OBITCH vacation from hell!

On February 1, 1959, nine experienced hikers cut their tent open from the inside and fled into a Russian blizzard wearing only their underwear. Their bodies were found weeks later scattered across a remote mountainside, some with missing eyeballs, a missing tongue, a knuckle lodged in a victim's own mouth, and traces of radiation on their clothing. The Soviet government closed the case quickly, ruling that the hikers died from a "compelling natural force." Nobody bought it then, and the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass incident has only deepened in the decades since.

The expedition and the first signs of trouble

The story begins in January 1959, when a group of ten hikers—mostly students and recent graduates of the Ural Polytechnical Institute—set out on a category-three expedition, the highest difficulty level in their university's hiking program. They were led by 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov, an engineering student. The only outlier was Semyon Zolotariov, a 37- or 38-year-old who had met Dyatlov shortly before the trip and was invited along. The group traveled by train and truck through several villages, staying in guesthouses and barracks, singing songs, and keeping a group diary. One member, Yuri Yudin, had to turn back due to sciatic pain—a decision that saved his life.