 prosecutorial review excluded crime at the outset, which is a limit of that review, not evidence⁠[3].

Full publication of the 2019–2020 review's expert reports, with the on-site measurements, would let the avalanche reconstruction be checked rather than taken on summary. A snowpack and wind record for the slope over a winter, with the kind of instrumentation now routine in avalanche research, would show whether slabs of the required size form above the tent site under the 1959 conditions; the 2022 films show they form, not how often⁠[5]. A forensic re-reading of the three injury cases against the slab-impact model, by pathologists independent of the authors, would test the model's strongest claim. The radiation finding could be re-examined from the archived clothing if it survives. None of this would tell us why the group walked 1.5 km; that part of the night is likely to stay inferred.