Dyatlov Pass Incident

At the end of January 1959, a Russian cross-country ski team ventured into the Northern Ural Mountains. Intended expedition was a week-long skiing adventure to reach Oroton Mountain in Urals. They left Vizhai (the last inhabited settlement far north) on January 27th, but never came back alive. The trouble wasn't that the team disappeared. It was the state they were in when they were found. The campsite was abandoned with tent torn from inside. Searchers followed the recent footprints that led to the edge of nearby woods where they discovered the remains of a fire and two dead bodies. The first two bodies discovered were found shoeless and only wearing their underwear. Nearby the searchers found three more bodies that appeared to have been trying to return to camp at that time. It wasn't until two months later that authorities would find the remaining four bodies in a ravine under 4 m of snow quite a bit further from the camp. Two of the hikers had skull damage, two had major chest fractures, and one woman was missing her tongue. They had no external wounds or injuries. There were no foreign footprints and there was no sign of a struggle. What’s puzzling was that some of the victims were wearing each others’ clothes. Examination concluded six of the group members died of hypothermia and three of fatal injuries. Forensic radiation tests had shown high doses of radioactive contamination on the clothes of some of the victims. Medical examiner finally concluded that the group members all died because of a “compelling unknown force.”