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The mysterious and grizzly deaths of a group of young Soviet students in the Siberian wildness over six decades ago has gripped the imaginations of true-crime fans the world over. Their frozen and battered bodies were discovered with horrific injuries. Two of the victims had missing eyes, while one had a tongue ripped out.
To this day there is no definitive explanation for what exactly happened, although there are countless theories. Soviet officials tried to pass off their deaths as a tragic accident, claiming the students had died of hypothermia and frostbite. However, their shattered and mutilated bodies said otherwise, with no one buying the official version. So what did happen to these young people who had looked forward with such excitement to their adventure in Siberia's remote hinterlands?
The story begins on a winter's day in January 1959 in the city of Sverdlovsk. Here a group of friends from the Urals Polytechnic Institute gathered to set out on what was supposed to be a one week trip.
There were ten in total - eight men and two women - all of whom were competent skiers. Igor Dyatlov, the leader, was a fifth-year radio engineering student and one of the most experienced athletes in the group.
The others were Zinaida Kolmogorova, 22, from the same faculty, Yuri Doroshenko, 21, who was studying power economics, Alexander Kolevatov, 24, studying nuclear physics, Yuri Krivonischenko, 23, Rustem Slobodin, 23 and Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignolle 23 - all engineering students.
Lyudmila Dubinina, 20, and Yuri Yudin, 22, were both studying economics. The final member was Semyon Zolotaryov, a 38-year-old sports instructor who had fought in World War Two.
On January 23, they boarded a sleeper from Sverdlovsk, and made their way to a quiet settlement called Vizhay. After spending the night there on January 25, they hitched a ride on a truck to a logging base called the 41st settlement.
They then hired a horse-drawn sled to carry their supplies for the last 15 miles to the abandoned North-2 mining settlement. By this stage, Yura Yudin decided he had had enough and turned around - a fateful decision that would save his life.
The remaining students continued onwards, towards their goal - Mount Ortorten. The name was given to the mountain by the Mansi people, an indigenous tribe of reindeer herders who have inhabited the region for hundreds of years. In their native language, the name has an ominous meaning - "Don't Go There"......
But the area was also the site of a notorious Soviet prison camp (gulag) which was reputed to be one of the most atrocious and violent in the entire gulag system.
The group skied along the nearby Auspiya River before the final ascent, pitching a tent in a shallow pit they dug put on the eastern slope of Kholat Syakhyl. And then all contact with them was lost.
A search party was sent out to try and find them, after they failed to return home. Mikhail Sharavin was one of the rescuers who made the gruesome discovery of the dead students on February 27.
Aged 83 at the time of his interview, he told the BBC in 2019: “We approached a cedar tree and when we were 20 metres away, we saw a brown spot – it was towards the right of the trunk. And when we got closer we saw two corpses lying there. The hands and the feet were reddish-brown.”
One of the two bodies was Yura Doroshenko - the other belonged to Yuri Krivonischenko. He had bitten off a piece of his own knuckle. Both men were stripped to their underwear.
The searchers found Igor next - dressed but shoeless and lying face down in the snow.
Zinaida Kolmogorova lay nearby and from the position of her body it seemed as if she had been desperately trying to scramble back uphill towards the tent. There was a long bright red bruise on the right-side of her torso, which looked as if it was made by a baton.
Many suspected they were killed by the Mansi, although members of their community have always denied any involvement.
Others believe they were victims of a military experiment, and that they died on the spot.
But perhaps the most plausible explanation has been put forwarded by two Swiss scientists, who say they were probably killed by an avalanche.
Alexander Puzrin and Johan Gaume, argue that the cause of the incident was a rare “slab avalanche". The scientists claim that the way in which the students pitched their tent helped set off the lethal snow slide.
Purzin explained: "If they hadn’t made a cut in the slope, nothing would have happened. That was the initial trigger, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough.
"The katabatic wind probably drifted the snow and allowed an extra load to build up slowly. At a certain point, a crack could have formed and spread, causing the snow slab to release.”
That slab of snow, falling on the hikers while they slept, would have caused massive trauma to some, and forced the rest to rush out of their tent without proper gear, where they then died of hypothermia.
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