Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident (34 page)

Setting up camp, of course, takes much longer than it does to dismantle it—a fact that only seasoned outdoorsmen can truly appreciate—and, for the next few hours, the nine hikers work together to erect their canvas fort against the rapidly approaching night. With the wind from the west ever increasing, their efforts take longer than usual—every safeguard must be checked and double-checked to ensure the tent’s security on the slope. The team begins by unhooking the skis from their boots and placing eight pairs on the snow, side by side like floorboards. The ninth set of skis they use as vertical support to keep the platform from moving. Someone sticks the ice ax in the snow, keeping it on hand in case they need to use it as a tent support. With the foundation intact, the team begins to unfurl the 6-x-13–foot tarpaulin. The thick material beats vigorously in the wind as they struggle to pull the tent into three dimensions. Finally, with the cords fastened to ski poles planted firmly in the snowpack, the tent is raised vertically where it begins to take on its familiar shape. By the time it is upright, the tent is positioned sideways on the slope, with the entrance facing south.

As is by now routine, Zina and Lyuda are first inside. At 80 square feet, the tent is roomy and tall enough to stand in. By the light of their flashlights, the two begin to fill out the space with the evening’s necessities—stove, food, blankets—while arranging the newly emptied backpacks on the floor for insulation. Above the packs, they roll out several blankets. Any unpatched holes in the tent they stuff with clothing or jackets. With the combined efforts both in and outside the tent, the structure is becoming firmly rooted on the slope and insulated from the cold leaking up from below. Not even gale-force winds tear the tent from its spot.

While Sasha and Kolya finish securing the integrity of the tent outside, the other five men—Igor, Doroshenko, Kolevatov, Georgy and Rustik—join the women inside. They help Zina and Lyuda finish arranging the packs and blanket. With that done, the seven of them
yank off their damp boots and shed their jackets, spreading them out strategically to dry. This is the group’s fifth night of camping, and every boot and jacket has its place.

Outside, the wind is picking up speed, falling somewhere between a whistle and a howl. The half-open entrance flaps urgently. At last, Sasha and Kolya come inside and close up the three layers of toggle clasps, hanging a sheet in front of the entrance for added insulation. By 9:00
PM
, the hikers’ combined body heat has begun to warm the tent a little. They settle on a light dinner, and ham and biscuits are passed around and eagerly devoured. With their stomachs filling up, some of the hikers have already begun to stretch out, lying on their sides to keep the least amount of surface area from touching the cold ground. Kolya and Sasha, who have arrived late, are still playing catch up with dinner. They continue to wear their outermost layers of clothing and the lining of their boots, perhaps because they will be sleeping on the periphery of the tent. Or perhaps Kolya leaves his boot liners on to excuse himself for a moment; there is no point in bothering with his boots if he’s only stepping out to take a leak. Georgy pulls off his watch and hands it to Kolya, who has been tasked with the morning’s wake-up call. Kolya has his own watch, but the mechanics of windup watches are known to be unreliable in subzero weather. Better to be safe with a backup watch than to risk sleeping through half the morning.

While some of the hikers continue to snack on cold food, Zina and Doroshenko set the camping stove in the center of the tent. Made of folding cast-iron panels and outfitted with a collapsible chimney that must be twisted into proper shape, the stove is extremely tricky to put together, particularly with cold hands. According to their mock sports page in
The Evening Otorten
, the champion stove assemblers’ record is one hour, two minutes and 27.4 seconds. But on that night, the stove just sits there in pieces. Perhaps Zina and
Doroshenko change their minds about assembling it—after all, their route has been taking them ever farther away from the tree line, and they must now conserve wood for their journey up the barren face of Otorten Mountain. Someone dissolves a pack of cocoa in water, but, for lack of a fire, the drink stands cold. Maybe Zina and Doroshenko fail to assemble the stove because something has begun to happen outside, and they are growing increasingly uneasy. The skis beneath the tent have begun to vibrate and the tarpaulin starts to sway.

For the past hour, the wind has been picking up speed as it moves over the dome of the mountain. But most alarming is its volume. The hikers are used to the haunting cry of mountain gales, but the wind’s terrifying roar is closer to that of a freight train tearing down the hill past the tent—or rather a series of trains. Igor and his friends know nothing of this weather phenomenon, and when their bodies begin to respond to it, they have no earthly idea what is happening to them. Those who are lying down, sit up in alarm. Their heads begin to pound, as if they’ve all been struck with the same terrible migraine, and their chests vibrate strangely. This initial feeling of indeterminate anxiety rapidly worsens, until it manifests as full-blown, excruciating terror. By the time the wind outside has reached an infrasonic threshold, the hikers are no longer just anxious about the wind—a deeper fear has set in.

What is happening to us?
This may not even be a question they are capable of posing to themselves. The effects of the infrasonic frequencies have temporarily robbed them of their rational minds, and now they are operating under the more primal instinct of flight response. All the hikers want to do is stop the intense discomfort, to get away from it. It’s as if the tent is a swiftly sinking ship, and the hikers must abandon it, at all costs, even at the risk of drowning.
Get out, get out, get out
, is all they can think.

Sasha and Kolya undo the latches, just enough to allow them to push themselves out of the flaps at the bottom. Someone at the other end grabs a knife and hacks at the back of the tent, but because the tent’s walls are frozen with condensation, the first attempts don’t take, and it’s only the third stab that successfully tears through the canvas. The opening is just big enough for the hikers to push through, and, one by one, they exit the tent and fly into the darkness. It is twenty-five degrees below zero. The hikers are insufficiently dressed and in their stockinged feet. They are looking only for relief from the torment that has hijacked their bodies; but, in fleeing the tent, they are only escaping from one pain into another.

Though the seven men and two women cannot see it, the wind is tearing off the mountaintop in twin files of vortices. It is, in fact, an army of winter tornadoes, with each rotating column of air hugging the contours of the summit before spinning off on either side of the slope. These vortices barrel past the hikers at 40 mph with an internal wind rotation between 113 and 157 mph, the equivalent of an F2 tornado. The twisters have since grown in size—100 feet wide and 130 feet tall—and in addition to their audible roar, they are generating an infrasonic frequency that has been wreaking havoc on the hikers’ minds. But despite the tornadoes’ size and power, the hikers are in little danger of being swept away as they flee into the darkness. The tornadoes are swirling past the tent at a substantial distance, giving the hikers a wide berth to clear the tent and descend the slope. Additionally, the farther from the summit the vortices move, and the larger they become, the less powerful their internal spin, and their life-span is no longer than a minute.

The group is separated early. The moon has not yet risen and the night is pitch black. Kolya and Sasha, who were nearest the entrance, have brought their flashlights, but, in the turmoil, Sasha drops his in the snow. The combination of exiting the tent
at different times and the complete darkness results in the hikers’ dividing into smaller groups. Besides this, they can barely hear each other. In ideal conditions, the sound of their voices would carry a distance of 60 feet, but as they descend the slope with the wind at their backs, the roar around them makes communication nearly impossible.

By the time the hikers have cleared the mountain and are nearing the tree line, the psychotropic effects of the infrasound begin to soften. The pain and confusion has not left their bodies entirely—and the howl of the wind still echoes in their ears—but they are slowly gaining possession of rational thought, and one by one, the nine become overwhelmed by a completely different sort of disorientation. It begins to occur to some of them what they have done, and as the cold pierces their feet, a deep horror sets in. They are standing in subzero conditions, unable to make out a thing in the moonless night, and they have little idea where they are in relation to the tent.

They are, in fact, roughly 300 yards away from the tent, and divided into separate groups of four, three, and two—Lyuda, Kolya, Sasha and Kolevatov; Zina, Rustik and Igor; and Georgy and Doroshenko. The hikers likely realize at this point that fighting the wind all the way back up the slope in hopes of finding the tent in the dark would be impossible. Their only hope is to keep going with the wind at their backs deeper into the trees, and focus on surviving until sunrise. This supposes that, before then, they don’t succumb to hypothermia, the symptoms of which have already arrived. Their heart rates are still accelerated from their flight down the slope and from the shock of hitting subzero air, but in the coming hours their heart rates and breathing will slow, and a disorientation that had begun as a response to infrasonic waves will become a delirium brought on by extreme cold.

Georgy and Doroshenko follow a path to the south that leads them across the frozen Lozva River toward the woods. But they
encounter deep snow in one of the river’s tributaries, and are obstructed from entering into thicker tree cover. So they move along the streambed until they arrive at a large cedar tree. Here, they stop for the night, not knowing just how far they have strayed from the others and from camp. Now begins their difficult task of building a fire, a daunting prospect in total darkness. Doroshenko manages to climb the cedar tree and breaks off small dry twigs for kindling, tossing them down to Georgy. When there are no more twigs, Doroshenko begins to saw at the thicker branches with a pocket knife. But because hypothermia is taking its toll on his coordination, he loses his balance and falls on top of the branches and onto the ground below. He injures himself, and likely gets the wind knocked out of him, but this is nothing compared with the unbearable cold that is paralyzing both men. They are fortunate that cedar is a fairly dry wood, capable of burning in this climate, unlike fir or birch. Additionally, the precaution of sewing matches into their clothing pays off, and with the help of a handkerchief to encourage the flame, the men are able to start a fire with the assembled twigs and branches. The better option would have been to set the entire tree alight, which would likely have provided them with enough warmth for the rest of the night. But they are not thinking properly at this point, and this basic survival tactic doesn’t occur to either of them. Instead, they immediately collapse next to their modest fire, letting its warmth—and a strange sense of peace—fall over them.

Meanwhile, Kolya, Lyuda, Sasha and Kolevatov head in the opposite direction, just north of Georgy and Doroshenko. Kolya injures himself at some point, probably on the rocks hiding just inches beneath the snow, causing him to lose his ability to walk. He also loses his flashlight in the process, and now the four must grope blindly through the darkness. Sasha and Kolevatov carry the injured Kolya over the snow in the general direction of the trees, but without warning, they encounter a 24-foot precipice and
tumble into the rock-lined ravine below. Kolya, Lyuda and Sasha hit the rocks with massive force—all three sustaining grave chest injuries while Kolya’s skull is dashed on the rocks.

Somehow, Kolevatov has managed to avoid seriously injuring himself in the impact—perhaps because Kolya cushioned his fall—and his only concern now is to save the lives of his friends. Perhaps he is able to communicate with them as they are losing consciousness, and in order to keep them warm, he spreads out a bed of fir twigs for them to lie on. He doesn’t bother to build a fire, as there is no fuel, and the wood of the surrounding birch and fir trees holds too much moisture to ignite. But, at some point, Kolevatov notices a glow coming from the direction from which they came. The hope of reuniting with the others, and recruiting their help in saving those in the ravine, is the only thing that compels his painfully frozen feet over 450 feet of snow in the direction of the flame.

When he reaches the cedar tree, he finds Georgy and Doroshenko lying unconscious near an already smoldering fire. They were lucky to have started a fire at all, but when one is suffering from severe hypothermia, there is the danger of “afterdrop” upon sudden reintroduction to heat, a phenomenon that, in fact, decreases core body temperature. The sudden warmth from the fire has had a strong soporific effect on the two men, resulting in their slipping into deep unconsciousness. In addition to the fatal mistake of neglecting to keep the fire stoked, the men have let their arms fall into the fire pit in an eagerness to warm themselves. Their clothes and skin are now charred. Kolevatov pulls his friends’ limbs from the pit, but it no longer matters: The effects of hypothermia have already killed them. Kolevatov’s only thought now is getting back to the ravine to help the three who have fallen. He pulls out his pocketknife and begins to cut away the warmest of Georgy and Doroshenko’s clothing—leaving the remaining scraps in shreds. He then moves his friends’ bodies side by side, in the most respectful arrangement he can manage, and starts back to the ravine.

By the time he returns, shredded sweaters and pants in his arms, Lyuda, Kolya, and Sasha are just barely alive. He uses part of a sweater to wrap Lyuda’s exposed feet, but it is becoming too late to save her. She loses consciousness and will eventually die of her internal injuries. Kolya, who has been knocked unconscious, will succumb to brain hemorrhaging. Only Sasha is still alive, and in a last effort to get him to the protection of the woods, Kolevatov lifts the injured veteran. But Kolevatov is unable to get as far as the edge of the ravine, and, unable to fight the cold and his exhaustion any longer, Kolevatov collapses next to his friend. They both close their eyes, clutching each other as they fall into a peaceful unconsciousness.