Dyatlov Pass Incident

From left, Lyudmila Dubinina, Rustem Slobodin, Alexander Zolotaryov and Zina Kolmogorova posing in early 1959

• Igor Dyatlov (Игорь Дятлов), 23
• Zinaida Kolmogorova (Зинаида Колмогорова), 22
• Lyudmila Dubinina (Людмила Дубинина), 21
• Alexander Kolevatov (Александр Колеватов), 25
• Rustem Slobodin (Рустем Слободин), 23
• Georgyi Krivonischenko (Георгий Кривонищенко), 24
• Yuri Doroshenko (Юрий Дорошенко), 21
• Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel (Николай Тибо-Бриньоль), 24
• Alexander Zolotarev (Александр Золотарев), 37
• Yuri Yudin (Юрий Юдин)

Those are the names of the members of the 1958-1959 Ural Polytechnical Institute Ski Team. On January 25, 1959, this group of ten Ski-Hikers would embark on a journey whose tragic end would forever remain a mystery. Only one of them, Yuri Yudin, would survive the trip due to an earlier illness.

If you haven’t heard of the Dyatlov Pass Incident before, the story is quite compelling. While modern forensics has been able to piece together some of the strangeness surrounding the incident, the details behind what happened on that cold, winter night in February 1959 still remain a mystery. The unanswered question is “Why would nine experienced cross-country ski-hikers quickly rip through their tent to run out into extremely frigid winter temperatures of −18°C (−1°F) at the risk of their own deaths?”