In 1959, 10 students led by Igor Dyatlov travelled to the Ural Mountains, which separates Asia and Europe. All the students on the trip were experienced skiers from the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg.

This trip was planned to last 3 weeks. The group leader Igor Dyatlov promised to complete the trip on 12 February and send a message to the sports club in the city. On 12 February the message did not arrive as promised, but no one panicked because weather delays had happened before. As the families became increasingly worried, the university sent a search team of student volunteers to the area on 20 February.

The search team was divided into small teams. Mikhail Sharavin was the first to see the tent. When he examined the tent, there were items placed in an orderly manner, a map showing their route, money and a small bottle of alcohol. There was also some meat that had been prepared to be eaten but had not been eaten.

Sharavin realised that the tent had been torn open from the inside with a knife. It looked as if it had been taken out in a hurry. Just outside the tent were the footprints of 8-9 people. Some of these footprints were bare feet, some were socks, some were boots. These footprints lasted for 5-10 metres and then disappeared. This situation surprised Şaravin and his colleagues in the search team.

On 23 January 1959, eight of these missing students, who started their journey by train, were men and two were women. All of them, except Semyon Zolotaryov (38), were aged 20-24. They had recorded their journey with photographs they had taken and diaries they had written. They sent their last letter from the post office in the small settlement of Vizhay and spent the night there. In the morning they arrived at the campsite named '41st Settlement'.

They spent the night in the campsite and the next day they walked on the trails used by the local Mansi people in the region while hunting. Then they hired a cart and travelled 15 miles north to the abandoned mining settlement of 'North 2'. On the way there, one of them, Yudan Yudin, returned home after distributing his belongings to his friends because his sciatic nerves would not allow him to walk any further. He didn't know that this would save his life on the way back home.

After their friends left, the group continued on their way to Mount Ortorten. When the date showed 1 February, the group decided to pitch a tent at 'Holat Syahl'. The name of the area means 'Death Mountain'. It was a very windy place to camp. For this reason, the group pitched their tent in a shallow hole.

Mikhail Sharavin and his search team found the first bodies on 27 February. The first two bodies found were those of Yura Doroshenko and Yuri Krivnishenko. They were lying in their underwear near a cedar tree. A campfire was found a little closer to the tree than the bodies. Someone had climbed into the lower branches of the tree and tried to use them as fuel.

Then Igor Dyatlov was found. Igor was wearing clothes but no shoes. He was lying face down on the ground, wrapped in a birch branch. Near him, in a position as if she was trying to climb the hill to the tent for her life, the body of Zinayda Kolmogora was found. There was a long rash on the right side of her body. As if she had been hit with a stick or something similar.

On 5 March the body of Rustam Slobodin was found with a fracture of the skull. Slobodin, whose watch stopped at 08:45, had more clothes on than the others.

The bodies of the other four students were recovered after the snow melted in May.

Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolle had a fractured skull. Aleksandr Kolevatov had a wound behind his ear and his neck was turned round.

Lyudmila Dubinina and Semyon Zolotaryov had broken ribs. At the same time, Zolotaryov had an open wound on the right side of his skull and the bone was visible. Interestingly, the eyes of these two young people were removed. Lyudmila even had no tongue.

The cause of death was recorded as hypothermia and frostbite. However, due to the strange wounds and fractures on the students' bodies, no one believed that they had frozen to death. The Soviet authorities held the Mansi people living in the region responsible for the incident and questioned them, but found no evidence. Then the Soviet authorities asked for help from the Mansi people. Thanks to this help, the remaining 4 students were found in May.

A monument was built in the area where the incident took place and it was called Dyatlov Pass after the surname of the group leader Igor Dyatlov.

THEORIES

It was a mysterious situation when a group of students suddenly came out of the tent by tearing it with a knife, running barefoot in such a cold and being found barefoot. Moreover, the mystery has not been solved for 62 years. How and why did they die? There are of course theories about this. But they remain theories, none of them have been proven.

It is possible that the hunters of the Mansi people hallucinated by eating magic mushrooms in shamanic rituals, and when they saw the students entering Mansi territory, they attacked them in a frenzy.
There was a bright, burning object in the sky that night. Wide at the front, narrow at the back, with a tail. There was no way that it could have been
Students may have entered an area where a test or experiment is being conducted
The students may have been victims of a military experiment.
There may have been a blast wave
New weapons were trialled in the area and the possibility of radiation leakage
Poisonous rocket, low-flying jet, tornado, etc.
Aliens
Avalanche, storm or a hard snow mass may have fallen
Wild animals
Murder
Scenarios such as this have been put forward. In total, 75 theories have been put forward. But the mystery remains unsolved.