One February night in 1958, something caused a group of skiers to cut their way out of their tent and flee into a howling blizzard, in 20-below-zero temperatures, in bare feet or socks. What was it?
Something had happened that induced the skiers to cut their way out of the tent and flee into the night, into a howling blizzard, in twenty-below-zero temperatures, in bare feet or socks. They were not novices to the winter mountains; they would have been acutely aware of the fatal consequences of leaving the tent half dressed in those conditions. This is the central, and apparently inexplicable, mystery of the incident.
On May 28th, Ivanov abruptly closed the investigation. His role was to determine whether a crime had been committed, not to clarify what had happened, and he concluded that homicide was not a factor. Ivanov ended his report with a non-explanation that has bedevilled Dyatlov researchers ever since: “It should be concluded that the cause of the hikers’ demise was an overwhelming force, which they were not able to overcome.
In 1990, the prosecutor Ivanov, who had retired, published an article in which he claimed that, while compiling his 1959 report, he’d been pressured not to include his views on what happened. The article, titled “The Enigma of the Fireballs,” said that the skiers had been killed by heat rays or balls of fire associated with U.F.O.s.
Proponents of the weapons-test theory cite claims from people in the region that they had seen flashes of light or moving balls of fire in the direction of the mountains. In 2008, a three-foot-long piece of metal was found in the area; according to the Dyatlov Foundation, which took possession of it, the metal is part of a Soviet ballistic missile. Military tests would explain the radioactivity of recovered clothing.
Another class of theories considers a variety of natural disasters. An avalanche, perhaps, struck the tent, causing the crushing injuries to three of the victims and forcing the whole group to cut their way out and head to the forest for shelter. But no avalanche debris was found—a ski pole holding up the front of the tent was still standing—and the original investigation determined that the slope was too shallow to generate an avalanche.
All the Dyatlov theories share a basic assumption that the full story has not been told. In a place where information has been as tightly controlled as in the former Soviet Union, mistrust of official narratives is natural, and nothing in the record can explain why people would leave a tent undressed, in near-suicidal fashion.
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