October 18, 2019 • 10 mins
The mystery of what happened to nine hikers one wintery night has gone unsolved for 60 years. Learn what evidence has been found -- and what's still unknown -- in this episode of BrainStuff.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum here. Today's episode contains some violent imagery, so
if you're not up for that, go ahead and skip
this one. Forget the unknowns surrounding Amelia Earhart's fate or
who really shot JFK. One of the most enduring unsolved
(00:22):
mysteries of the twentieth century is what happened to nine
hikers found dead at the now named diet Love Pass
in the Ural Mountains of Russia in nineteen fifty nine,
And although it happened decades ago, government officials in Russia
are once again working on a preliminary investigation that can
ultimately reopen the case in an effort to resolve its
unanswered questions and give some peace to the families who
(00:44):
never really understood how their loved ones died. The odd
series of events started in the winter of nineteen fifty nine,
when savvy outdoorsman and twenty three year old college student
Igor diet Love assembled a group of ten people to
go on a skiing and hiking journey through a north
stretch of the Ural Mountains in what was then the
Soviet Union. The adventure wasn't just a group of crazy
(01:06):
college kids on a lark. They didn't pack booze or cigarettes.
It wasn't a vacation. It was a mission. All of them,
eight men and two women, were experienced outdoorsy types with
Grade two hiker certifications including ski experience, and the one
hundred and ninety mile that's three hundred and six kilometer
journey would qualify them for Grade three status, the highest
possible certification in the country at the time. On January
(01:30):
they set out into the cold and snow. Almost immediately,
one man felt physically unwell and turned back for home.
He couldn't have known at the time that his ailments
would save him from certain death. The nine others continued onward.
On January thirty one, the group reached a critical way point,
a valley that marked the approach to what would eventually
come to be called Diet Love Pass. There they stashed
(01:52):
extra gear and food that they need for their return trip.
The following morning, they began their ascent, hoping to push
over the pass and then make camp, but a fierce
snow storm pushed them off their intended route and onto
the slopes of a mountain which, in the language of
the indigenous people who lived there means dead mountain. The
altered route meant that the team had to choose a
(02:13):
new campsite rather than retreating to a more protected area.
They opted, for whatever reason, to camp on the mountains
exposed slopes. Perhaps they simply didn't want to lose the
ground they had gained. Maybe they were too cold and
weary to fall back. In any case, they pitched their
large shared tent, where they would soon be subjected to
temperatures that nose dived to around negative forty degrees in
(02:35):
both fahrenheit and celsius. Researchers know this much thanks to
journals and film recovered from the camp, but much of
what transpired during the next two days is hard to understand.
The group failed to arrive at a rendezvous point at
a predetermined time, so search and rescue teams, including army units,
set out to find them. Three weeks later, on February
(02:57):
ninety nine, the searchers finally located the rue and camp
amid a string of truly weird circumstances. How weird, let
us count the ways. The tent was half covered with snow,
torn open from the inside, was no one around the
group's belongings, including vital necessities like shoes, had been left behind.
A line of footprints indicated that the nine people had
(03:19):
walked away at normal speed, but some just wore one
shoe or were totally barefoot. About a third of a
mile that's about half a kilometer away, there was evidence
of a campfire along with the shoelace and mostly naked
remains of two group members. Within several hundred feet between
the campfire and the tent, they located three more bodies,
(03:40):
frozen in poses that made it seem as though they
were attempting to return to the camp. It wasn't until
May fourth of that year that the weather warmed enough
for investigators to track down the other dead, whose remains
were found a few dozen feet from the chaotic campfire.
Their bodies lodged in a creek bed. Autopsies show that
the first six hikers found died of hypothermia, but the
(04:01):
three found in the ravine suffered a variety of injuries,
including skull and chest fractures. One woman's eyes and tongue
were missing. Yet there was no sign of struggle, which
seemed to rule out foul play. Pictures recovered from cameras
at the scene seemed to portray a group that started
in high spirits but ended with dour and anxious faces,
(04:22):
perhaps because they thought they were lost, or maybe there
was some other danger afoot. One photo shows tree markings
made by local Muncie people. Another shows an unidentified figure
that some people believe could be an intruder or more outlandishly,
a yetti. Officials first suspected that the Munsey might have
been offended by the trespassers on their sacred land, causing
(04:44):
them to lash out in violence against the hikers, but
in the end, investigators concluded that no one else was
on the mountain when the hikers died. By the end
of May, the investigation was officially ended. The causes of
death were listed as compelling natural force. Some documents were
then classified, and the area was closed to public access
(05:04):
for years following the instant. Given the circumstances, you can
see how surviving family members might be unsatisfied with the
government's vague conclusion. In the vacuum of an actual explanation,
many wild theories took root. One postulates that there was
an avalanche, extreme high winds, or a wild animal attack.
Another tells of a possible lover's quarrel combined with a
(05:26):
psychedelic drug obtained from locals, causing a wild sequence of events.
Others think deep infrasound vibrations conjured by winds roaring over
the mountain pass incited panic in the group, since some
of the hiker's clothes were found to be radioactive. Perhaps
they stumbled unwittingly onto a military weapons experiment, And of
course there's a theory that aliens were involved. Locals later
(05:49):
told officials that had spotted unidentified flying objects over the
area the night of the deaths, though it was later
revealed that the military was testing parachute mines in the
region when the group was killed. Now more than sixty
years later, the cases escalated from regional authorities to a
federal branch of the country's Investigative Committee, which obtained all
relevant documents regarding the deaths as part of the research process.
(06:12):
To begin the fresh inquiry, officials whittled down their list
of possible causes to just three of the most likely hypotheses,
all of which centered on natural causes a hurricane, avalanche,
or snow slab. The idea was that did revisit the
area with those three possibilities in mind in hopes of
untangling the course of events, but investigators were dealt a
(06:34):
tough hand right from the start. None of the three
possibilities seems to explain why the hikers slashed through their
tent and fled without any clothes, or why there was
no real evidence that an avalanche had taken place. In fact,
in more than one hundred subsequent expeditions to the area,
no one has ever reported avalanches in that area, or
why the hiker's footprints were visible and not covered by snow,
(06:57):
further deflating the avalanche theory. Plus, although the tent collapsed laterally,
there was no evidence of horizontal force that would have
indicated sliding snow and ice. All of the strange circumstances
so puzzled Theodora Hadgitzka that she launched Diet Love Pass
dot com as a comprehensive archive of many documents and
images related to the case. Born in Bulgaria, she's one
(07:20):
of the few people who's taken the time to translate
the many Russian files into English and has created a
comprehensive database of all the photos, evidence, and theories, making
her an expert on the tragedy. In an email interview,
Hajitska said the information that's publicly available, either by ineptitude
or more ominously, by design, does not fully explain what
happened to the hikers. She's also far from convinced that
(07:43):
the government is trying to truly solve the case, rather
than using half measures to pacify families still yearning for answers.
After years of picking through the information, she has her
suspicions about what transpired on that frozen mountain. Her take
the hikers were murdered. Jetska thinks that something alarmed the
group and they clambered out of the tent. Then her
(08:04):
theory goes, armed people confronted them and there was a
brief scuffle. She said the hikers were marched down to
the tree line to die from exposure. They didn't know that.
They thought the perpetrators were after their belongings, so they complied.
She thinks that's certain that their victims would quickly perish
in the life draining cold. The murderers wandered back to
the tent. Her theory goes that the half naked group
(08:27):
frantically and perhaps miraculously managed to start a campfire. Which
alerted their foes, who rushed back down the hill to
finish them off. By then, the three who were wearing
more substantial clothing, had moved away from the fire in
a bid to create a shallow snow down in which
to survive the night. But soon they two were found
killed and then dragged to the creek. A. Jitsica said,
(08:50):
it still lacks the who and why, but this scenario
explains the mysterious behavior of the hikers. It's a murder,
so it doesn't have to make sense. Little can be
safely deduced from the fact, but at least there's no
doubt that somebody helped them die. She feels certain that
the group was under attack in three separate instances, at
the tent, then the tree line, and then at the
(09:10):
snow den. She said the whole ordeal must have taken hours,
even if something scared them at the tent fireball avalanche.
YETI that something had to follow them to the cedar
after they had time to make the fire. That's because
building a fire does take time, which means that the
hikers were under the impression that they would make it
through the night. They also had time and energy to
(09:31):
make the den she believes this hypothesis shows a pattern
of assailants following the group and escalating the attack amid
unbearably cold and perhaps blizzard like conditions where confusion and
panic affected all parties. To date, Russian authorities have not
released a statement regarding what's still considered a preliminary investigation,
but they have assured the public that modern forensics and
(09:53):
analysis will be used during this phase. Perhaps, with new insights,
they'll finally rest real answers from the grips of an icy,
cold tragedy that seems frozen in time. Or maybe, just
maybe those who really know what happened on the slopes
of Dead Mountain will do everything they can to further
bury the truth in an avalanche of half truths and lies.
(10:19):
Today's episode was certain by Nathan Chandler and produced by
Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of
other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com,
and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum here. Today's episode contains some violent imagery, so
if you're not up for that, go ahead and skip
this one. Forget the unknowns surrounding Amelia Earhart's fate or
who really shot JFK. One of the most enduring unsolved
(00:22):
mysteries of the twentieth century is what happened to nine
hikers found dead at the now named diet Love Pass
in the Ural Mountains of Russia in nineteen fifty nine,
And although it happened decades ago, government officials in Russia
are once again working on a preliminary investigation that can
ultimately reopen the case in an effort to resolve its
unanswered questions and give some peace to the families who
(00:44):
never really understood how their loved ones died. The odd
series of events started in the winter of nineteen fifty nine,
when savvy outdoorsman and twenty three year old college student
Igor diet Love assembled a group of ten people to
go on a skiing and hiking journey through a north
stretch of the Ural Mountains in what was then the
Soviet Union. The adventure wasn't just a group of crazy
(01:06):
college kids on a lark. They didn't pack booze or cigarettes.
It wasn't a vacation. It was a mission. All of them,
eight men and two women, were experienced outdoorsy types with
Grade two hiker certifications including ski experience, and the one
hundred and ninety mile that's three hundred and six kilometer
journey would qualify them for Grade three status, the highest
possible certification in the country at the time. On January
(01:30):
they set out into the cold and snow. Almost immediately,
one man felt physically unwell and turned back for home.
He couldn't have known at the time that his ailments
would save him from certain death. The nine others continued onward.
On January thirty one, the group reached a critical way point,
a valley that marked the approach to what would eventually
come to be called Diet Love Pass. There they stashed
(01:52):
extra gear and food that they need for their return trip.
The following morning, they began their ascent, hoping to push
over the pass and then make camp, but a fierce
snow storm pushed them off their intended route and onto
the slopes of a mountain which, in the language of
the indigenous people who lived there means dead mountain. The
altered route meant that the team had to choose a
(02:13):
new campsite rather than retreating to a more protected area.
They opted, for whatever reason, to camp on the mountains
exposed slopes. Perhaps they simply didn't want to lose the
ground they had gained. Maybe they were too cold and
weary to fall back. In any case, they pitched their
large shared tent, where they would soon be subjected to
temperatures that nose dived to around negative forty degrees in
(02:35):
both fahrenheit and celsius. Researchers know this much thanks to
journals and film recovered from the camp, but much of
what transpired during the next two days is hard to understand.
The group failed to arrive at a rendezvous point at
a predetermined time, so search and rescue teams, including army units,
set out to find them. Three weeks later, on February
(02:57):
ninety nine, the searchers finally located the rue and camp
amid a string of truly weird circumstances. How weird, let
us count the ways. The tent was half covered with snow,
torn open from the inside, was no one around the
group's belongings, including vital necessities like shoes, had been left behind.
A line of footprints indicated that the nine people had
(03:19):
walked away at normal speed, but some just wore one
shoe or were totally barefoot. About a third of a
mile that's about half a kilometer away, there was evidence
of a campfire along with the shoelace and mostly naked
remains of two group members. Within several hundred feet between
the campfire and the tent, they located three more bodies,
(03:40):
frozen in poses that made it seem as though they
were attempting to return to the camp. It wasn't until
May fourth of that year that the weather warmed enough
for investigators to track down the other dead, whose remains
were found a few dozen feet from the chaotic campfire.
Their bodies lodged in a creek bed. Autopsies show that
the first six hikers found died of hypothermia, but the
(04:01):
three found in the ravine suffered a variety of injuries,
including skull and chest fractures. One woman's eyes and tongue
were missing. Yet there was no sign of struggle, which
seemed to rule out foul play. Pictures recovered from cameras
at the scene seemed to portray a group that started
in high spirits but ended with dour and anxious faces,
(04:22):
perhaps because they thought they were lost, or maybe there
was some other danger afoot. One photo shows tree markings
made by local Muncie people. Another shows an unidentified figure
that some people believe could be an intruder or more outlandishly,
a yetti. Officials first suspected that the Munsey might have
been offended by the trespassers on their sacred land, causing
(04:44):
them to lash out in violence against the hikers, but
in the end, investigators concluded that no one else was
on the mountain when the hikers died. By the end
of May, the investigation was officially ended. The causes of
death were listed as compelling natural force. Some documents were
then classified, and the area was closed to public access
(05:04):
for years following the instant. Given the circumstances, you can
see how surviving family members might be unsatisfied with the
government's vague conclusion. In the vacuum of an actual explanation,
many wild theories took root. One postulates that there was
an avalanche, extreme high winds, or a wild animal attack.
Another tells of a possible lover's quarrel combined with a
(05:26):
psychedelic drug obtained from locals, causing a wild sequence of events.
Others think deep infrasound vibrations conjured by winds roaring over
the mountain pass incited panic in the group, since some
of the hiker's clothes were found to be radioactive. Perhaps
they stumbled unwittingly onto a military weapons experiment, And of
course there's a theory that aliens were involved. Locals later
(05:49):
told officials that had spotted unidentified flying objects over the
area the night of the deaths, though it was later
revealed that the military was testing parachute mines in the
region when the group was killed. Now more than sixty
years later, the cases escalated from regional authorities to a
federal branch of the country's Investigative Committee, which obtained all
relevant documents regarding the deaths as part of the research process.
(06:12):
To begin the fresh inquiry, officials whittled down their list
of possible causes to just three of the most likely hypotheses,
all of which centered on natural causes a hurricane, avalanche,
or snow slab. The idea was that did revisit the
area with those three possibilities in mind in hopes of
untangling the course of events, but investigators were dealt a
(06:34):
tough hand right from the start. None of the three
possibilities seems to explain why the hikers slashed through their
tent and fled without any clothes, or why there was
no real evidence that an avalanche had taken place. In fact,
in more than one hundred subsequent expeditions to the area,
no one has ever reported avalanches in that area, or
why the hiker's footprints were visible and not covered by snow,
(06:57):
further deflating the avalanche theory. Plus, although the tent collapsed laterally,
there was no evidence of horizontal force that would have
indicated sliding snow and ice. All of the strange circumstances
so puzzled Theodora Hadgitzka that she launched Diet Love Pass
dot com as a comprehensive archive of many documents and
images related to the case. Born in Bulgaria, she's one
(07:20):
of the few people who's taken the time to translate
the many Russian files into English and has created a
comprehensive database of all the photos, evidence, and theories, making
her an expert on the tragedy. In an email interview,
Hajitska said the information that's publicly available, either by ineptitude
or more ominously, by design, does not fully explain what
happened to the hikers. She's also far from convinced that
(07:43):
the government is trying to truly solve the case, rather
than using half measures to pacify families still yearning for answers.
After years of picking through the information, she has her
suspicions about what transpired on that frozen mountain. Her take
the hikers were murdered. Jetska thinks that something alarmed the
group and they clambered out of the tent. Then her
(08:04):
theory goes, armed people confronted them and there was a
brief scuffle. She said the hikers were marched down to
the tree line to die from exposure. They didn't know that.
They thought the perpetrators were after their belongings, so they complied.
She thinks that's certain that their victims would quickly perish
in the life draining cold. The murderers wandered back to
the tent. Her theory goes that the half naked group
(08:27):
frantically and perhaps miraculously managed to start a campfire. Which
alerted their foes, who rushed back down the hill to
finish them off. By then, the three who were wearing
more substantial clothing, had moved away from the fire in
a bid to create a shallow snow down in which
to survive the night. But soon they two were found
killed and then dragged to the creek. A. Jitsica said,
(08:50):
it still lacks the who and why, but this scenario
explains the mysterious behavior of the hikers. It's a murder,
so it doesn't have to make sense. Little can be
safely deduced from the fact, but at least there's no
doubt that somebody helped them die. She feels certain that
the group was under attack in three separate instances, at
the tent, then the tree line, and then at the
(09:10):
snow den. She said the whole ordeal must have taken hours,
even if something scared them at the tent fireball avalanche.
YETI that something had to follow them to the cedar
after they had time to make the fire. That's because
building a fire does take time, which means that the
hikers were under the impression that they would make it
through the night. They also had time and energy to
(09:31):
make the den she believes this hypothesis shows a pattern
of assailants following the group and escalating the attack amid
unbearably cold and perhaps blizzard like conditions where confusion and
panic affected all parties. To date, Russian authorities have not
released a statement regarding what's still considered a preliminary investigation,
but they have assured the public that modern forensics and
(09:53):
analysis will be used during this phase. Perhaps, with new insights,
they'll finally rest real answers from the grips of an icy,
cold tragedy that seems frozen in time. Or maybe, just
maybe those who really know what happened on the slopes
of Dead Mountain will do everything they can to further
bury the truth in an avalanche of half truths and lies.
(10:19):
Today's episode was certain by Nathan Chandler and produced by
Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of
other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com,
and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Jonathan Strickland
Ben Bowlin
Lauren Vogelbaum
Cristen Conger
Christian Sager
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.