Death of the Sole Survivor of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

Yuri Yudin hugging Lyudmila Dublinina in late January 1959.  Photo is courtesy of St. Peterburg Times. 

Though this is not in the book, it is about a recent unusual disappearance,  so I decided to include  it. Thank you Tim Beckley for the tip. This is a great tragic story, it definitely ranks as one of the top 10 most gruesome deaths in history.  And it all begins with the death of the sole survivor of The Dyalov Pass Incident, Yuri Yudin,on May 2 of this year, 2013. He was all of 76 years old. 

Back during the Dyatlov Pass Incident, he was one of ten young students at the Ural Polytechic Institute in Sverdlovsk (which is now called Ural State Technical University), who was supposed to be going on a ski hike up Ural Mountain. Unfortunately, due to poor health, he was the lucky one who stayed back. The other students died on the pass on January 28, 1959 on the east shoulder of Kholat  Syakhl  Mountain which, ironically, is Mansi for Dead Mountain. It has since been renamed as Dytalov Pass after their group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov, who was a senior student and part of the radio technology faculty at the university.

Igor Dyatlov courtesy of www.centineladelsendero.com

Dyatlov was supposed to send their sports club a telegram upon their return to Vizhai by February 12, but he told Yudin that the trip could take longer, so Yudin didn’t contact the authorities right away when the ski hikers didn’t return. It was the relatives of the missing ski hikers who demanded that a rescue operation be launched, so on February 20th, professors and volunteer students scoured Dytalov Pass for their loved ones.  They were shortly joined by the army and police forces who used planes and helicopters to comb the area for the ski hikers or any evidence as to their whereabouts.

The Dyatlov Incident Tent was slashed with knives. Courtesy of  thevelvetrocket.com

Six days later, on February 26, they finally found their abandoned tent which was covered in snow. What was odd, was that it was still filled with the students’ belonging and slashed with knives. For whatever reason, the students may have been frightened, evidence pointed to them scrambling out of the tent in a frenzy and climbing up trees.

Georgyi Krivonischeko and Yuri Doroshenko dead. Courtesy of therealevidenceoftheparanormal.blogspot.com

The first five bodies were discovered that same day. The bodies of Georgyi Krivonischeko and Yuri Doroshenko, which were found near a pine tree, were stark naked except for their underwear, and their arms and feet were burned. The bodies of Igor Dytalov, Zinaida Kolmogorova, and Rustem Slobodin were found about 400 kilometers from the pine tree. It seemed to the investigator at the time because of their poses and foot prints in the snow, that they were rushing back to their tent.

Bodies of Lyudmila Dubinina. Courtesy of myonlinelessonplan.com

A few months later on May 4, the other three bodies were found deep in the woods. They were covered with four meters of snow in a stream valley. When the doctors examined their bodies, they were horrified by their condition. Lyudmila Dubunina and Alexander Zolotarev had broken ribs, Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel had a crushed skull with no broken skin, one of the women was missing half of her face including her eyes and tongue like a mutilated cow, and they were all drenched in radiation. If that weren’t strange enough, none of the students had any external wounds that would suggest that they were attacked by wild animals or other humans.

                 Bodies of  Alexander Zolotarev and  Alexander Kolevatov . Courtesy of myonlinelessonplan.com

Scientists who were studying the case came to the conclusion that the hikers were in no state to overcome an elemental force…whatever that elemental force was. Some people speculate that cattle mutilations are connected to UFO sightings in the area where they happen, and Ural Mountain is a hot bed of UFO sightings. On the day the students went missing, orange orbs were spotted in the area where they were camping. Unfortunately, it looks like the sightings didn’t disappear in the area after the incident because witnesses spotted three white orbs  just this year.  

As for the Soviet investigators, due to the lack of eyewitnesses and scant evidence, they concluded that “compelling natural forces” were the cause for the students’ deaths, which sounds eerily similar to the scientists’ deduction. Perhaps inspired by these compelling natural forces, the Soviet military barred access to the Dytalov Pass to anyone for three years after the incident. Yuri Yudin wasn’t about to accept their explanation at face value. He conducted his own investigation, suspicious that the Soviet military was directly responsible for the deaths of his friends. He pointed out that the military had done tests in that area and that they were more interested in how and why the students were in that area in the first place, rather than in the whys and the causes of their deaths.

An Interesting photo taken by one of the skiers. Notice the person or thing near the table. Courtesy of therealevidenceoftheparanormal.blogspot.com

According to RT News, when he was once asked what question he would have liked to ask God if he was allowed to ask him only one question, Yudin answered, “What exactly happened to my friends that night?”

I guess now that he’s in heaven, he has the answer that eluded him his entire life.