Dead Mountain

When nine hikers go missing, no one is worried - at first. But as days pass, it becomes clear that something has gone wrong. What isn't understood at the time is how wrong things could go, and the many decades that would go by without answers for the families.

As each family begins pressing for more information, there are many theories that being to crop up about what could have caused nine, healthy and experienced skiers to have such a cataclysmic accident, leaving no one alive. It seemed as though each of them were scared out of their minds as they ran into the frigid cold of the Russian winter.

But what went wrong? It seems that they knew what they were up against, had taken every precaution they could, and yet, their tent was still where it had been left, with huge gashes torn through the back of it.

Did someone attack them? Did they discover something they shouldn't? These are just a few of the questions that have plagued the cold case. No one knew. Answers were not forthcoming, and it seemed as though the government wanted to make the entire thing disappear, as quietly as possible.

I enjoyed this read. One of the areas I appreciated most was each of the theories being explored, and explained away. What the final theory was, actually makes sense, and I can see how that would have affected each of the persons on the mountainside that night. -- No -- I am not going to tell you the theory, you are going to have to read this book for yourself, and undertake the journey to not only understand these nine souls that were taken too soon, but the journey that the author undertook to discover as much as he could about what happened, and what could have gone so wrong.

Highly enjoyable, although a sad read in areas.

“I don't remember Sherlock Holmes ever mentioning what you are supposed to do when you've eliminated everything improbable, and nothing is left.”

I knew nothing about the Dyatlov Pass Incident before reading this book, hadn't even heard of it. The cover looked interesting and the premise sounded super creepy and mysterious though, so I was looking forward to seeing where this went. The short story is that I loved everything about this book, except the ending.

In 1959, nine Russian college students (experienced mountain climbers, all) decide to conquer Dead Mountain in the Urals as part of their mountain climbing experience necessary to advance their qualifications. They went missing, and when a rescue team finally located the bodies (because, let's face it, Russia, on a mountain, in winter, isn't the most hospitable of locations), nobody can figure out what happened. The bodies are in various states of disrobe, none have shoes on, one is missing a tongue, and they failed to stick together. Theories are advanced, everything from avalanches to animal attacks to secret government weapons to aliens, but nothing conclusive was ever determined. The Russian government quickly wrapped things up, and the final conclusion was “an unknown compelling force should be considered the cause of the hikers' deaths.” This is where the mystery remains to this day.

For the majority of the book, the author splits the chapters into one of three viewpoints. A diary was recovered from one of the hikers, and the author retells their story in the days and weeks leading up to their fate through these entries. The author also weaves in chapters with accounts of the recovery efforts amongst these journal entries, which provides context for how the scene was discovered and the investigation following. Finally, the author's viewpoint, where he visits Russia today, retraces the hikers' steps to the mountain and looks around a bit. Of the viewpoints, the authors' was the least interesting to me. His trip to Russia doesn't seem to have much impact on the overall conclusion the author comes to, and a lot of what he writes about has nothing to do with the Dyatlov Pass Incident itself. Still, I appreciated the lengths the author went to, and the viewpoint in present day Russia was interesting.

Where the book loses me is the ending. The author spends time in the very last bit of the book outlining the different theories and why they don't make sense given the facts as the author sees it. Which is fine, most of what he says here makes sense. But then he busts out with a theory that hasn't come up before about something that's barely been studied up to this point. He speaks to experts in this field who do have some compelling arguments for why it makes sense (and I'm willing to believe them given evidence), and basically leaves his theory there on the table with no more commentary as the book ends. I feel like this would be an easy thing to prove if someone were to go back to the mountain and do so, but the book ends without any compelling proof beyond “some experts say this might be true”.

All that said, the writeup of the actual incident was stellar. This was a really interesting read, and even though the ending kinda flopped for me, it remains an unsolved mystery for a reason, I guess.