Footprints in the snow

The publishing house "Doroga" (Road) in the series "The Truth is Somewhere Near..." is preparing for publication Evgeniy Zinovyev's book "Footprints in the Snow", which lifts the veil on the mystery of the tragic death of nine Sverdlovsk hikerss in the Northern Urals in the dead of night on February 2, 1959. A group of nine hikers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute led by Igor Dyatlov did not return from a trip to the Northern Urals. A rescue team sent to the travel area found the guys on the mountainside. They all died. The cause of their death was incomprehensible and mysterious... We offer to the readers of our newspaper excerpts from the book.

Not many people know that during the winter holidays of 1959, on one day, January 23, several groups of fourth and fifth year students of the Ural Polytechnic Institute went on skiing trips. A group of eight people was led on a hike of the second category of difficulty across the Southern Urals by a fourth-year student from the Faculty of Mathematics, Mihail Sharavin. A group of fourth-year UPI students under the leadership of Sergey Sogrin set off on the route of the third, highest category of difficulty in the Subpolar Urals. Groups of Yuri Blinov and Igor Dyatlov set out simultaneously on similar routes of the third category of difficulty across the Northern Urals in the same carriage.

Several groups made their hikes along the classic routes of the Middle Urals. Almost the entire Urals that winter of 1959 was covered by the network of ski sports routes of the hiking section of the UPI sports club, and this was a great achievement of student amateur hiking. The routes seemed especially attractive: along the Subpolar Urals, which included three winter pioneer ascents to the peaks of the Sablya, Neroyka and Telpoiz mountains, as well as the route of Igor Dyatlov’s group with an ascent to the top of Mt Otorten, crowning the Main Ridge of the Northern Urals.

Igor Dyatlov’s group was one of the strongest and most experienced sports groups in the UPI hiking section, and its leader was highly respected, not only among his team of fifth- and fourth-year students, but also among hikers in the city hiking section. Having passed the necessary controls and checks of the route books and passports of the participants in the administration of the Vizhay settlement, the groups of Yuri Blinov and Igor Dyatlov hurried to their routes. The first team reached the main ridge of the Poyasovoy Kamen (Belt Stone) and headed towards the Molebniy Kamen (Prayer Stone) ridge. The second team of Igor Dyatlov, having first driven up in a passing truck to district 41, and then sent their backpacks on a horse cart to the 2nd Northern, had essentially already begun their ski marathon from the previous village, but not in full force.

At the very start, Yuri Yudin, a fourth-year student of the Faculty of Economics of UPI, who had solid experience of hiking and skiing in the Urals, Eastern Sayan Mountains, and Altai, many of which he made with members of this same group, fell ill and left the route. From the village of 2nd Northern, Igor Dyatlov’s group began to break a ski track through deep snow with areas of ice, first along the Lozva River, then its right tributary Auspiya, and five days later they found themselves at the source of the Auspiya at the foot of Mt Kholat Syakhl. Here on February 2, 1959, the trace of Igor Dyatlov’s group stopped. They did not show up on the deadline at the final destination of their route, the village of Vizhay.

Meanwhile, the remaining groups began to return to the city of Sverdlovsk from their treks. The groups of Yuri Blinov and Mihail Sharavin returned. On February 20, 1959, our team of hikers consisting of eight fourth-year UPI students was returning to Sverdlovsk from a successful ski trip of the highest category of difficulty in the Subpolar Urals. Behind us were the 13 cold nights we experienced in the snow trenches, the still fresh impressions of successful, breathtaking winter ascents to the peaks of the Sablya and Neroyka mountains, the thrill of overcoming emergency situations, first when our tent burned down by accident, igniting from contact with the stove, and then, my ski boot was accidentally dropped into the fire and flared up like a bright torch, of which only the sole remained. I had to move in the then popular "farewell to youth" boots. Our souls were warmed up at the thought that we were not at a loss, in both cases we found a solution and walked our entire route, despite heavy snowfalls, severe frosts and a prolonged blizzard of three days and two nights, which we waited out walled up in a snowy, dank cave. And when we got out of it in the frost of -32 degrees, we found ourselves like cosmonauts in spacesuits made of frozen clothes, and our only salvation was to run and ski, without stopping, from the snow-covered Ural ridge down to the safety of the forest, to a big, big fire. In addition, we were worried and driven forward by the fact that one of us, the skier Igor Kuzminyh, might not reach the village. After cold nights in a damp cave, his joints ached. And even with Igor completely unloaded by us, we were not sure that he would walk 100 km to the nearest populated spot. Igor stood it, groaned, but walked, and we tore the track, covering one and a half daily allowances per day. Everything turned out well with Igor Kuzminyh. Komi reindeer herders drove Igor the last 20 km to the village of Ust-Soplyas on their sled, and he was taken from the Ust-Voya field airfield by ambulance to Pechora.

We were surprised that there were no friends meeting us on the platform of the Sverdlovsk-Pasazhirsky train station. And then the alarming news hit us: Igor Dyatlov’s group had still not returned from their trip to the Northern Urals. A search has been announced!? How so? One day, January 23, we left the station for routes, and Igor Dyatlov also announced a shorter route for as much as 10 days. They should have returned before us. The deadline for the group to return to the village of Vizhay was February 12, and the guys were expected in Sverdlovsk by February 14-15. The parents of Lyudmila Dubinina and Rustem Slobodin were the first to raise the alarm. On February 17, Rimma Sergeevna Kolevatova, Sasha’s sister, became worried. Sports officials remained nonchalant for almost a week. Only through the city party committee did the relatives manage to reach the director of the institute, Nikolay Siunov. The first to be sent to the city of Ivdel on February 19 to organize search and rescue operations was the head of the educational unit of the military department of the UPI, Colonel Georgiy Ortyukov. On February 20, 1959, an emergency meeting of the UPI hiking section was held. 70 people came, including those students who had already returned from ski trips and those who had just finished the winter session and were planning to travel during the winter holidays. The chairman of the UPI hiking section, Boris Martyushev, announced the laconic agenda of the meeting: an emergency with Igor Dyatlov’s group! The registration of volunteers for search and rescue groups began immediately. Only guys signed up. The girls undertook to maintain round-the-clock telephone contact at the headquarters. Those present at the meeting: Head of the Department of Physical Education Andrey Vishnevsky, chairman of the student trade union committee V.E. Slobodin, talked about the emergency situation, called on hikers to participate in the search for their comrades. Hiking groups were provided with financial assistance for the purchase of food and equipment.

Before we had time to come to our senses and move away from our expedition, the very next day the leader of our group, Sergey Sogrin, was mobilized for the search. Yuri Blinov’s group that came a week earlier from their ski route was also sent on a search. Vladislav Karelin's group was located and intercepted in that area and was sent back to search. The tense atmosphere like in a "Civil War" reigned at the institute, as if "Everyone has gone to the front!" The UPI sports club was empty. The entire institute, and then the city, began to buzz like an alarmed hive. The hum came from everywhere: "Where are the guys? What happened to them?" Rumors have already started in some circles that atomic tests were allegedly taking place in the mountains north of Ivdel. People in the northern villages of the region saw a flash, heard a rumble, and felt the breath of a shock wave. To top it all, many were surprised by the periodic, approximately once every half month, appearance of mysterious fireballs in the night sky. Since the beginning of January 1959, they have been observed by many residents in the vicinity of Nizhny Tagil, Serov, and Ivdel. Residents are alarmed. Rumors are spreading. The authorities are concerned and are beginning to take control of the situation.

On February 21, on a special flight on an AN-2 plane, we flew to Ivdel and began reconnaissance over the travel area along the route of the missing group with the chairman of the sports club, Lev Semenovich Gordo, and a member of the hiking section bureau, Yuri Blinov. Yuri and his comrades were the last to see Igor Dyatlov’s group when leaving on the routes from the village of Vizhay. On February 22, the rescue headquarters organized by the UPI trade union committee formed the first search teams of hikers and climbers. One of these groups is headed by third-year student Boris Slobtsov, another by fourth-year student Oleg Grebennik, and the third by a famous hiker, master of sports, Moses Akselrod, already a graduate of UPI. All three have mountaineering or hiking experience. The regional authorities also mobilize the military: first they send a group led by captain Aleksey Chernyshev, and then a group of operatives led by senior lieutenant Moiseev with trained dogs. From the Northern Geological Expedition, radio operator Egor Nevolin and two Mansi reindeer herders Stepan and Nikolay Kurikov, were sent to join the search. Two other Mansi hunters arrived on deer from Suevatpaul.

Later, other military personnel were involved: cadets of the Ivdellag sergeant school under the leadership of Senior Lieutenant Potapov and a group of sappers led by Lieutenant Colonel Shestopalov. Experienced mountaineers are sent from Moscow to Ivdel for an expert assessment of the situation: Bardin, Baskin, Shuleshko and Korolyov, and Sogrin seconded to them from Sverdlovsk. An experienced and authoritative master of sports in tourism, Evgeniy Polikarpovich Maslennikov, is appointed for the operational management of search teams directly in the mountains. The military department of the UPI, headed by the head of the educational unit, Colonel Georgiy Ortyukov, is involved in the search for the missing students. He is entrusted with the task of coordinating the actions of all civil and military detachments, managing the flights of civil and military aircraft and helicopters, and maintaining contact with Evgeniy Maslennikov, local and regional authorities, and the leadership of the institute. The formation and preparation of the student groups for the search was carried out by the head of the Department of Physical Education Andrey Vishnevskiy. We turned to him with a request to send our group to search for our friends. The answer was simple: "be prepared, your turn will come...". Andrey Vishnevskiy himself was soon seconded to the city of Ivdel, where the headquarters of search and rescue operations was located in a two-story hotel. Meanwhile, the search gained momentum. We felt the growing tension of the situation, as if a very important but secret event was taking place. After the winter holidays, classes resumed at UPI. But how could student hikers study when their comrades have been missing for two weeks?" They would have ran out of food by now. What happened to them? This question worried not only students, but also all residents of Sverdlovsk.

On February 26, 1959, a group of UPI students, led by Boris Slobtsov, followed the trail of Igor Dyatlov’s group. Together with Mansi guide Stepan Kurikov, who reached the upper reaches of the Auspiya River valley, Boris Slobtsov and Mihail Sharavin went out in search of the missing hikers from the Igor Dyatlov’s group. Following the declared line of the route, they discovered a ski trail leading from the valley of the Auspiya River to the pass between the top of the eastern spur with an altitude of 880 meters and Mt Kholat Syakhl with an altitude of 1079 meters, located on the main ridge of the Poyasovoy Kamen (Belt Stone). At the border of the forest the ski trail disappeared. Having climbed the pass, the searchers began to traverse the northern slope of Mt Kholat Syakhl in the direction of the top of Mt Otorten. Citing ill health, the guide refused to accompany the students through the treeless part and returned to the camp. Mihail Sharavin, as an experienced hunter and taiga tracker, was the first to notice on the snow-covered slope of Mt Kholat Syakhl (1079 m) a dark corner of a tent almost covered with snow with a protruding pole. Having approached and opened the tent, Boris Slobtsov and Mihail Sharavin found in it padded jackets, ski boots, blankets, cameras, a flask with alcohol, backpacks, some food and other things, and under the bottom of the tent skis laid perpendicular to the long axis of the tent and the smooth sliding surface facing upward. The tent was located in the gentle part of the northern slope of Mt Kholat Syakhl, 300 meters from the top and was installed on a prepared leveled area, protected from the westerly winds by a wall of snow blocks and piled snow.

One end of the tent was oriented to the southeast towards the pass into the Auspiya valley, the other - to the northwest to the Lozva valley. There were no people in the tent, but tracks went down into the Lozva valley. They started from the end and a longitudinal cut in the side wall of the tent and ran parallel, sometimes diverging, sometimes narrowing. It’s a strange thing: in some places there were eight tracks, and in others there were nine pairs. And they went down, as if in two ranks: now approaching, now diverging, and the length of the step was about a meter. Among them were footprints of bare feet, but in socks, some prints were left by felt boots, and in some places was visible the imprint of a ski boot heel. At the same time, the tracks rose in columns above the wind-swept surface of the slope. Descending along the footprints leading from the tent towards a spreading cedar tree noticeably rising on the slopes of the mountain, Boris Slobtsov and Mihail Sharavin first lost, and after some distance again, discovered traces that had already appeared in the birch undergrowth and led down to Lozva ravine. And again, carefully examining the area, Mihail noticed a dark object near the cedar. In front of the cedar there was a flat area where the searchers found the remains of a camp fire, nearby, 3 meters under a blanket, a frozen Yuri Doroshenko, undressed, with burnt hands, a little to the side Yuri Krivonischenko, in a similar condition. Boris and Misha, dejected by what they saw, with their hope for a successful outcome dashed, returned to their tent in the valley of the Auspiya River.

Information about the tragic finds was sent on the radio to Ivdel. The headquarters ordered all search groups to concentrate in a camp on the bank of the Auspiya River and begin searching for the rest of the Dyatlov group. The sad news soon reached Sverdlovsk. It was difficult, very difficult to come to terms with the idea that two good-natured, active, optimistic guys were gone. With Yuri Doroshenko we made the first category ski trip in our lives in the Middle Urals. There were 20 of us second year students. Yuri was the leader of this expedition. The route he chose first ran along the Chusovaya River from Staroutkinsk to the village of Martyanovo. I remember that near the cliffs we had the pleasure of sounding the echoing rocks. Then we covered an equally interesting mountain taiga section of the route, from the logging village of Bolshie Galashki to the village of Uralets. "The most impressive was the radial ascent of the Starik-Kamen mountain. On the descent, for the first time, we experienced a feeling of mutual assistance, supporting girls who could not yet ski down. And I remember how at our promotional concert in front of local residents, Boris Martyushev and Yuri Doroshenko masterfully played a scene from Chekhov’s "The Intruder". Yura Doroshenko and I also became friends through our hikes in the Eastern Sayan. In the period 1957-58, the hiking section of the UPI sports club became the largest and most popular in the institute, and at the same time it needed experienced leaders of mass and sports. This is how our team, consisting of Yuri Doroshenko, Yuri Yudin, Boris Martyushev, Sasha Ivliev, Galina Radosteva, Lucy Kiseleva and the author of these lines, who was entrusted with leading a hiking trek of category II difficulty with us for the first time, ended up on the Eastern Sayan. Along a parallel route, a team of freshmen, led by Vadim Brusnitsyn, interacted with us. We returned from this trip as if we were reborn people: united, matured, filled with vivid impressions. Here is one of those stories. Аt the edge of the forest, overgrown with blueberries, in the evening, when we were busy with the tents and trying to start а fire, a large brown bear suddenly came to us. This unexpected danger was announced by the heart-rending cry of Yuri Doroshenko. He himself, without hesitation, fearlessly ran towards the beast with a geological hammer in his hands. We could not help but support our brave comrade and hooted: "Give me the bear!" together we rushed towards the bear, some with an axe, some with a knife, some with a stick. The bear, who was peacefully hunting for sweet blueberries, could not withstand the psychic attack and, dropping a couple of already processed blueberry "cakes", hastily retreated. Yuri Doroshenko did not pursue the beast for long, but returned to the camp site with the look of a winner, a brave man who had overcome fear.

Yuri Krivonischenko is associated with earlier memories from the the beginning of his hiking career. The hiking "baptism" for us, newcomers, took place in a three-day hike in November 1956 on the classic trekking route: Kuzino station - Nizhneye village - Treka village - Kamenka village - Kuzino station. One of the organizers of this mass hike of approximately five dozen students was Igor Dyatlov. Quite often, the route laid out by Igor using a compass and map led the crowd to the bends of the Chusovaya River, framed by beautiful cliffs: Shaytan, Senkin, Hanging, Sokol. In between walking, overcoming obstacles and organizing lunches, the entire mass of hikers free from cooking poured onto the ice of Chusovaya. The wonderful sounds of two mandolins, amplified by multiple echoes from the rocks, echoed far around, creating a lyrical mood. The strings of mandolins, obedient in the hands of Kolya Popov and Yuri Krivonischenko, brought out the melodies of songs, or ancient waltzes, and called for ice dancing. Why not parquet and a hall of columns! That time, after the appearance of photographs of the hike, which were masterfully taken by Igor Dyatlov, Kolya Thibeaux-Brignolle and Lyuda Dubinina, we, the "baptized" newcomers, were invited to celebrate this event with songs and a mass tea party at Yuri Krivonischenko’s apartment. Almost all the participants in the November expedition gathered in Yura’s small room and there was nowhere for an apple to fall. Yuri Krivonischenko grew up in an intelligent family. Such student tea parties were encouraged by his parents and further united us, second-year students, with our older and more experienced comrades. Yuri Krivonischenko participated in many of Igor Dyatlov’s category expeditions and was his reliable friend.

Thinking later about these healthiest and strongest guys in the group, motionless, stretched out not far from the extinguished fire, you involuntarily shudder - what mission did they take upon themselves, supporting the dying flame in a patch under the cedar tree piercing by all the winds and bitter cold?! What superhuman strength and will they had to concentrate in order to climb the cedar tree, break and throw into the fire more and more cedar branches as thick as a human hand. And what hellish pains these guys had to endure in order to break the branches with their burned hands and their bodies, fall with them, leaving shreds of living skin on other cedar branches, tear off the branches and support this torch! No, they could not freeze in front of a blazing fire in the process of hellish physical work. Another hidden reason is involved here, from which they fell dead on the prepared branches. I think that they needed the lonely cedar as a beacon proclaiming: "People! You will find us here!" Where are the rest of the Dyatlov group? The short, fading day and the approaching February darkness could not provide an answer. Returning to the camp on the Auspiya River, the guys brought this gloomy news. Several search groups had already come here and pitched their tents: Blinov, Karelin, Akselrod. Until this moment, there was still some hope of finding the Dyatlov group alive... A painful silence reigned among the searchers. Even rations of alcohol did not help relieve the numbness and stress. We climbed into the tent, where a tin stove was installed and warmed with heat, with a chimney suspended horizontally along the tent and leading to the end. In the middle of the night there was a cry: "We’re burning!" The pipe came down loose. All the smoke from the stove poured into the tent, suffocating people. With difficulty, Mihail Sharavin, who showed composure and restraint, with the help of the guys who had already jumped out, managed to reinstall the pipe in its original place. It turned out that it was Slava Halizov, struck by the tragic news of the death of the guys and walking around the tent all night in an excited state, he accidentally tripped over the guy wire supporting the chimney. Touching the tarpaulin canopy, the red-hot pipe ignited it. Our subpolar story with the stove repeated itself here. Later, hikers switched to pavilion type tents, where the pipe was installed vertically and became safer. The next morning, a helicopter arriving from Ivdel dropped off guides with search dogs. With their help, Zina Kolmogorova was discovered 850 meters from the tent on a slope under a ten-centimeter layer of drifted snow. She was lying on her right side, dressed but without shoes. The position of the torso, arms and legs expressed movement towards the tent. Apparently, death occurred suddenly. And this was due to damage to the internal organs. Indisputable evidence of this is bloody snow from bleeding from the throat and nose.

Zina Kolmogorova graduated from high school, vocational school, and in 1954 she entered the radio faculty of UPI. Studying at the institute was difficult. But with her tenacity she outshone even the Asians who studied at the institute. In the institute’s library the Asian comrades studied late, but Zina got up from the table only after they have left the common reading room. She was always the last to leave the library. Zina was an amazing, generous person, a favorite of the UPI hiking section. She studied at the same course with Igor Dyatlov, at the same radio engineering faculty. And, naturally, she go into the hiking club with the help of Igor. She spent almost all her winter and summer holidays skiing and hiking. Zina voluntarily took on the burden of organizational and mass work in the hiking section of the UPI. She kept records and campaigned for the admission of newcomers to the hiking section and the training of the portraitists to cover normative to obtain a badges. Here she had no equal. Being in the midst of the guys, be it at the institute, at hiking competitions or on the route, Zina stirred up and set everyone in motion, becoming the leader of any endeavor and the soul of the team.

In her third year, Zina went on a difficult hike in the Altai Mountains. In the area of ​​Lake Teletskoye she was bitten by a poisonous snake. The forester's family saved her by applying curdled milk serum to wounds from snake bites. Zina bravely endured this painful critical condition, but was very worried about the delay of the group on the route. During the winter holidays of 1958, she managed to go on a ski trip in the Northern Urals. Zina was the pride of the entire UPI hiking section. She was welcome in any hiking group going on any route. On December 5, 1958, Zina, together with Igor Dyatlov, organized a mass campaign of the hiking section to the Smolinsky Caves, where a record number of hikers took part - approximately 75 people.

According to tradition, a successful propaganda concert was given for local residents at the school in the village of Smolino. And, as always, it was fun. The exploration of the Smolinsky caves ended with fun games and jokes around a big fire. The next morning, a small group of us, which included Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, Slava Halizov, Lyuda Blinkova, Tamara Zaikina and the author of these lines, made a 25-kilometer ski march from the village of Smolino to the village of Klevakino, where Zina Kolmogorova’s mother and relatives lived. We arrived tired already in the dark. We sang well and soulfully, spent the night, and the next day we were in Sverdlovsk. Preparations began for the winter session and at the same time for ski trips in the Urals, including this, which turned out to be tragic, the ascent to Mt Otorten. Meanwhile, Zina Kolmogorova, back in December 1958, could have been in our group, which, under the leadership of Sergey Sogrin, was preparing for a ski trip to the Subpolar Urals. She really liked our well trained group. We were happy to include her in our composition. But Zina was in a terrible hurry. Her plans were: to go hiking, quickly return to her pre-graduate practice, and in the interval to stay with her mother in the village for a week. We really punished ourselves for not persuading Zina to go to the Subpolar Urals with us.

Approximately on the same day as Zina, 300 meters on a slope above the cedar, the Mansi found the body of the leader of the trek, Igor Dyatlov. Igor was lying on his back with his head towards the abandoned tent, without a head wear, covered in snow, with his hand as if holding a birch tree. Igor was dressed quite warmly: long johns, ski trousers, a checkered shirt, a sweater, a fur vest, a woolen sock on one foot, a cotton sock on the other. Apparently, in these clothes he hastily left the tent with an interrupted cold night, and then tried to return to the tent after Zina.

Igor Dyatlov was at the peak of his athletic and physical fitness by the time he set out on the route. Tactically, he outlined an impeccably correct route: with the setup of a cache site in the upper reaches of the Auspiya river, a radial ascent to Mt Otorten with a light load, first traverse the gentle part of the northern slope of the mountain "1079" and then straight along the ridge of the Poyasovoy Kamen (Belt Stone), using easily passable hard firn, and returning back the same way. This option provided, if necessary, for an easy descent from the ridge to the forest of the Lozva valley, where it would be possible to arrange a warm overnight stay with a stove. Thus, the planned radial ascend could be completed in two to three days. The further route was to go from the cache site to the upper reaches of the Auspiya river, climb to the crest of the main ridge of the Poyasovoy Kamen (Belt Stone) and move along its western slopes south to Mt Oika-Chakur. This was the southernmost point of the route, from which there was an exit to the east of Vizhay, where the route began and was supposed to end.

The leader of the expedition, Igor Dyatlov, was undoubtedly an extraordinary person. He grew up in a large family living in the city of PervoUralsk. Obviously, from his father, a mechanic by profession, who worked at the "Khrompik" plant, Igor inherited a penchant for technology, and from his mother, who worked at the Lenin Club, sociability, kindness and disposition towards people. According to the recollections of Lyudmila’s younger sister, her parents’ house was crammed with technology. Igor himself built a telescope and monitored the flights of the first artificial satellites. He was interested in amateur radio, collecting homemade receivers and even a radio station. This passion, apparently, led him to the radio engineering department of the UPI, where, along with his studies, he did scientific work and showed great promise, since he received an offer to remain at the department even before defending his diploma. By the way, in dorm room №10, where Igor lived, a walkie-talkie he made was found. He often used it to communicate with his parents' house in Pervouralsk, and thus simply solved the problem of long-distance communication.

While still at school, Igor became interested in photography, and his photographs were distinguished by their artistic taste. But Igor’s greatest passion was amateur sports hiking.

Here, in his parents’ house, his friends often gathered before going on hikes. A camp stove was made, a long double tent was sewn together. Igor literally fell on the "hiking path" from his first year. This was greatly facilitated by his older brother Slava, who studied at UPI two years older and went on hikes in the same company with famous mountaneers Anatoly Grigoriev, Volodya and Valya Poluyanov. Volodya Poluyanov remembers this time like this. "The desire to travel along Chusovaya among UPI students was great. There was a group of twelve people. This is not so small, considering that in 1951 sports hiking in UPI was just beginning. We counted on a maximum of 10 people (two boats of 5 people each), and now we had to buy another boat in the shortest possible time. Slava Dyatlov, my schoolmate and friend from college, did this for a long time, a kind of warm-hearted guy in love with radio technology, and he took his 15-year-old brother Igor Dyatlov, whose fate is worth dwelling on separately.

Thanks to Igor, we had our own homemade receiver on the hike, which in 1951 was a very rare thing. We didn’t think then, when we took this boy on the hike, that this hike would be fatal for him, that he would fall in love with the mountains for the rest of his life and eight years later would give it the most precious thing in his life. This lanky boy, awkward in appearance, with a far from eloquent accent, had truly phenomenal abilities in the field of radio engineering. Already at the age of 15 he was making quite complex receivers and tape recorders.

As a student at UPI, he amazed teachers with his abilities, and we can confidently say that science acquired a worthy son in him. Igor was a modest man who was least interested in parties, games, girls, in short, everything that people call "cultural pastime". Hiking took away this side of his life. During the years of the institute, he thoroughly explored the Urals; a number of his photographs are included in the book by Raisa Rubel and Evgeniy Maslennikov "Travels in the Urals".

In 1956, Igor Dyatlov got very lucky. He came to the Eastern Sayan as part of the national hiking team of the Sverdlovsk region under the leadership of Vasiliy Korolyov and gained enormous experience on this trek. What was it worth to climb the highest peak of the Eastern Sayans - Grandiose Peak. And rafting with a pole along the rapids of Kizir will remain a unique phenomenon in the history of Sverdlovsk hiking. On the rafting trip, Igor tried to use his homemade walkie-talkie for the first time. Having been elected chairman of the UPI hiking section for the period 1957-1958, Igor Dyatlov was certainly the most active athlete and one of the best organizers of amateur and mass hiking at the institute. Of course, it was not easy to get into his team. He made high demands not only on the physical condition of the hikers: endurance, physical strength, but above all on the moral qualities of a person: compatibility, sociability, patience, the ability to admire and enjoy nature, bring a fresh spirit to the team, the ability to sing, have fun, play, relax. Look at his wonderful photographs. They not only contain magnificent by composition landscapes, but also the dynamics of the route, masterfully filmed scenes of recreation in the form of acrobatic pyramids, group and individual portraits.

Igor didn’t just select, he prepared the guys for difficult expeditions. I remember that before the Sayan field camps, in March-April, before the spring thaw, we went with him to the slopes of Mt Volchikha, learned to scale roped rocks and snow-covered slopes, learned the secrets of orienteering, and had cold overnight stays. At the same time, an imitation of a real hike was practiced with the help of ballast weight in a backpack and natural sweat that appears on our backs when walking through falling snow. Igor could not take everyone into his team going on a category hike, but he formed groups of us that were already prepared to complete the routes independently. And he did it with sincere care and goodwill.

That is why Igor Dyatlov enjoyed authority among the travel participants, and his decisions made along the route were not authoritarian, but carefully thought out, rational and accepted by the entire team. The guys celebrated New Year 1959 in the forest on the banks of the Chusovaya River near the Boytsy station. The guys tried out the tent and personal equipment. The last elements of the group's actions were practiced in conditions of cold overnight stays on the upcoming route. The guys had a stove with them and even a walkie-talkie of Igor Dyatlov’s own design. It is unclear why they did not take it on the route. I assume that due to the large weight of the equipment, the addition of a walkie-talkie and batteries could slow down the group.

In this last trek, all decisions were carefully thought out and verified. The group, moving through deep snow on the ice of Lozva and the shore of Auspiya, despite the already laid ski trail of the Mansi hunters, over the four days of the route from the village of 2nd Northern to height 1079 m, still accumulated a half day delay. Therefore, during reconnaissance on February 1 at the pass in the spur between peaks 1079 and 880 m, in my opinion the only correct decision was made not to descend into the Lozva valley with its deep snow, but to go to Mt Otorten by traverse along the gentle slopes, and then after passing Mt Kholat Syakhl, climb the main ridge and move towards Otorten through a number of other flat heights of the ridge. Snow firn, compacted by the winds, could be a reliable guarantee of a quick radial ascend and return to the cache site. Many hiking groups go to Otorten along this path, which has now become the "Dyatlov trail". It seems that this decision was both rational and unanimous. Neither Igor nor any participant could have imagined that the path of a deadly projectile would pass here, destined to explode above them.

On February 28, a radiogram about the tragic discovery of four dead from the Dyatlov group was received by telephone by student hiker who were on duty at the UPI sports club around the clock. And new rumors have already spread throughout the institute and the city about the possible murder of students by escaped Ivdellag prisoners, or... Mansi hunters. It seems that some authorities were involved in the launch of such rumors, preparing this version in order to hide the truth about the true causes of the deaths of the students. Let us recall the confession of searcher Vladislav Karelin, published by journalist Anatoliy Gushchin in the newspaper "UR" №41 dated March 3, 1999, that investigator Lev Ivanov literally imposed and forced Karelin’s assumption "about a possible attack on the hikers by an armed group of people" to be included in the investigation protocol. And even in the first days of the investigation, Lev Ivanov constantly repeated only one thing: "The students did not die a natural death, it was a murder." Such assumptions and versions are not as innocent as their authors think.

Let's remember the testimony of the first investigator of the Ivdel prosecutor's office Vladimir Korotaev, who began the criminal case into the death of the hikers in the area of ​​Mt Otorten: "I was one of the first at the scene of the tragedy. Quite quickly I identified about a dozen witnesses who said that on the day of the murder of the students, a glowing object flew in the sky. Witnesses Mansi Anyamov, Sanbindalov, Kurikov not only described it, but also drew it (these drawings were later removed from the case).

Moscow soon requested all these materials. And while the above-mentioned Mansi were on search operations, doing everything to find the students buried in the snow, the relevant authorities were already "making" a case against them. While I was working at the pass, the police began to "stab" the indigenous families. They were tortured, imagine! They stripped them naked and drove them out into the cold, left them without food. Moscow needed a solution fast. And, probably, as a result, everything would have been blamed on Mansi. But one day, a local seamstress, aunt Nyura, accidentally came to the prosecutor’s office. They decided to use her as a witness during the inspection of the tent that was immediately put up. Aunt Nyura examined the striped tarpaulin and declared authoritatively: "But it’s ripped from the inside." I invited experts from Leningrad, who confirmed aunt Nyura’s observation. Meanwhile, regional council deputy Stepan Kurikov did not let his fellow tribesmen perish. He got on his skis, headed south and rode them straight to the Sverdlovsk regional party committee. In general, the Mansi had nothing to do with it."

On the same day, February 28, investigators who have already arrived by military helicopter from Ivdel begin an external examination of the tent and the corpses found. Some military men, Mansi, leaders and members of search groups are brought in as witnesses. A hail of stones rained down posthumously on the poor head of the group leader, Igor Dyatlov, who had already been killed by an unknown weapon, but was not buried, and many poisonous arrows were fired. Most often they came from people incompetent in hiking, all kinds of officials and representatives, authorities, but there is also an intentional line on the part of the investigators aimed at distorting the real picture, suppressing facts, events and examination results in order to conceal the truth of the cause of death of the innocent "Dyatlov group", maintaining secrecy around the "fireballs" that carried out the tests and "state secrets", which ceased to be such due to the carelessness of its guards. They failed to protect the testing area from trespassing by random hikers, hunters, fishermen and other groups of the population. We ourselves contributed a lot to the confusion of the true causes of the tragedy, creating ridiculous versions and assumptions, ignoring immutable facts, eyewitness testimony, evidence of ongoing phenomena.

Only on March 4, on the way up from the fire to the tent, approximately 500 meters from the cedar, the guides found Rustem Slobodin under the snow. The position of his body resembled that of a man moving upward towards the abandoned tent. Dressed relatively warmly, in a tshirt, a brushed knitted undershirt, a cowboy shirt and a cotton sweater, and under the ski trousers: shorts, long johns and satin pants, tucked into four layers of socks on his feet, Rustic gave the impression of a man who had spent a cold day in a tent spent the night and was preparing to go outside. One felt boot was on his foot, and I was going to put on his other boot, but... he didn’t have time. This readiness was also evidenced by a cowboy jacket buttoned up with all the buttons, a patch pocket with a passport, money and a pen fastened with a safety pin, as well as a penknife, a box of matches, a comb in a case and a pencil in his other pockets. Apparently, something prevented Rustik from putting the second felt boot on his left foot and forced him to urgently leave the tent... Perhaps he was on duty and had already prepared a Chinese flashlight to go out, which was later discovered behind the tent. Those on duty get up first, usually between 5 and 7 am. I think that a cold overnight stay and an early rise were necessary for the group to march to Otorten, and only 300 meters of ascent remained to the ridge, but time intervened. In my opinion, it was precisely on this same early morning of February 2 that an unknown force suddenly appeared above the tent, which turned out to be catastrophic for the group. In relation to Rustem Slobodin, such formulations of death as "frozen on the way up to the tent", or "died from freezing" are completely inapplicable and groundless. His elder brother speaks interestingly about Rustik: "Our parents lived in Central Asia for a long time. Rustam was named by his parents after one of the national folk heroes. Let's say, six months before the tragedy, Rustem and our father came to me on a geological exploration party in Kyrgyzstan. After that, the two traversed through the mountains of the Western Tien Shan from Frunze to Andijan."

And here are the memories of Y.V. Zubkov, an institute classmate of Rustem, with whom he graduated from the mechanical faculty of UPI and was assigned to NIIHIMMASH: "Rustem led an active, sporty lifestyle, was the ringleader of all sports and hiking events. If it happened to go out to harvest potatoes and it was raining, the guys would sit and play cards, and Rustem would put on his sneakers and go on cross-hikes." One has only to marvel at the charge of will, responsibility and reserve of physical energy of Rustik Slobodin, who, mortally struck, despite the latent skull injury he received, continued to fight for the existence of the group, rushing to the abandoned tent for food, clothes and shoes.

So Rustem Slobodin is loaded into a military helicopter and sent for forensic medical examination to Ivdel. How it was carried out and what its results were, we knew nothing at that time. There were rumors that everyone who came into contact with the corpses of the "Dyatdov group" was ordered to wash themselves in a barrel of alcohol.

The telephone installed in the sports club is heating up. Parents, relatives, strangers are constantly calling, everyone is interested in news and details. Girls from senior years who have abandoned their studies do not leave the device around the clock, trying not to miss important messages from Andrey Vishnevskiy from Ivdel. The work log also records each call and the content of the conversation with any number. The people are seething, sending angry letters and requests to Moscow, to the CPSU Central Committee. On February 28, a search Extraordinary Commission of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU was even created, headed by the deputy chairman of the regional executive committee, Pavlov, and the head of the CPSU department, Ermash. It was decided to continue the search work to the end. This was to a certain extent facilitated by a rumor that appeared among the masses: that the surviving students could have absconded abroad! The authorities could not allow this.

What to do with the already found bodies of the hikers? Apparently they too, having already been killed, posed some danger to the authorities in terms of information leakage? ...The parents of the Dyatlov group, who had not yet processed the tragedy of losing their children, were faced with the drama of organizing their funeral. The authorities are imposing persecution of parents that is vile in all respects. Yuri Krivonischenko’s mother said that the parents of each were summoned individually either to the Regional Party Committee or to the UPI Party Committee and, along party lines, were forced to agree to bury their son or daughter in Ivdel, ... they were also forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding the fact of their death. Similar "work" was carried out with the relatives of the victims. Rimma Sergeevna Kolevatova, the older sister of Sasha, who was found later, recalls that the authorities had a plan to bury all the children in a mass grave in Ivdel and even promised to build an obelisk!? The question is, why can’t the same thing be installed in Sverdlovsk? Children lived here, studied, and made friends! The Kolevatovs, Slobodins, Dubinins, Kolmogorovs categorically objected to such a blasphemous proposal from the authorities: "No, only in Sverdlovsk!" The parents of Yuri Krivonischenko shared a similar opinion.

The parents also found the courage to promise the authorities: "Otherwise we will contact all international organizations!" Apparently this threat and determination had an effect. After another "campaign" to the Secretary of the Regional Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Kuroedov, the issue with the funeral was resolved favorably. But what suffering, what callous attitude of the authorities towards themselves, mothers, fathers and relatives had to endure, who lost their sons and daughters in the very prime of their lives, undoubtedly talented, pure, honest and immaculate young people! Neither the searchers in the Northern Urals nor the UPI students knew anything about all these behind-the-scenes moves by the authorities.

On March 6, the UPI sports club received information about the upcoming funeral of the hikers in Ivdel. The institute began to discuss in what quantity and composition a delegation from the hiking section should be sent to the funeral. It was consoling that the parents did not agree, insisting on burying the children in Sverdlovsk. Rumors about the murder of the Dyatlov group again reached Sverdlovsk: corpses without clothes, bruises, abrasions, internal injuries on the body... And no official information. There is a feeling of complete secrecy surrounding the circumstances of their children’s deaths.

On March 7, new information: five children were brought to Sverdlovsk and will be buried on March 9 at the Mikhailovskoe cemetery. Students prepare announcements about the place and date of the funeral. And again, this cannot be done without the machinations of the party authorities. Sophomore student Valentin Yakimenko, who had just returned from a ski trip in the Middle Urals, recalls: “I posted a notice about the funeral in the foyer of the main building of UPI. Almost half an hour later I was called to the UPI party committee, where the party committee secretary Kasukhin scolded me for arbitrariness and demanded that I remove the announcement. I refused. But someone has already taken down the announcement. The reaction of the party committee secretary is clearly afraid of something.

On March 9, updated information: today only four people are buried, and for some reason although the family of Yuri Krivonischneko didn’t object to Mikhailovskoe will be buried in another cemetery, Ivanovskoe. We put up another announcement about the funeral again. Someone immediately took it down. We decided: everyone in their faculty and course will go around the classrooms (the classes have been going on for a long time, only we, the activists of the hiking section, have not attended them) will inform the rest about the hour and place of the funeral." And here they are, the funerals. In the foyer of the student dormitory №10 on Lenin Street, coffins with the bodies of Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, Yuri Doroshenko and Rustik Slobodin are displayed on stools in red carpet decoration. The lids of the coffins are open, and everyone saying goodbye, walking around in a circle, has the opportunity to see with their own eyes the faded faces of our silent friends with a  brownish  tint and abrasions. The inconsolable parents, relatives and friends of the deceased bent over them with tears in their eyes. Here, Zina Kolmogorova’s relatives saw us, who had recently visited their village after the December expedition and sang cheerful and lyrical songs with Igor and Zina, and ... of course, a new burst of sobbing. It’s hard to stand it, tears blur the eyes. The funeral procession lines up on Lenin Street in a column of thousands heads towards the Polytechnic Institute.

After the funeral of the first five hikers from the Dyatlov group, it was our turn to look for the remaining comrades. Our group consists of leader Boris Martyushev and participants: Evgeniy Zinovyev, Valeriy Pechenkin, Igor Shestopalov, also Mihail Sharavin and Yuri Koptelov, who went out searching for the second time in a row, were soon taken to the pass. The other detachment consisted of "military" guards from Ivdellag, who had their own commander. The spacious tent also contained a walkie-talkie, through which radio operator Egor Nevolin sent and received information twice a day, morning and evening. The search was carried out in a coordinated and friendly manner. Although it was hard work, day after day we carefully pierced the snow cover with probes, section by section, but... there were no results. Egor Nevolin complained that in our country we do not have alpine St. Bernard dogs that search for people under deep snow. Obviously, under the influence of similar pessimistic sentiments from the low effectiveness, but very labor-intensive work on manual sounding of the snow cover, the thickness of which was increasing due to snowfalls, a letter was written to the director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Forensic Science of the USSR Prosecutor's Office, Professor Golunskiy.

In a letter signed by the prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk region, State Counselor of Justice 3rd class Nikolay Klinov, there was literally a cry for help: to send a professional instrument detector for buried corpses, based on the properties of ultrasound, to search! Because the use of mine detectors does not yeld results since the corpses of the hikers are half naked and do not have metal objects on them. At the same time, the colossal costs of searching are increasing! On days of bad weather with wind and snowfall, we were forced to stay in the tent, but still found the opportunity to hunt partridges that flew from one snow-covered tree to another. In free search mode we went to the height "880", and on another day we went down along the stream to its confluence with Lozva. We were surprised to see a lynx hiding in the branches. That is, life continued in the wooded valley. One day, while skiing from the camp tent to the Auspiya River, our comrade Mihail Sharavin ran into a birch tree and lost control of his skis, receiving a concussion upon impact. This happened just during the period of planned replacement of our group with another team of students.

On March 25, we are replaced by a third team of UPI students. It consists of three polar explorers Sergey Sogrin, Victor Malyutin and Rudolf Sedov, who returned from a third category trek about a month ago. Sergey went on a search for the second time, already as a leader. The remaining participants: Vasiliy Shulyatyev, Victor Meshtiryakov, Vsevolod Eroshev, Valeriy Dubovtsev and Valentin Yakimenko are students of different UPI courses, but of unequal degrees of hiking training. All the guys voluntarily interrupted their studies to search for for the still missing comrades.

During this period of searching, rather strange events begin to occur. The participants and eyewitnesses themselves speak best. Here are the memories of Valya Yakimenko: "The camp... A vast clearing in the forest. An army platoon tent 6x6 m. In the middle of the tent there is a table. Near it is an iron stove. A pleasant warmth radiates from it and spreads throughout the entire space. Backpacks and sleeping bags lie along the walls. Felt boots closer to the stove. Storm jackets, quilted jackets, underwear and other wet clothes are hanging on a rope. And people are sitting everywhere, all cold, dirty, with red, weather-beaten faces. On the left are we, UPI student. Right at the entrance there is a group of 6 people in black sheepskin coats and black padded jackets. Many have pistols. They are from a group of state security forces. On the right are 9 people in white sheepskin coats and green quilted jackets. Hair brushed, young faces. These are the emergency service guys from the railway troops. They are here instead of sappers. The military commanders are lieutenants Potapov and Avenburg."

Here is one of the typical days: "... Today, like yesterday, and all the previous days, we worked on the slope. We lined up, pierced the snow with long two-meter rods every 40-50 cm. In some places the snow was knee-deep. In some places we move slowly. And then we return to camp." And here is a diary entry from an atypical day: "...Today the same work. Hard, tedious. Suddenly the probe does not go all the way, as always in this work, but only to the middle. And it doesn’t go any further, but is pushed even further to the end. We are sure that we found a body. We dig the snow with our hands. The snow falls back into the hole. The others are helping to expand the hole. Ah, damn it! We sigh with regret and move on. In the evening, radio operator Gosha Nevolin taps out in Morse code: "There is nothing new, we continue the search."

March 31. Early in the morning it was still dark. The student on duty Victor Meshtiryakov came out of the tent and saw a luminous ball moving across the sky. Woke everyone up. We observed the movement of the ball (or disk) for about 20 minutes until it disappeared behind the mountainside. We saw it southeast of the tent. It was moving in a northerly direction. This phenomenon excited everyone. We were confident that the death of the Dyatlov group was somehow connected with it. A detailed telegram was sent to Ivdel. Prodanov, Vishnevskiy 03/31/59 9-30 local time.

"On March 31, at 4 am in the southeast direction, the student on duty Meshtiryakov noticed a large ring of fire that moved towards us for 20 minutes, then disappearing behind the height of 880. Before disappearing beyond the horizon, a star appeared from the center of the ring, which gradually increased to the size of the moon, began to fall down, separating from the ring. The unusual phenomenon was observed by all the personnel who were alerted. Please explain this phenomenon and its safety, since in our conditions it produces an alarming impression.

And here are the memories of Rudolf Sedov, now an Honored Master of Sports in Tourism, about these days, which he sets out in his recently published book "The Attraction of the Mountain" (Magadan, 1998): "My group was located in a large tent, near Dyatlov group labaz. The task was as follows: ski up to the pass (now called Dyatlov Pass), walk along the slope to the place where the hikers’ tent stood, probe down the slope to the treeline. The snow completely covered the slope. The wind turned it into a hard crust. To the north was a vast area of ​​icy snow. At night a guard was kept in the tent. One day, and it was March 30 or 31, well after midnight, someone went out. We were awakened by a scream from behind the tent. Since we were sleeping without undressing (I think this was an order), we quickly began to jump out.

I remember well: a luminous ball was flying high in the sky, the size and color of a full moon. A bright point burned in its center. The ball flew horizontally, without changing its trajectory, from south to north. We saw him for half a minute. Then we decided that it was a rocket using some new fuel. For some reason I thought: if such a "moon" accidentally fell, it could cause the death of the group. When we left home, we signed a non-disclosure agreement about everything that was seen here during the search. This further strengthened the belief that the military was involved in the tragedy."

Meanwhile, in April, spring has arrived, generous with sun and warmth. "Hidden areas" of water began to appear in the hollows and ravines; stones and dark objects were exposed in the snow, and hidden traces were revealed. It became difficult for searchers to walk through the collapsing loose snow from across the pass to the search area. We had to relocate the camp from the upper reaches of the Auspiya River over the pass to the Lozva River valley. The searchers pitched their 6x6 m tent on the right bank of the stream, about 100 meters below on the forest edge among mixed trees. Here the snow melted more intensely, remaining in deep ravines and gullies. There was hope to find the rest of the guys using the melting traces and items of clothing.

In April, the search for the hikers on the slopes of Mt Kholat Syakhl was led by Colonel Georgiy Semyonovich Ortyukov, who had returned from Sverdlovsk and was the head of the educational unit of the military department of the UPI. He was a decisive, very responsible and professional military man of high human qualities, who went through the Finnish and WW2. Originally from the village of Maminskiy, Kamenskiy District, in his youth he managed to work at a machine and tractor station, graduated from the Shadrinskiy Polytechnic, and headed the Komsomol during the construction of the Kamensk-Uralsky Aluminum Plant. In 1936 he was drafted into the army, three years later he graduated from the infantry school, served in the Trans-Baikal Military District, and in 1939 he volunteered for the Finnish war. Being the commander of a ski sabotage battalion, he blew up a very important strategic object in the rear of the White Finns, after which the outcome of the war three months later was predetermined in favor of the USSR. During the Great Patriotic War, in the battles near Yelnya, he was wounded in the heel by an explosive bullet. He refused to have his leg amputated. The famous military surgeon Bogoraz, who himself was legless and operated on people from a wheelchair, in the operating ward of the hospital in the city of Ordzhonikidze, where the wounded Georgiy Ortyukov was admitted, literally bone by bone restored Georgiy Semyonovich’s crushed heel. And he got to his feet, although he had suffered with a wounded heel all his life. Having returned to Sverdlovsk from the hospital as a non-combatant service officer, he taught at the military infantry school and in 1942 took cadets to the front, in 1944 he trained cadets at the training garrison in Chebarkul, in 1948-50 transferred to the headquarters of the Commander of the Ural Military District Kuznetsov, and from 1950 to 1956 he was secretary of the Military Council of the legendary disgraced Georgiy Konstantinovich Zhukov. Having completed courses for division commanders at the Frunze Military Academy, Georgy Semenovich Ortyukov returned from Moscow to Sverdlovsk for another three years served at the headquarters of the Ural Military District, and after demobilization in 1956 he began teaching tactics, being at the same time appointed head of the educational unit of the military department of the UPI. Thanks to the energy of Georgiy Ortyukov, his fatherly attitude towards students, and high responsibility, it was possible to clearly and coherently organize the search for missing students with wide interaction between military and civilian people, students and employees, squadrons of airplanes and helicopters.

At a critical moment, Georgiy Ortyukov, despite his injury, comes to the search site in order to think with his own head, and with his own hands, directly, along with others, to participate in the excavation of students buried under the snow. In the last ten days of April, the UPI hiking section sends another team of student searchers to replace them: Vladimir Askinadzi (leader), Victor Kastrulin, Nikolay Kuznetsov, Vadim Fedorov, Boris Suvorov, Yuri Delevich (Gilevich - ed.), Anatoliy Mohov.

In the first days of May, the snow melts intensively, and the surface of the ground is exposed not only in open, but also in shaded areas. Parts of the rag clothes of the dead boys appear near the cedar and in the snow. Approximately 50 meters below the cedar, on a huge snow blow that blocked the ravine and the stream bed, plucked coniferous branches becoming visible, going deep into this blow. "We’ll dig here!" - Colonel Ortyukov commands. Shovels are used, and at a depth of 3-3.5 meters a platform with a flooring of cut young tree and fir trunks is exposed. There is no one in the den. Georgiy Ortyukov suggests increasing the composite probe to 5 meters and shows the place where to probe. Soon the probe, when rotating at a depth of about 4 meters, grabs with its hook a piece of clothing from one of the buried corpses. Careful, careful excavation of the snowdrift begins.

At the bottom of the ravine in the very bed of the stream, along which water had already been flowing for several days in the spring, the bodies of three men were found lying with their heads to the north along the stream and the body of Lyudmila Dubinina, kneeling and leaning her chest and head against a low (0.6-0.7m) rocky ledge from which a stream rolls down as a small waterfall. Looking at the dead, it seems that all three men were laid out in the ravine bed before the den was built, and were apparently alive. At the same time, Sasha Kolevatov carried Kolya Thibeaux-Brignolle who hung on Sasha’s back without releasing his arms, and the two of them lay down with their right sides on the bottom of the ravine in a single embrace. Semyon Zolotarev lay half a meter lower from them, but in a slightly different position. Lyuda Dubinina was apparently carried in the same way as Kolya, and was placed facing the ledge, since it was more convenient for her to endure the pain. By the time, through the efforts of the still living Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova and Rustik Slobodin, young fir trees were cut with a knife and the flooring was made, these four had already expired and there was no more need to move them in the den.

I remember what these guys were like when they were alive. During the first mass trip along the Chusovaya River in 1956, Yura Doroshenko, Volodya Linchevsky and I were given guardians by the mysterious Nikolai Thibault-Brignolles. Apart from his unusual French surname, which caused him a lot of trouble, Kolya struck us with his impressive appearance. Of average height, dark, with a pleasant, intelligent face and moving eyes, he dressed himself in seemingly unthinkable clothes. On his head is a black earflap hat with untied ears sticking up, on his feet are black rubber cast all-terrain boots, on his body are dark trousers, covered on top with a simple all-weather padded jacket, a belted sash with an ax tucked into it. Well, that's right - well done on the big road! Kolya traced footprints in the freshly fallen snow, taught how to prepare firewood from “rusks” (dry trees), light a fire in snowy weather, and melt snow in buckets on a communal fire for preparing hot food and tea. Many of us, especially urban people, were truly beginners and did not know how to do any of this. With all this, Kolya was a cheerful fellow, constantly joking. He gave the impression of a reliable, self-confident person. And in ordinary student life, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolle behaved with dignity. In a free, independent manner he communicated with teachers and the dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering. He was talented and original. In tourism, this was manifested in the fact that Kolya, with great skill and grace, drew terrain along the route with carefully drawn horizontal lines and topographical signs. At that time, detailed maps for tourists were of great value, and all of them on a scale less than a million were classified. Kolya enjoyed great fame and popularity in student dormitories. Sometimes they brought him rare and then prohibited books from the category of rarities. He generously gave us, newly acquired friends who were in his trust, the opportunity to get acquainted with the next book discovery for one or two nights. So unexpectedly a pre-revolutionary edition of Müller’s book “The Sexual Question” appeared in our dorm room. Thus, in dormitory No. 5 of the UPI campus, the gap in sexual education of students was closed.

Nikolay was irreplaceable even on difficult expeditions. He could drag his heavy round Abalak backpack onto any of the mountain passes, scolding and shaming his integral rider with all his might. Humor helped not only himself, but also his companions, to relax from the physical and stressful stress of traveling. That is why Nikolai Thibault-Brignolle, with all his non-athletic build, was invariably part of the core of amateur groups formed by Igor Dyatlov for his next travels.

In the summer of 1957, the second part of our tourist group that did not end up in the Sayan camp successfully completed a walking route of the second category of difficulty in the Southern Urals, chosen on the recommendation of Igor Dyatlov. The leader of the trip was Yura Blinov. Second-year physics and technology student Sasha Kolevatov has been added to our guys as a participant.

Sasha Kolevatov was older than us and already had hiking experience. Before moving from Moscow to Sverdlovsk, as part of a Moscow team, he made a trek through the Subpolar Urals and managed to climb Mount Sablya. He was distinguished by accuracy, pedantry, and at the same time he knew how to joke and get along with his group mates. Sasha had the qualities of a leader. At the beginning of 1957, he conducted a ski trip through the Middle Urals with access through Kachkanar directly to Verkhnyaya Tura, where his aunts lived. Friends had the opportunity to get acquainted with them and the decoration of the old house, where the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary life was preserved. Leafing through the pages of the album, one could notice Sasha’s resemblance to his uncle, a mining engineer. Sasha behaved respectably, at rest stops he invariably lit an old pipe and puffed on everyone with the aroma of real fragrant tobacco.

Sasha Kolevatov was a reasonable person and enjoyed the trust of people. During his treks, he carefully kept his diary, but did not show it to anyone, apparently trusting the diary with his observations and reflections. He managed to form his Sayan group exclusively from physics and technology students of his chemical specialty. These were extraordinary people. In the summer of 1958, Sasha led this group around Kyzyr. In the summer of 1958, Sasha led this group to the Bazybai rapids and quite successfully completed the first walking part of the route. However, having passed the mountainous part of the route and reached the upper reaches of Kazyr and built a raft, the guys began to raft slightly higher than the planned place. In the technically difficult rapids "Shteki" (Cheeks), the heavy raft capsized and all belongings and backpacks with food sank. Only one of Sasha’s backpacks was tied and survived. It contained money, a passport, a dry box of matches and one single bag of flour, which saved them from hunger. All the guys survived and swam on the same raft to the camp, where they received the necessary help.

Sasha Kolevatov, following his long-term habit, kept an individual diary during this trip. Being less traumatized than the other guys, he could not help but leave entries in his diary about the tragedy that happened to them. But during the excavations, someone’s skillful hand extracted this evidence and for many years made it impossible to find out the cause of the Dyatlov group’s death.

Lyuda Dubinina entered the hiking life of UPI literally from the first steps of her studies at the institute. On weekend trips, she was the ringleader of the organizational events: ice dancing, fun games like "leapfrog", "third wheel" and others. I took part in propaganda concerts with pleasure, loved songs, and knew how to take good photographs. Her hiking assets include skiing and trekking routes in the Middle and Northern Urals, and walking routes of the UPI camp in the Eastern Sayan. In the taiga under the Grandiose peak on the Eastern Sayan, an accident happened to her. Due a student's poor handling of a gun, an accidental shot wounded Lyudmila in the leg. The group had to break camp and carry Lyuda on a stretcher for about 80 km to a campsite on the Bazybay threshold. She bravely endured all the hardships of her transportation through the off-road mountain taiga. There were climbs to passes and steep descents into valleys. Lyudmila still encouraged the guys. Everything worked out well. During the winter holidays of 1958, Lyuda Dubinina herself led a group on a ski route of the second category of difficulty in the Northern Urals.

From the memoirs of Victor Bogomolov:
"What can I say about Zolotaryov? He was a mysterious person for everyone. Before joining Igor Dyatlov’s group, he, having worked several shifts as a hiking instructor at the Artybash tour center on Teletskoye Lake in Altai and at the Kourovskaya tour center, turned to Sergey Sogrin and asked to join our group, which is going to the ski route 3rd category of dificulty in the Subpolar Urals. We usually gathered in the private house of Sergey Sogrin’s parents on 18 Kirova Street, located next to the Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgicheskiy Plant. Sergey himself sewed a new elongated canvas tent for 10 people, similar to Dyatlov’s, from two standard ones. Our tent was distinguished by a vestibule about 1 meter wide, which connected the right and left parts of the tent. A tube was built into this vestibule where we were entering and exiting the tent, and there was the tin stove with a chimney that served to heat the tent. I was making this ill-fated stove from sheets of tin, mastering the specialty of a tinsmith for the first time in my life, when suddenly Sergey brought into the room a rather unusual man with a Caucasian appearance and introduced him:
- Semyon Zolotarev, asks to join our expedition!
- "Call me Sasha", said this Caucasian Semyon, flashing his gold teeth, which was so unusual for us.

Semyon was significantly older than us, about fifteen years, but we did not attach any importance to this. Having learned that he was an instructor at the Kourovka tour center, and he needed this trip to fulfill the standard of a master of sports in tourism, the group gave its go-ahead. But this Semyon, like Zina, was in a hurry to complete the route and return back. He said that he needed to go to his old mother in the Caucasus. And when Slava Bienko’s place became vacant in Igor Dyatlov’s group, they accepted Semyon Zolotaryov in their group. Judging by their diary entries, Sasha fit well into the friendly team of the Dyatlov group, perhaps due to his unpretentiousness, sociability and cheerful disposition."

Located in the bed of a babbling stream, the guys changed beyond recognition. The hollow water washed away their faces and washed out their eyes. Colonel Ortyukov, together with soldiers and students, carefully and painstakingly removed the bodies one by one from the half-flooded rocky bed of the stream, carried them up and laid them on pre-prepared drag stretchers assembled from felled young fir trees. The most difficult was the way up to the helipad to the pass, with overcoming a steep climb, a ridge of stones and snow-covered fields. Sometimes on their hands, sometimes on their shoulders, and often by dragging, students and soldiers overcame this grueling climb four times, trying not to shake or drop the already decomposing remains.

An arriving helicopter was already waiting at the pass. But, looking at the condition of the corpses, the pilots flatly refused to transport them. The head of the search, Colonel Ortyukov, insisted on loading by order, and the helicopter pilots refused to carry out the order, citing instructions prohibiting the transport of unknown cargo. For the first time in many years, combat officer Georgy Ortyukov was faced with his orders being ignored, and even lost his temper, resorting to the threat of using personal weapons.

The student leader Volodya Askinadzi and his comrades with great difficulty calmed down Georgy Ortyukov and convinced him to contact the general in command of the military helicopter pilots by radio, and agreed with him on the conditions for transporting the remains according to the conclusion of forensic expert Boris Vozrozhdenniy, who was specially called from Ivdel to the place of death of the hikers. Forensic expert Boris Vozrozhdenniy, who soon arrived, examined the corpses right on the spot, and, despite the beta radiation found on them, gave an opinion to the pilots on the transportability of the cargo, essentially sharing responsibility with Georgiy Ortyukov for the safety of this operation. Thus, human duty to the deceased overcame the demands of soulless instructions. Otherwise, the last four from the Dyatlov group would now be resting on the slopes of the infamous Mt Kholat Syakhl, under the howling of winds, snowstorms and blizzards, far from their parents, relatives and friends. That would be completely against Christianity!

While this conflict was resolved, another team of students was approaching the city of Ivdel, called upon to replace Vladimir Askinadzi’s group and continue the search work. Evgeniy Zinovyev was appointed the leader of this team, and the participants were the same students who had already been to search: Boris Martyushev, Valeriy Pechenkin and several new hikers.

Colonel Georgiy Ortyukov with the remaining military personnel and radio operator Egor Nevolin broke camp and were the last to leave the search area. UPI students sympathized with Georgiy Ortyukov for the skill and perseverance he showed, and among themselves they called him nothing less than "Colonel Otorten". He was not offended, remained disinterested and supported students without giving them offense, if necessary, reaching the highest offices and ranks.

On May 12, 1959, the funerals of Aleksander Kolevatov, Lyudmila Dubinina and Nikolay Thibeaux-Brignolle took place. Their bodies, sealed in zinc coffins after forensic medical examination and radiological examinations, were taken to the morgue of the military hospital in the city of Sverdlovsk. On a hot May day, a crowded funeral procession proceeded from the morgue along Dekabristov, Malysheva and Kuzbasskaya streets to the Mikhailovskoye cemetery. The townspeople said goodbye to the dead students.

7.04.99 After conversations with El. Ryazantseva:
After finding the last 4 bodies, parents and relatives were called to the morgue on Dekabristov street to identify their children. They were required to indicate those characteristic signs on individual parts of the body that could be shown to them for recognition while opening only this part of the veil, because the appearance of the bodies was deplorable and unrecognizable. And then Lyuda Dubinina’s father threw off the blanket from his daughter in one sharp movement, for a moment he saw a terrible picture of a half-decomposed corpse, empty eye sockets, a bare skull, bared teeth, a collapsed nasal part gaping with emptiness, and the still surviving breasts, a swollen belly, and the next moment he lost consciousness! .... The identification process was interrupted in the most unexpected way, the relatives were confused and were also on the verge of losing consciousness. They had to stop the process and ..... take the parents and relatives back home.

Apparently, for a long, long time, Sasha Kolevatov’s sisters did not tell his mother about the death of her son. Why hasn't he been going to Moscow for so long? - she asked in letters to her daughters. They refused, citing damage to their leg and a delay in recovery. But his mother still felt that something terrible had happened to him. In the end they were forced to tell her. Rimma Sergeevna, who raised Sasha, withdrew for a long time, not showing anyone photographs or other objects of her son. Maybe she still has Sasha’s notebook!? The grave is overgrown, the photograph in the oval was broken by hooligans. A sort of oblivion of Sasha’s memory itself had established itself. She became indifferent and indifferent to fate.

Delevich (Gilevich - ed.) was also in the last search group! The same extravagant hiker in a wide-brimmed hat who went with Sasha on a hiking trip from the Sayan base camp to the Bazybai rapids. By the time of the search, he was already dressed more decently. It fell to him to go and retrieve Sasha’s remains from the bottom of the stream...