Some mainstream exposure for the mysterious Dyatlov Pass Incident this week with the release of a film based on the strange events that occurred in the Ural Mountains in 1959. Directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger), the film – Devil’s Pass (trailer above) – has a Blair Witch feel and follows a group of modern-day students who set out to investigate the unexplained, bizarre deaths of nine Russian skiers.
As part of the publicity for the film, a number of mainstream news outlets have covered the mystery, such as this piece from Britain’s Daily Mail:
The first bodies — frostbitten and frozen stiff — were discovered lying in the snow on flat land near a river, a mile from the tent, next to the remains of a long burnt-out fire.
Around 350 yards away lay the corpse of Igor Dyatlov, the 23-year-old engineering student from Ural Polyetchnic who had put the expedition together and was its leader. (His name would later be given to the area where the tragedy took place.)
Nearby, a search dog sniffed out the remains of Zina Kolmogorova, 22, under four inches of snow, and then that of Rustem Slobodin. The bodies were in a line 200 yards apart, as if they had been trying to crawl behind each other back up to the shelter of the tent, but never made it.
Another two months went by before the rest of the group were found, under 15ft of snow in a den they had desperately hollowed out for themselves before succumbing to the cold.
Some of this group had broken bones and terrible internal injuries but, strangely, no external wounds, not even scratches on the skin.
Stranger still, odd bits of their clothing contained higher than normal levels of radiation.
Indeed, post-mortem examinations of all nine bodies threw up a string of bewildering anomalies. Why were some fully clothed, but others nearly naked? Most disconcerting of all was Lyudmilla Dubinina’s body, which was missing her tongue and eyes.
