Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident (15 page)

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FEBRUARY 1959

STEPAN KURIKOV TRUDGES THROUGH A SMALL RAVINE, A
lead in his hand and a police dog at the other end of it. Kurikov has come to the search by way of Suyevatpaul, a Mansi village at the Anchucha tributary, where he is one of the respected tribal elders. He is also one of few Mansi tribesmen who has joined the search, and though he is well into his fifties, he is a tireless member of the team. Trailing behind him is Vladislav Karelin, a medical engineering employee and a Grade-II hiker. Karelin was a member of the same hiking group that stopped for tea at the Mansi village of Bahtiyarova earlier in the month—a visit that initially threw off searchers after they confused Karelin’s party with Dyatlov’s.

As the two weave through the dark claws of dormant birches, Kurikov senses that his dog is anxious, in the way that police dogs get right before they find something. It is late afternoon and Kurikov and Karelin are only a few hundred yards from where the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Georgy Krivonishchenko were found several hours earlier. It’s strange that Kurikov should find himself here again, in the same spot that he and another Mansi volunteer had combed just days before with no success. If not for the two searchers stumbling upon the bodies earlier that morning, the teams would still be swarming the eastern slope. But now the focus has shifted to the valley, almost a mile from the Dyatlov group’s tent.

The German shepherd tugs at its lead, pulling Kurikov over the powdery snow in the direction of a young birch, whose shoots erupt from the ground at unnatural angles, as if coerced by gravity or wind. The Mansi man watches as the dog sniffs around the sapling, leaving behind a mess of paw prints. As the shepherd grows increasingly anxious, Kurikov calls to his companion. There can be no doubt there is something here, and the men drop to their knees and begin to dig. With gloved hands, they toss the snow behind them in clumps. But they don’t have to dig far because just inches beneath the surface, they hit something hard. They find a patch of dark cloth, and after more snow is cleared away, they can make out the shape of a joint covered in wool—an elbow.

Like a pair of archaeologists, the men continue to carve away the snow, until something human emerges. First an arm, then hands, and another arm, until it becomes clear that the arms are held across the chest in what appears to be a defensive gesture. But in fact, the arms are clutching the birch, pulling its spindly trunk downward, giving the tree its awkward angle. As the men unearth more of the body, they observe that this hiker is dressed more warmly than Doroshenko and Krivonishchenko had been, though not by much. This man wears a sweater pulled over a checkered shirt, plus a fur vest and ski trousers. Like his companions, he is without hat or gloves. He is also shoeless, with only a pair of mismatched socks pulled over painfully curled feet. On his left wrist is a Zvezda watch—a popular brand manufactured north of Moscow in Uglich. The watch is stopped at 5:31. The position of the body, as it clings to the birch, is one of suspended struggle, as if the victim had been fighting against the elements until his last breath.

Kurikov has never met any of the Dyatlov hikers and is hardly in a position to identify the body. But Karelin not only knows this man, he helped secure maps for his group’s trip to Otorten
Mountain. As Karelin wipes the encrusted snow from the rigid, upturned face, he is confronted with the unmistakable features of the hiking party’s leader, Igor Dyatlov.

Igor Dyatlov’s partially buried body, February 27, 1959.

AFTER NEWS OF THE BODY IS DELIVERED BACK TO CAMP
, searchers begin to fan out from the birch. Lieutenant Nikolay Moiseyev, who leads the second police dog of the company, heads from the tree back in the direction of the hikers’ tent. Several hundred yards from the birch, as the land slopes upward from the valley, his dog, Alma, starts to pace back and forth over a smooth patch of snow. Moiseyev has made a career of interpreting canine behavior. Back at his precinct in Sverdlovsk, he is primarily known for two things: telling good stories and
training police dogs. He works mostly with German shepherds, but he has also trained Eastern-European shepherds, a military breed developed in the 1930s by crossing German shepherds with Russian breeds. For years, he has been preparing these animals to sniff out contraband and missing persons, yet he can’t help but feel his heart sink when his efforts pay off at a moment like this, above several feet of snow.

Alma stops and begins to dig. Moiseyev drops to his knees to join her, their efforts soon revealing a figure just beneath the surface. It is clear from the smaller stature that this is a woman. She lies on her right side, face down, arms twisted beneath her. Her pretty face is dark with dried blood, and her right leg is bent, as if she had been in midclimb before collapsing. Unlike the other bodies, however, she is the first to be dressed somewhat sensibly for the climate. She wears a hat, ski jacket and ski pants. Yet, like the others, she is mysteriously without shoes. Her feet are covered only in socks.

Because he does not know her, Moiseyev is unable to name the victim on the spot, but a radiogram sent back to Ivdel later that day would identify the young woman’s body as Zina Kolmogorova.

THAT SAME DAY, WHILE MOISEYEV AND HIS MEN ARE
searching the valley, Yevgeny Maslennikov—the man who advised Dyatlov and his friends before their trip—is appointed head of the entire search operation. It is a post for which he is well qualified. Maslennikov is not only head of the hiking club at the metal plant where he works, he is one of the few in Sverdlovsk who can boast a Master of Sport certification. And because he knew all of the missing hikers personally—with the exception of Zolotaryov—he is one of the few searchers who is able to identify the bodies on the spot.

Once bodies start turning up—and in the continued absence of the lead prosecutor—Maslennikov takes a turn at investigator and begins to suggest theories as to what might have happened to his young friends. His radiograms back to Ivdel sketch out an early theory that the hikers were swept down the slope by gale-force winds:

WE DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO EXAMINE TENT

PROBABLY THEY WERE BURIED UNDER HEAVY SNOW THE TENT GOT TORN PEOPLE STOOD UP WERE SWEPT AWAY DOWNHILL BY WIND.

This echoed a radiogram sent from camp earlier in the day from other members of the search team:

IN 16 HOURS 4 BODIES FOUND IN DIFFERENT PLACES, AND THEY ARE SCARCELY DRESSED AND BAREFOOT, WHICH LEADS US TO BELIEVE THEY WERE SWEPT BY A STORM.

Yet even this early theory, which seemed to make perfect sense to the people on the ground, wasn’t adding up for those back in Ivdel. A committee secretary by the name of Zaostrovsky inquired:

WHY WERE THINGS LEFT IN THE TENT IF PEOPLE WERE SWEPT AWAY BY WIND?

More specifically, why would the tent—including all its contents and support posts—be left intact when the hikers had been swept away so forcefully? This seemingly innocuous question posed by radiogram would turn out to be one of the most baffling questions of the case, one that would ceaselessly plague investigators.

Search team gathers at Boot Rock, February 1959.

FEBRUARY 27 WAS AN EVENTFUL DAY FOR THE SEARCHERS
, but by the end of it, five hikers are still unaccounted for. The next day, having exhausted the area near the birch and cedar trees, Maslennikov has his teams focus on the trail of footprints leading downhill from the tent—a path that had turned up nothing the previous day. Surprisingly, the search dogs that were so useful the day before, are now encountering difficulty. In a radiogram, Maslennikov calls Moiseyev’s dogs “useless” in deep snow. To tackle the snow problem, Moiseyev outfits his searchers with steel avalanche probes—instruments that, incidentally, had been manufactured at the very metal plant in which Maslennikov works. Probing snow is more difficult than it sounds; some patches of snow are so dense that it requires a strenuous effort to shove the probe all the way to the permafrost. A single searcher
could make 10,000 picks in the snow per day, covering an area of up to 30,000 yards, yet still turn up nothing.

The four bodies that were previously found have been wrapped in tarpaulin and stored about a mile from Holatchahl mountain under a large, boot-shaped rock, dubbed “Boot Rock.” Meanwhile, Maslennikov continues to puzzle over the evidence, articulating his confusion in another radiogram to Ivdel:

WHY THE WHOLE GROUP LEFT TENT HALF-DRESSED, WE DON’T KNOW YET.

ABSOLUTELY NO NOTION.

That same day, a helicopter lands near search headquarters, and the lead prosecutor from Ivdel emerges. Vasily Tempalov, the man with zero experience on such cases, has arrived at last. He gets to work on catching himself up on the day’s events, cataloguing the tent’s contents, and making his official report. He notes the following facts:

The tent was set on the slope at a height of 1,079 meters.

An even spot was made under the tent, with skis laid at the bottom.