The death of the Dyatlov group in 1959 still stirs the mind. And the more time passes, the more difficult it is to imagine the circumstances in which the tourists found themselves. In January 1959, a group of 9 people went on a ski trip across the Northern Urals. In 16-18 days the tourists planned to cover about 300 kilometers and climb two peaks.

All but one of them were senior students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI): eight young men and two girls (the group originally consisted of 10 people). The leader, Igor Dyatlov, was a fifth-year student at the Radio Engineering Faculty.

On January 23, the group left for Serov, a city in the north of the region, and on January 28, nine people set out on the route. Yuri Yudin, one of the participants, returned home: his leg was hurting and he realized that he would not be able to pass.

On February 12, the group was expected in the final point - the village of Vizhai, but “Dyatlov's” did not appear. When they didn't show up five days later, the rescue team was sent to search for them.

The whole world was searching for the missing. The air force was mobilized, several groups of students with hiking experience were gathered, one group was sent to search right from the route, the military was involved, local Mansi hunters were also searching.

They searched mainly in the area between the Otorten and Oika-Chakura mountains: judging by the route, which Dyatlov approved in the Tourism Commission, the group could have been in that area. After three days of searching, when everyone still hoped that the tourists were safe, they found Dyatlov's tent with a cut roof.

The searchers were drawn to the area of the tent: it became clear that further it was necessary to comb the territory there. And indeed, the next day they saw a chain of footprints that went down the slope to the forest and the Lozva River. Despite the fact that several days had passed, the tracks were clearly visible. However, there were eight pairs of them, and the tourists should have been nine... Moving along their course, the rescuers found five bodies. Judging by the way they were lying, the dead were not walking away from the tent, but trying to return to it.

The boys were dressed rather strangely for winter - no shoes and no warm clothes. It looked like they had jumped out in what they had gone to bed in.

At that time it was already clear that no one from Dyatlov's group would be found alive, but there were four other members missing. Their bodies were found in May, when the snow began to actively melt.

As the expert examination established, the five Dyatlovites, who were found first, died of hypothermia. Three of the last four had serious injuries.

In the course of the investigation was done a lot: the entire area where the tent stood and the bodies were found, combed literally by the millimeter, trying to find something that could prompt a clue. So why did the campers leave the tent, cut it open, run away without warm clothes, and not return to the site? It was the lack of a clear reason that gave rise to a huge number of versions, including the most incredible.

Let's say at once - in the end the case was closed with the wording that the cause of the tourists' death was an elemental force, which they were unable to overcome.

Supporters of this version believed that the Dyatlovs became accidental witnesses of a secret test of some newest weapon. This version was born from numerous testimonies about fireballs in the sky. Not one and not two people in different districts of the Sverdlovsk region confirmed that in February 1959 they saw a strange phenomenon in the sky - luminous balls.

After a thorough check of information about rocket launches from different test sites and cosmodromes (and the main options are two - Baikonur and Plesetsk) it turned out that exactly in those periods when people observed fireballs in the sky, there were launches of launch vehicles from Tyuratam (Baikonur). The polygon, of course, is far from the Sverdlovsk region, but the flight altitude was such that the rockets were visible in the sky.

The spy version arose when it turned out that the clothes of the Dyatlovs, as they are called, “phoned”. On it were found areas that gave increased radiation background, and immediately there was an assumption that it could somehow have something to do with the death of tourists. But in the end, those who studied the materials decided that it was not the clothes that “phoned”, but the dirt stains on them. That is, radioactive elements were most likely in the soil that soaked the clothes. Given the presence of strategic enterprises in the Urals, this is quite possible.

A version arose that the killing of the boys was ritual: allegedly they had entered the territory where there was either a kapiche or another sacred place of the Mansi. They killed the Dyatlovs.

The mystical version was finally abandoned when the expertise established that the tent was cut from the inside, not the outside, that is, they were desperately trying to get out of it. If the murder had been a ritual murder, it would be logical to assume that someone had tried to break into the tent from the outside.

The shortest version was a criminal one. Naturally, it was assumed that the tourists could have been victims of an attack by escaped prisoners or poachers. Yes, there were camps in the area, but there were no escapes from them. To escape in winter in the Urals was tantamount to death. Poachers are also an unlikely option, because there was no fishing in this region of the Northern Urals, especially in winter.

There was also such an assumption - allegedly there was a quarrel and a fight between the tourists. But if there was a fight, especially one that resulted in death, there should have been traces - bruises, contusions, other injuries. But the tourists had only abrasions on their faces, probably when they tried to rub themselves with snow to warm up somehow.

Evgeny Buyanov, a researcher from St. Petersburg and master of sports in tourism, and Boris Slobtsov, master of sports in mountaineering, conducted their own analysis of the possible causes of the group's death. Among other things, they studied the weather conditions in the area of the future Dyatlov Pass. They came to the conclusion that the tent that night was set up according to all the rules of protection from the wind - it was really strong and it got cold. But the tourists did not take into account the danger of snowfall and, while they were preparing a place for parking, “cut” the snow layer overhanging from above. It slid down on the tent at night, and on one edge - those lying there received the most serious compression injuries.

The snow coming down on the tent caused panic. The canvas was cut from the inside and the injured were taken out. All but Thibault-Brignol could walk by themselves, but Nikolai had to be dragged, so there was a chain of eight pairs of footprints leaving the tent. They did not put on clothes, they were afraid of a new avalanche. Apparently, the “Dyatlovites” expected to reach the forest, to take shelter from the wind there, to organize the victims and somehow hold on. But they had nothing to cut wood, they could not make a fire, and the temperature that night fell to minus 20 and below.

This story is returned to with enviable regularity. In 2013, an American movie called “The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass” was released, filmed in a pseudo-documentary style. In 2019, when 60 years have passed since the death of the group, the Investigative Committee returned to the case materials, and its experts also decided that the avalanche is the most likely cause of the death of the tourists.