Dead Mountain

When nine hikers go missing, no one is worried - at first. But as days pass, it becomes clear that something has gone wrong. What isn't understood at the time is how wrong things could go, and the many decades that would go by without answers for the families.

As each family begins pressing for more information, there are many theories that being to crop up about what could have caused nine, healthy and experienced skiers to have such a cataclysmic accident, leaving no one alive. It seemed as though each of them were scared out of their minds as they ran into the frigid cold of the Russian winter.

But what went wrong? It seems that they knew what they were up against, had taken every precaution they could, and yet, their tent was still where it had been left, with huge gashes torn through the back of it.

Did someone attack them? Did they discover something they shouldn't? These are just a few of the questions that have plagued the cold case. No one knew. Answers were not forthcoming, and it seemed as though the government wanted to make the entire thing disappear, as quietly as possible.

I enjoyed this read. One of the areas I appreciated most was each of the theories being explored, and explained away. What the final theory was, actually makes sense, and I can see how that would have affected each of the persons on the mountainside that night. -- No -- I am not going to tell you the theory, you are going to have to read this book for yourself, and undertake the journey to not only understand these nine souls that were taken too soon, but the journey that the author undertook to discover as much as he could about what happened, and what could have gone so wrong.

Highly enjoyable, although a sad read in areas.

Super interesting book. I'm not sure I agree with the author's conclusion, but I acknowledge that it is plausible.

Fascinating subject, but a good chunk of this book is marginally related nonsense. I didn't care about the author's personal life or his interpolation of how long-gone people thought or felt.

“I don't remember Sherlock Holmes ever mentioning what you are supposed to do when you've eliminated everything improbable, and nothing is left.”

I knew nothing about the Dyatlov Pass Incident before reading this book, hadn't even heard of it. The cover looked interesting and the premise sounded super creepy and mysterious though, so I was looking forward to seeing where this went. The short story is that I loved everything about this book, except the ending.

In 1959, nine Russian college students (experienced mountain climbers, all) decide to conquer Dead Mountain in the Urals as part of their mountain climbing experience necessary to advance their qualifications. They went missing, and when a rescue team finally located the bodies (because, let's face it, Russia, on a mountain, in winter, isn't the most hospitable of locations), nobody can figure out what happened. The bodies are in various states of disrobe, none have shoes on, one is missing a tongue, and they failed to stick together. Theories are advanced, everything from avalanches to animal attacks to secret government weapons to aliens, but nothing conclusive was ever determined. The Russian government quickly wrapped things up, and the final conclusion was “an unknown compelling force should be considered the cause of the hikers' deaths.” This is where the mystery remains to this day.

For the majority of the book, the author splits the chapters into one of three viewpoints. A diary was recovered from one of the hikers, and the author retells their story in the days and weeks leading up to their fate through these entries. The author also weaves in chapters with accounts of the recovery efforts amongst these journal entries, which provides context for how the scene was discovered and the investigation following. Finally, the author's viewpoint, where he visits Russia today, retraces the hikers' steps to the mountain and looks around a bit. Of the viewpoints, the authors' was the least interesting to me. His trip to Russia doesn't seem to have much impact on the overall conclusion the author comes to, and a lot of what he writes about has nothing to do with the Dyatlov Pass Incident itself. Still, I appreciated the lengths the author went to, and the viewpoint in present day Russia was interesting.

Where the book loses me is the ending. The author spends time in the very last bit of the book outlining the different theories and why they don't make sense given the facts as the author sees it. Which is fine, most of what he says here makes sense. But then he busts out with a theory that hasn't come up before about something that's barely been studied up to this point. He speaks to experts in this field who do have some compelling arguments for why it makes sense (and I'm willing to believe them given evidence), and basically leaves his theory there on the table with no more commentary as the book ends. I feel like this would be an easy thing to prove if someone were to go back to the mountain and do so, but the book ends without any compelling proof beyond “some experts say this might be true”.

All that said, the writeup of the actual incident was stellar. This was a really interesting read, and even though the ending kinda flopped for me, it remains an unsolved mystery for a reason, I guess.

Maybe it is a bit sick in a sense, but I absolutely love mysteries, be it a serial killer, a disappearance, a John Doe corpse or anything unexplained. I love when I get the facts, also I really can't stand Hollydoow-ified, soap opera type approaches. This one actually wasn't like that all.
I understand that it must be hard making a story readable, actually engaging and somehow beating it into a book form and presenting it, without going overboard with describing the soft spring breeze playing on the unblemished skin of some beautiful girl who is going to fall victim of some horrible, satanic killer.
Well, in this one people just get majorly fucked by nature. So yeah.

In the 50's in Russia a bunch of university students decide to get a hiking certificate through completing an extremely hard, winter trip to the Urals. One of them has to turn back because of health issues, while the others never return. Later their frozen (and in some cases, seriously injured) bodies are found in various stages of undress out in the snow, with their tent slashed open from the inside. The government is all hush-hush about it.

Man, I love this case, which is probably extremely rude to say when people died. What I mean is that I find it extremely interesting and just crazy; think about how these people really faced the shit side of nature, basically. With roads everywhere and civilisation only ever a few miles from us, it's really hard to imagine these people being stranded out there, absolutely powerless to do anything. I find that fascinating and pretty hard to imagine.
There were also roughly my age, mostly. It's so obviously that they weren't even thinking about the possibility of things going SO badly. During the book we hear some anecdotes about them (like one guy chasing away a bear with a hammer on a previous trip), but this was way too big for them.

The book is also full of photos, just little snapshots of the group having dinner, messing around, acting silly. If they had colour, I could totally imagine them being youngsters now, on a skiing trip somewhere. It was eerily familiar. In one photo a guy makes a face that reminds me of an ex-bf. A bit of a surreal feeling.

What I really liked about the book was how it was actually informative. The author didn't actually try to sell some crappy idea about the yeti eating the people (have seen a “documentary” about that, it was ridiculous) or aliens messing with them. No mountain ghosts either.
I didn't really expect a conclusion, though, I was emotionally fine with the author just saying “we don't know, so yeeeah”, but he actually didn't do it. It's especially interesting as his methods of just going to Russia for whatever reason to look into the case and walk around was not exactly professional level.
The conclusion was satisfying. Scientifically sound, not over the top dramatic bullshit conjured out of nothing.

All in all, I really enjoyed this and I would love to read similar books. Non-fiction is generally not my thing, but this type, with interesting event and not a focus on what I call “suffering porn” is really up my alley.

Good night and stay inside while winter is coming!

An interesting and thorough account of the hikers who mysteriously died at Dyatlov Pass. The author's conclusion seems plausible. Definitely learned a lot!