Last year, a plausible explanation was proposed to explain the Dyatlov Pass Incident, in which nine expert hikers died on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl Mountain (“Death Mountain” in the indigenous Mansi language) in 1959. According to the report, the hikers were trapped in an unusual slab avalanche. When rescuers went looking for them a month later, they discovered their tent had been ripped apart from the inside, with most of the goods and clothing still inside. The next day, several of the victims were discovered near the remnants of a fire. Others were discovered in a ravine months later.
Three died of physical injuries, while the other six perished of hypothermia, according to Soviet authorities at the time. The avalanche, which killed a third of the company and killed the remainder as they fled in inappropriate clothes, is a plausible scenario. While the explanation seemed to suit the case’s characteristics, not everyone was convinced. The biggest objection was that there were no such avalanches on the mountain. Authors Johan Gaume and Alexander M. Puzrin have now performed three further journeys to Kholat Syakhl, discovering video evidence of two recent avalanches. The findings were published in Communications Earth & Environment.
Slab avalanches are unique in that the top layer of snow is linked together in a slab that lies on top of a weaker layer, creating a slab. To form, they must span across a sufficiently vast region on a slope with an inclination greater than 30 degrees, making them extremely unusual. “The critics argued that the slope wasn’t steep enough and the conditions weren’t appropriate for an avalanche to occur, claiming that the slope wasn’t steep enough and the conditions weren’t proper for an avalanche to occur.” People in the region claimed they’d never witnessed an avalanche on the Dyatlov Pass, according to Gaume of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
“Relatives and conspiracy theorists were the source of the majority of the criticism. We had the impression that many individuals were dismissing our scientific approach in order to keep the awful fate of the hikers shrouded in mystery.” The two missions, one in the summer and one in the winter of 2021, looked first at the slope angle (which was more than 30 degrees) and then at snow conditions, which indicated that avalanches were certainly conceivable.
The third trip, headed by Oleg Demyanenko and Dmitriy Borisov in January 2022, captured footage of two recent snow-slab avalanches. The researchers emphasize that they do not pretend to know everything regarding the terrible deaths of the Dyatlov Pass hikers, but they are certain that their theory is sound and makes sense given the mountain’s natural circumstances.
