Dead Mountain: The True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

by Eichar, Donnie

  When I rejoined the others, Kuntsevich was soberly discussing the weather forecast, which he pointed out was particularly difficult to predict in the region from Ivdel to the mountains. He explained that we would have to bypass the village of Vizhay, where the hikers had stayed for one night. A wildfire had struck the village in the summer of 2010, consuming thirty-four buildings and resulting in the entire community’s evacuation to Ivdel. Similarly, Sector 41 no longer existed, as such woodcutting settlements had typically been razed after five years of use. We would, however, be staying in Ushma, a Mansi village located along the Lozva River, five miles downstream from where the hikers had spent the night in Sector 41. Lacking the modern conveniences of running water and electricity, Ushma was the closest we could come to spending the night as the hikers had done.

  Kuntsevich’s worry was that in the 45 miles between Ushma and Dyatlov Pass, a region known for its hurricane-force winds, weather prediction was utterly useless. The temperate forecasts were saying minus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit, the same estimated temperature the hikers had experienced on their last night together. But even that prediction could change for the worse.

  Having never experienced these kinds of brutal temperatures firsthand, I started to get a little nervous and, amid all the talk of worst-case scenarios, I had to suppress my own feelings of escalating dread. My talk in the kitchen with Olga had only made me more aware of the concern I saw on Kuntsevich’s face whenever he looked in my direction. If the stoic Russians were this nervous about our journey into the northern Ural Mountains, how was I supposed to feel?

  Our morning call time was seven o’clock, and as I prepared for bed, I gave myself a mental pep talk. This hike was exactly what I was supposed to be doing, I told myself. It was what I had been wanting for several years. Before I could disappear into my room for the night, Borzenkov pulled me aside with one last bit of mountaineering wisdom, delivered in halting English. I was expecting another warning—a remember to, or never, or always—but instead he told me not to bother packing a toothbrush. He didn’t tell me why, but he said it with such gravity, that for a second I believed it to be sage advice. In the end, I made sure that my toothbrush was easily accessible in the side pocket of my pack. My new friend, after all, was missing a significant number of his teeth.

  The last bit of business before bed was to call my family. First, I called my girlfriend on Skype, in what turned into a teary half-hour exchange, at the end of which I promised her that I’d return home safely. Even more poignant was my son’s puzzled look as he stared at the computer screen at a face he was having trouble placing, but one that his mother kept referring to as “Papa.” His lack of recognition cut my heart in half. I had only been gone a couple of weeks, but to a one-year-old, that was an eternity.

  The last call was to my mother, whose refrain throughout this quest of mine had been: “Why are you doing this?” When my mother asked me again, “Why are you doing this?” I didn’t have a satisfying answer for her. I told her not to worry and that I’d be home soon.

  Zinaida “Zina” Kolmogorova in Sector 41 wearing the boot covers she made in Vizhay, January 27, 1959.

  15

  JANUARY 26–28, 1959

  THE WOODCUTTERS LIVING IN SECTOR 41 HAD LIKELY NOT seen a woman in months, and when the truck bearing the ten hikers came into view, the two women aboard must have sent a collective tremor through the laborers’ hearts. It was about an hour before sunset, and, as the hikers climbed out of the truck to greet their hosts, there was still enough light for the strangers to see each other clearly. The woodcutters were bundled in the standard outerwear of the region: trapper’s cap and telogreika—a quilted cotton jacket originally designed for the Red Army. The men had young, unlined faces, and the hikers recognized that they were not much older than themselves. Among those who greeted them, there was one proud man who stood out from the rest. He had dark, disheveled hair and a full red beard. He introduced himself as Yevgeny Venediktov, though Georgy noted he had a fitting nickname.

  We were talking to local workers about all kinds of things for a rather long time, and one red-bearded worker stayed in memory, his fellows called him “Boroda.”

  Boroda (the Russian word for “beard”) considered himself the spokesman of the group, and he took immediate charge in finding rooms for their guests. Aside from a series of pine log cabins that served as dorms for the workers, there was little to see at Sector 41. The settlement was like many of its kind in the region—a collection of roughly fifty men sent out on long-term contracts to harvest, chop and haul wood from the surrounding forests. The life of a woodcutter was an isolated one, and it took men away from their families for extended portions of the year. But then, for Soviets who lacked a formal education, manual labor was often their best option. Perhaps it was at moments such as these that the ten hikers felt lucky to have been awarded a place at the university; even under Khrushchev, there were many young people whose opportunities were startlingly limited.

  While the woodcutters were enlivened by the appearance of unexpected guests, the hikers were simply relieved their windblown ride was at an end. There was dinner and sleep to look forward to, and, for Yuri Yudin, there was the temporary reprieve from the painful jostle of travel. The ten friends unloaded their packs from the truck. After displacing some of his fellow workers, Boroda managed to free up a separate room for their female guests. Lyuda and Zina appreciated the gesture, but as it happened, there would be little time for sleep that night.

  The woodcutters made bread for their visitors, and after dinner, everyone gathered around the wood-burning stove for warmth. The cabin offered none of the comforts of the Vizhay guesthouse. The furniture was Spartan, and patches of swamp moss wedged between the logs were the only thing keeping out the bitter draft. But the cabin was luxurious compared with the accommodations that lay ahead for the hikers, and they were surely grateful for the warm reception and company. In fact, the students from the city found that they had more in common with these rural laborers than they might have guessed. It was true that the woodcutters had the wiry bodies of men who made their living from the land, but they also had the minds of self-taught intellectuals and the hearts of poets. Of all the men, the hikers found Boroda to be the most like-minded. Not only could he recite poetry as if he were reading it from the pages of a book, but he also held an easy sway over the entire group. “He was clearly the smartest,” Yudin recalls, “and he had immense authority among the guys.” Boroda also had a striking personal style for a man who spent most of his life in the woods. His reluctance to shave may well have arisen from convenience, but when paired with his smart blazer and Cossack-style breeches, Boroda’s generous facial hair lent him a surprising air of sophistication. It was as if he were making a conscious fashion statement, even if out here in the Russian wood there were few to admire it.

  Sector 41 woodcutters. Far left, Yevgeny “Boroda” Venediktov, January 27, 1959.

  The Dyatlov hikers in their Sector 41 quarters. Igor Dyatlov (middle) and Nikolay “Kolya” Thibault-Brignoles (right, wearing hat). Yuri “Georgy” Krivonishchenko’s mandolin hangs on the wall behind them, January 27, 1959.

  Over multiple cups of black tea, which was in plentiful supply from China during that time, Boroda and his crew recited their favorite poems for their guests. “Even though they worked as forest cutters, they knew Yesenin and his poems,” Yudin remembers. “So that shows that they were smart, not just working class.” Sergei Yesenin was a lyrical poet of the early twentieth century, one of the most celebrated in Russia. He had been an early supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution, but his later criticism of the government compelled Stalin to ban his work—a ban that had remained in place through Khrushchev’s regime. Yesenin had also been plagued by mental illness, and at the age of thirty hanged himself. But just before ending his life, he wrote what would become one of his most famous poems:

  Good-bye, my friend, good-bye

  My love, you are in my heart
.

  It was preordained we should part

  And be reunited by and by.

  Good-bye: no handshake to endure.

  Let’s have no sadness—furrowed brow.

  There’s nothing new in dying now

  Though living is no newer.

  Poetry lovers living in the Soviet Union would have had to memorize poems such as this one, as it was difficult to find Yesenin’s work in print. “You couldn’t read his books,” Yudin explains. “They were forbidden. You couldn’t buy them anywhere. . . . But even though he was forbidden—as were many other poets and writers—somehow we managed to have conversations about him.”

  As often happens, talk of poetry among young people turns to talk of love and relationships. And that night the two women steered the conversation toward romance. Yudin remembers that the two women were fond of this type of talk, and they had often brought up the subject back at the UPI dorms. “So every day since we left Yekaterinburg they were talking about love. They were trying to express something and to get to know something from the guys.”

  Only a couple of days earlier, Yudin had noted as much in the group diary: “Dispute about love provoked by Z. Kolmogorova.” Zina evidently wasn’t finished with the dispute, and her male hosts provided a fresh perspective on the subject. But Zina’s motives, as well as Lyuda’s, were entirely innocent, Yudin says. Most members of the group, including both women, were virgins. “Life was different in those times, and the atmosphere was different. Nobody would understand that now. Everything was romantic, but the romance meant something different.”

  Yudin admits that the male members of the hiking group—Igor, Georgy and Doroshenko, in particular—had crushes on Zina, but he says there was shame attached to expressing interest in one person. “Of course, we had some romantic feelings toward each other, but nobody said anything because you couldn’t pay attention to one girl. It wouldn’t be the Soviet style of doing things.” Of the talk that night at Sector 41, Yudin says, “Of course we had affections toward each other, but the talks were about love in general, not in particular. . . . What is love? What is romance? Who’s the perfect girl, the perfect type of girl?”

  The friends may have preferred to speak of their feelings in universal terms, but they didn’t hesitate to sing and dance with each other, celebrating the romance of being young, together and, perhaps, secretly in love. The musical Rustik took a turn on Georgy’s mandolin, while one of the woodcutters produced a guitar. Among the many songs of the evening was “Snow” by the Russian poet and adventurer Alexander Gorodnitsky, whose songs were popular among young travelers.

  Silently slowly sliding snow,

  Crackling twigs in the sputtering fire,

  Everyone’s still asleep but I—

  What’s on my mind?

  It’s snowing snow, snowing snow,

  Priming the tent’s canvas in white

  Our short stay overnight

  Is almost over.

  It’s snowing snow, snowing snow,

  Painting the tundra around us white;

  Making the frozen rivers alight,

  Snowing snow.

  All this celebrating was, of course, conducted without consuming alcohol—at least for the hikers. “Nobody drank, among the tourists, nobody,” Yudin insists, though he admits that he and his friends made exceptions on special occasions. On one particular New Year’s Eve, a group of roughly one hundred students went camping, bringing two bottles of champagne to go around. “Everybody had a spoonful of champagne and that’s it. But we were dancing and singing all night, because we didn’t need alcohol to have fun.”

  And so, without the aid of beer, wine, or moonshine, the students laughed with their hosts, stomped on the wooden floorboards and generally amused themselves until there were only a few hours of remaining darkness. Only then did they retire to their rooms and fall into a much-needed sleep. The group had a difficult day of travel ahead of them. They were now finished with motorized transportation; it was time to ready their skis and test their physical abilities in the wild.

  Yuri Yudin did not sleep soundly that night. He awoke from his bed on the floor to an even worse pain than he had experienced the day before. Yet he was determined to push ahead. His stubbornness, he says, was partly due to his wish to continue the trip with his friends, but he had his own private reasons for not turning back. The next stop was an abandoned geologic settlement—and because Yudin was studying geology at school, he was curious to see what minerals and gemstones he might find amid the deserted buildings.

  After a late breakfast, the woodcutters filed out of the cabins to see their new friends off. Boroda emerged with an unruly mane and a cigarette between his fingers. When he realized proper group photographs were being taken, he smoothed back his hair and assumed a pose with his Comrades. As a parting gesture, the hikers presented their hosts with gifts, whatever possessions they thought they could spare. One of the Sector 41 workers, Georgy Ryazhnev, later revealed to investigators, “They presented master Yevgeny Venediktov with a fiction book and gave a present to Anatoly Tutinkov as well.”

  That afternoon, a Lithuanian named Stanislav Velikyavichus arrived with a horse-drawn sleigh to escort the hikers to the geologic settlement. Velikyavichus was on an errand that day to pick up iron pipes from the abandoned site, and, as luck had it, his sleigh had room enough to hold the hikers’ packs. He was a freelance worker at the settlement, and having been imprisoned for six years at Sector 2 of the eighth department of penitentiary camps, he was the travelers’ first encounter with a former convict of the region. What Velikyavichus did to earn his imprisonment isn’t clear, but, whatever his crime, Sector 41’s director didn’t see any reason not to put the hikers in his trust. Neither did the hikers, who would affectionately dub him “Grandpa Slava.”

  Because Velikyavichus arrived so late in the day, the trade-off for a lightened load was that they would be making much of their 15-mile trek by moonlight. The ten skiers said farewell to their woodcutter friends and proceeded north from Sector 41 deeper into the forest. Though they were temporarily relieved of their packs, the skiers had 15 miles of difficult country to cross before reaching the next settlement. To break up the monotony of travel, the friends would stop periodically, and cameras would appear from beneath their coats. A visual record of their progress was crucial in earning their next hiking grade of III. By capturing their journey on film, they could prove to the university that they were complying with the various hiking codes: regulation clothing, proper gear and skiing in proper formation. This didn’t stop them from mugging for the camera occasionally, and a fair portion of film was devoted to less serious documentation, including swapping hats and adopting exaggerated poses. A look at their album reveals typical college students clearly enjoying each other’s company.

  There was thick forest all around them, and the easiest path through the snow was up the frozen Lozva River. Yudin says the ice wasn’t very thick, and it wasn’t cold enough to completely ensure against their skis penetrating through to the water. What’s more, the sticky snow would turn to ice on their skis, compelling them to stop periodically and slice away the ice with a knife. But, in doing so, they had to be careful not to put too much weight on the river. “It was very difficult and dangerous,” Yudin remembers. “The river was covered in snow and you couldn’t see the ice you were standing on.”

  Group photo at Sector 41, January 27, 1959.

  The Dyatlov hikers en route from Sector 41 to the abandoned geological site. From front to back: Yuri Doroshenko, Zinaida “Zina” Kolmogorova, Lyudmila “Lyuda” Dubinina, Stanislav “Grandpa Slava” Velikyavichus. Yuri Yudin can be seen in the far background, January 27, 1959.

  Nikolay “Kolya” Thibault-Brignoles plays in the snow assuming positions of faux distress, January 27, 1959.

  From left to right: Lyudmila “Lyuda” Dubinina, Yuri “Georgy” Krivonishchenko, Nikolay “Kolya” Thibault-Brignoles, and Rustem “Rustik” Slobodin, January 27, 195
9.

  Yuri “Georgy” Krivonishchenko takes a photo, January 27, 1959

  To keep their energy up, the skiers had purchased four loaves of warm bread at Sector 41, and, over the course of the night, they split two of the loaves among themselves. Meanwhile, Grandpa Slava’s horse seemed to move ever more slowly over the perilous river, and despite the skiers’ own cautious pace, the Lithuanian and his sleigh eventually disappeared from view behind them.

  At last, in the light of the three-quarter moon, the travelers were able to make out a cluster of snow-capped rooftops. As they approached, the settlement seemed to grow into a full village, but there would be no villagers to receive them tonight. There were around twenty cabins, all silent, with no fire or candlelight in a single window. The skiers moved down the trackless streets, past doors and windows that had been left or blown open—and in the moonlight, they could make out the outlines of forsaken stoves and furniture inside. The settlement had been abandoned two or three years before, but, to look at it, one might have imagined the inhabitants of these cabins just having been forced to leave at a moment’s notice, having no time to collect their furniture or to latch their doors before leaving their homes forever.

  The woodcutters had informed them that only one of the houses was in suitable condition for spending the night, and it took some effort to find it. In his diary, Doroshenko noted the discovery of the house—discernible from the water hole cut in the ice—and the late arrival of Velikyavichus.

  We found it late at night and guessed the location of the hut only by a hole in ice. Made fire out of boards. Stove is smoking. Some of us hurt our hands on the nails. Everything’s OK. And the horse arrived. And then, after dinner, in a well-heated hut, we were bantering till 3:00 AM.