The secret of the mountain pass (part 2)

One of the most persistent supporters of the of the rocket and space version for the death of the group led by Igor Dyatlov is the master of sports in tourism V. Karelin. Vladislav Georgievich, a participant in the search for the missing skiers, spent a lot of time later on unraveling the causes of the tragic incident. He sent requests to space services, scrupulously analyzed publications on the development of near-earth space.

According to his version, the blame is the unsuccessful launch of the R-7 space rocket, the famous Korolev's "seven". In addition to the category of phenomena, Vladislav Karelin attributed the flights of mysterious celestial bodies on February 17 and March 31, 1959, seen by many observers living in the area of Nizhniy Tagil to Polunochnoe and recorded in the case files of the death of the Dyatlov group.

For February 1 or 2 (that is, the days of the tragedy) there is no such evidence in the "case". True, there are radiograms of the head of the search, Evgeniy Maslennikov, to Ivdel, to the emergency commission: "It would be good to clarify whether a new type of meteorological rocket flew over the area of ​​the accident on the evening of February 1." We don't know the reason for this request - whether eyewitness testimony, for some reason not recorded in the "case", or the assumptions of the searchers that arose in hindsight, by analogy with the phenomena seen on February 17 and March 31.

Years later, newspaper contributors will, whether by accident or deliberately, confuse dates. For example, there are statements that Karelin's group, being on a hike to Mt. Oyka-Chakur, saw a mysterious flying object on February 17, and students of the pedagogical institute A. Shumkov, V. Shavkunov and others observed a similar phenomenon at the very beginning of the month. However, it was worth to get a little closer to the facts, and it turned out that the aforementioned future teachers were on the trek in Karelin's group and, therefore, they could not see any mysteries in the northern skies either on the first or on the second of February. (Those who saw it would be nice to respond.)

By the way, what date do we believe the tragedy happened? First or second (of February)? While recently in Yekaterinburg, Yuri Yudin, the tenth member of the Dyatlov group who turned back for health reasons, tried to figure it out. In his analysis Yudin started from the stove. In the tent, hastily abandoned by the hikers, there was an iron camp stove, which had to be suspended under the ridge of the tent and heated with small logs. In the case files it says that there was one large log, apparently brought from a previous campsite. But the participants of the search, with whom Yudin had a chance to talk (professor of Ural State Technical University-UPI V. Lebedev, engineer of the optical-mechanical plant V. Brusnitsyn) recall that they saw other firewood at the wall of the tent.

That means the group was going to use the stove. But they didn't have time. They didn't even take it out of the case. Judging by the state in which the stove was found, the guys left the tent on February 1 in the evening. The forensic medical examination recorded that the last meal they had was 6-8 hours before their death. This must have been the group's hot lunch at the previous halt - the remnants of it in the form of porridge in a mug and cocoa in a flask were brought to the last overnight camp. Here they managed to improvise with dry food - there were crackers scattered around the tent and a large piece of loin cut - Yudin saw it already in Ivdel among the things brought by the searchers from the pass.

The insufficient clothing the guys were wearing also adds to the "evening" scenario. In such trips, the opposite is true: they walk along the route lightly dressed, and at night they put on everything they have, up to boots. They didn’t have time to dress warmly. On that day, they managed to build a storage shed, hiding in it spare food and some things, to publish the newspaper "Evening Otorten" (the name was chosen, apparently, by analogy with the then young Sverdlovsk "Vecherka"). They also managed to move to a new place, set up a tent, make it a little habitable - and rush out to meet their own death.

Arguments for the late evening of February 1 have already been laid out. V. Karelin attributes the tragic incident to the morning of February 2 - in this case it is easier to connect it with the flights over the northern latitudes of the mysterious luminous bodies, which, as a rule, took place in the morning and which Vyacheslav Georgievich considers unsuccessful launches of Korolev's space rockets.

Indeed, it seems. Let's compare the descriptions of flights from the "case" of the Dyatlov group and from the book by Yaroslav Golovanov "Korolev: Facts and Myths".

From "the case": "In the southeast direction, the hiker on duty saw a ring, which for 20 minutes moved towards us, then hiding behind the height 880. Before disappearing behind the horizon, a star appeared from the center of the ring, which, gradually increasing to the size of the moon, began to fall down, separating from the ring."

From the book: "The huge machine has learned to fly. The start time was now chosen so that it was convenient to see the finish line in Kamchatka. Having saddled the treeless summit of Mt. Lyzyk, the observers with their theodolites noticed a bright, fast flying star at midnight - it was the rocket body, burning in the rays of the already invisible from the ground sun. Then there was a flash and a meteor passed like a red line - it was the "head"."

Sounds familiar, right? But the knowledgeable people with whom I had a chance to communicate in Moscow this spring say that space rockets did not fly close to the Urals on takeoff.

The first to declare that space had nothing to do with it was academician Boris Rauschenbach, the closest associate of Sergei Korolev and, in a way, our fellow countryman - during the war he had a chance to work behind the "barb wire" of the Tagillag.

Y. Ryabov, the former first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU, and later the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in charge of the military-industrial complex, then the USSR ambassador to France, was far from these events forty years ago. He got involved quite recently, through a film made by the journalists of "Television Agency of the Urals" (TAU), which was watched with interest by members of the Moscow community of former UPI graduates.

Yakov Petrovich assures that no tests could have taken place in the Northern Urals in those years. Novaya Zemlya is far away, so is Baikonur. True, there was an air defense system, the Plesetsk cosmodrome was getting on its feet, where emergency launches were not excluded. In conclusion, Yakov Petrovich told how, together with Mitterrand, he accompanied the French cosmonaut Jean-Louis Chretien to Baikonur. But that's a completely different story.

- No point in looking there! - said the writer and author of many publications on astronautics Yaroslav Golovanov.

According to him, "Korolev's" rockets from Kapustin Yar and from Tyuratam (in other words, Baikonur) were launched exclusively to the east and did not go near the Urals. Even if we imagine that some hypothetical rocket flew into the Urals...

After all, it does not perform any threatening pirouettes, but simply flies. Or falls. In the former, people do not need to run for one and a half kilometers. In the latter, they simply will not have time to do it. If the rocket has sunk so low that the fiery tail has reached the ground, then it will fall somewhere close. And this means - the fallen taiga, a funnel, and everything that is nearby is scattered to shreds. This was not seen on Kholat-Syakhl.

- Yes, at the turn of 1958 and 1959, the Korolev's "seven" caused a lot of trouble, - said Yaroslav Kirillovich. - But did not fly where you are looking. Right on takeoff, it fell into the steppe in front of the amazed audience. The protracted pause between launches of the "lunar", which fell in 1959, is associated with ground testing of the carrier rocket systems, after which a successful launch took place.

The meeting at the Institute of Management Problems with Associate Professor of Tomsk University V. Vorobyov was not planned but very useful. Vladimir Anatolyevich worked on the subject "Ecology of Space Research", which, like many good undertakings, collapsed due to lack of funds. He knows that rockets flying from Tyuratam drop the first stage 60 kilometers from the cosmodrome, in the Dzhezkazgan region of Kazakhstan. Ural has nothing to do with it. Vorobyov was not so categorical about Plesetsk, which is in the Arkhangelsk region. But thatcosmodrome is new, officially it has been in service since 1960.

Our compatriot, and now Muscovite Boris Slobtsov, a graduate of the UPI, head of the department of the Scientific and Technical Center "Radar" of the Institute of Precision Instruments, which is part of the Russian Space Agency, also questioned the rocket and space version. And although we are considering only one version in this publication, I want to give Boris Efimovich more space: nevertheless, he was the first to find Dyatlov's tent, lives far away from us, and none of the current authors of publications has ever talked to this witness to the events.

- Among the searchers, our group was the youngest - third year. I still can't understand why I was appointed as the leader. Now I can say that I became a more or less professional rescuer, I saved Germans in the mountains, they gave me an order for it. But then I wasn't even the most experienced in the group.

I remember that we arrived in Ivdel first. Then we were dropped off in a helicopter in the mountains, but not to Otorten, as planned, but further south. A radio operator and a hunter were with us. Local people, older than us. They assumed that nothing good would come of this epic. We, young people, were absolutely sure that nothing terrible had happened. Well, someone broke a leg - they built a shelter, sat and waited.

There were three of us that day: the local forester Ivan, me and Misha Sharavin. We reached the pass and, without going down, walked along the slope. Here's why we went.

While we were getting there, they told us a lot of things. The main story was about Otorten. I practically learned about Mount Dead from the press. But the locals told me about Otorten that there are deep holes there, that cornices grow on them in winter, and that once a whole group flew off the cliff along with the cornice. We didn’t really believe it, but we decided to climb the ridge and look in the direction of Otorten with binoculars.

We walked diagonally from the pass to the northwest until we saw... The tent is up, the middle of it is caved in, but it’s up. Imagine the state of nineteen-year-old boys. It’s scary to look into the tent. And yet we start poking around with a stick – a lot of snow has piled up in the tent through the open entrance and the slit.

There was a windbreaker hanging at the entrance to the tent. It turned out to be Dyatlov’s. In the pocket there was a metal box from under monpensier. There's money and tickets in it. They pumped us up: Ivdellag, bandits all around. And the money was there. So it wasn't so scary. We dug a deep trench in the snow near the tent, didn't find anyone there. We were terribly happy.

We took a few things with us so that we wouldn't get into trouble with the guys for "fantasies." A box, a flask of alcohol, a camera, something else. On our skis - and off we went.

Again, I want to talk about the psychology of young people. We sat down in the tent, poured out this alcohol. And drank to their health. Two local "cadres" offered to drink to the repose of their souls. So we almost beat their faces in. We were convinced that the guys were sitting somewhere. But a month had passed! We didn't have enough imagination for anything else.

We reported the find over the radio. We were told that all the groups would be transferred here. When, after the radio, we climbed up the pass to the others, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko had already been found. Now we can confidently name their names. And then Yura Doroshenko was mistaken for Zolotarev. I knew Yura, but I didn't recognize him here. And even his mother didn't recognize him. And they also wondered about the fifth body - was it Slobodin or Kolevatov. They were completely unrecognizable, their skin was some strange color.

And then the grueling work began. We walked step by step through the entire territory with probes. Sometimes they brought mine detectors, sometimes dogs. Muscovites from the Central Tourism Council - Baskin, Bardin, Shuleshko, experienced people - immediately said that the search should be stopped until spring. But the authorities gave the order: search until they find them.

Because a version was born among the pathfinders with a sick imagination: what if they went abroad without pants, without shoes. I didn’t come up with this now. It outraged us back then. Vadik Brusnitsyn and I were given the task: find the damn storage shed. Because it was mentioned in the diary.

The winds on the pass are terrible. You won’t believe it: you take a ski pole by the lanyard, and it is held almost horizontally. The snow, compacted by the wind, is slippery. When we dragged the corpses to the pass, to the helicopter, having adapted skis for this, we fell several times, grabbed onto whatever we could. I grabbed the leg of one of the dead.

If we assume that the weather was the same on the night of the tragedy, then in the dark, without shoes, you will run wherever the wind takes you. The storage shed was in the Auspiya Valley, and they ran to the Lozva Valley.

When all the search groups gathered in an army tent with a stove, powerful sleeping bags, when the aces, veterans of tourism - Maslennikov, Karelin, Akselrod - were sitting with us, there were many conversations and assumptions. But to be honest, I did not notice anything unusual in the area that could be relied on. It just felt like the guys were acting by touch. For example, there are two trees at a visible distance. One is more suitable for a fire, the other is smaller. Why create additional difficulties for yourself, break thicker branches?! It turns out that this is the tree that the man stumbled upon, and missed a more convenient one. At some point they lost the ability to see?

In general, it seems to me that it is not constructive to try to solve this mystery by talking to those who worked at the "rescue station"; we need to reach out to other categories of people. Although, perhaps, with the help of witness testimony, some versions can be discarded. I would discard the "space" version. I don't see any arguments in its favor.

That's how many of my Moscow interlocutors were in solidarity. And yet, I tried to fulfill Vladislav Georgievich Karelin's request and clarify whether the dates we are interested in, noted by the Ural observers, appear in the calendar of rocket and space launches. As for February 17, 1959, this date is significant for two events at once. The reference book "Space Navigation" by the American E. Stearns, published in the USSR in 1966, reports: on this day the American satellite "Avangard" was launched. From the aforementioned book by Yaroslav Golovanov about the general designer of space rockets Sergei Korolev, it follows that on the same day an intercontinental rocket designed for a hydrogen warhead was launched.

The author of the book explained in the conversation that he entered this event into his card index, which mainly contains purely space events, because it was the first serial rocket manufactured in Kuibyshev and launched from the Kapustin Yar test site. Yaroslav Kirillovich did not find anything closer to the tragic date we are interested in, either in the card index or in the latest American reference book.

An event coinciding with the second date we are interested in was discovered by Vadim Chernobrov, an employee of the Department of Spacecraft of the Moscow Aviation Institute, "looking" into his computer. On March 31, a space rocket was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, but it did not reach orbit.

The latter circumstance seemed very significant to Vladislav Karelin. Although, in my opinion, it is not so easy to build a logical chain from the unsuccessful launch of a space rocket to the death of the hikers, if, moreover, these events occurred on completely different days.

In general, space launches can, in my opinion, be excluded from the working versions of the causes of the tragedy. Without "rehabilitating" some other types of missiles. Our colleague Rudolf Grashin "identified" a mysterious metal ring recently brought from the Dyatlov Pass as a part of the first stage of the S-200, a missile that Rudolf had to deal with during his military service. Maybe it was its booster blocks, fired over the Northern Urals, that scared the Dyatlov group so much?

Let's return to our new acquaintance Vadim Chernobrov. For some, he is not a new acquaintance: he studies anomalous phenomena, writes for the almanac "World of the Unknown", and is published in many publications. Vadim Aleksandrovich, as he said, systematizes situations with stalkers who voluntarily or involuntarily invaded an anomalous zone. He includes the tragedy of the Dyatlov group among such cases. Fright, flight, inadequate actions and, finally, death. Something similar, Vadim Chernobrov believes, happened to the hikers on one of the lakes of the Kola Peninsula and in other places where, as they say, there is no sign of missiles.

People encountered the unknown, which does not even have a name yet. Heavy fields, microlepton, chronal... Scientists-enthusiasts are trying to study them. This summer, if everything works out, the expedition "Mysteries of Russia on the threshold of the 21st century" with the participation of Vadim Chernobrov will travel in cars "stuffed" with the latest equipment, from west to east, including through the Urals. Taking this opportunity, I will state Vadim Aleksandrovich's request: if you have a place in mind where something inexplicable happens, let us know, and we will give him the address for the future route.

Of course, there is a desire to pave the way through the point of the tragedy of 1959. But the distance and lack of roads can interfere, and Dyatlov Pass, leaning against the Dead Man's Mountain, will remain Terra Incognita for a long time.

Concerning the name of the mountain, disputes flare up from time to time. Here is what a great expert on those places, the famous geologist Vera Varsanofyeva, wrote in response to a letter from her graduate student B. Guslitser (we quote, preserving the author's spelling):

"I was at Kholat Syakhl in 1934 with Khorum-Torum (Pyotr Stepanovich Podvyazin), and he then collected a remarkable section of weathering crust from a deeply buried pit... If I had known that you would be near Kholat Syakhl, I would have definitely indicated the place for studying and collecting weathering crust. The Mansi know it, since they took paint (ocher) from there to paint sleds.

I knew nothing about the death of the hikers at Kholat Syakhl. What happened to them? How could all nine have died? By the way, the name Kholat Syakhl means "Dead mountain".

Why Dead? Because it has a lifeless, vegetation-less summit? But after all, all more or less significant mountains in the Northern Urals end in chars. And only this one has such a gloomy name.

Rimma Pechurkina