9 hikers died after fleeing into freezing wilderness in the middle of the night. It takes 60 years to uncover what terrified them

In February 1959, nine Russian hikers died in strange ways in the Ural Mountains. Their bodies were found spread out across the snowy hills of Kholat Syakhl, also called Dead Mountain. The group had cut open their tent and run out into the cold. The temperature was minus 30 degrees Celsius. Some were found with almost no clothes on. Some had bad injuries like broken ribs and broken skulls. One woman had no tongue and no eyes. These weird details made people come up with wild theories for decades.

The case became known as the Dyatlov Pass mystery. It was named after the group’s leader, 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov. The hikers were students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute. They started a hard skiing trip on January 27, 1959. When they did not come back by mid-February, search teams went looking for them. They found the empty tent on February 26. Inside were supplies, folded clothes, and even a plate of food. But the tent had been cut open from the inside.

The first two bodies were found at the edge of a forest, as per Wired. They wore only underwear. Three more bodies were found between the tent and the forest. The last four were not found until May. They were buried under several meters of snow in a ditch. Six died from freezing to death. Three had injuries that looked like they had been in a car crash. The Soviet government said the hikers died from a “compelling natural force” but did not explain much. The case was closed and the files were kept secret for years.

So what really happened that night?

In 2021, two scientists from Switzerland named Johan Gaume and Alexander Puzrin finally gave a real answer. They used computer models that were based on the snow animation code from the Disney movie Frozen. Their work showed that a rare type of small avalanche could have hit the tent while the hikers were sleeping. This kind of avalanche happens when a hard layer of snow breaks off and slides down in big chunks. It can happen on hills that are only 28 degrees steep.

The scientists found that the hill where the hikers set up camp was more steep than it looked. Strong winds had blown extra snow to the area above their tent. A few hours after the hikers cut into the hill to put up their tent, a small avalanche started. The block of snow that fell was only about 16 feet long. But it was heavy enough to badly hurt the people who were sleeping on their backs. Getting hit by it would feel like being in a car crash. Like many chilling true crime cases that still remain unsolved, this mystery made people curious for decades.

The avalanche explains why the hikers cut open their tent and ran away. The people who were not hurt helped move the injured ones down to the forest. But in the dark and freezing cold, they could not find their way back. They tried to make a fire and wait, but it was too cold. As for the missing eyes and tongue, scientists think wild animals ate these soft parts in the weeks before the bodies were found. The small amounts of radiation on some clothes probably came from thorium in their camping lights.

Three trips to Dyatlov Pass between 2021 and 2022 found proof that backed up the avalanche idea. Video footage caught fresh small avalanches in the same area when the weather was similar. After more than 60 years, the real answer is not aliens or secret weapons. It was just nature being brutal at the wrong time. The Dyatlov Pass case is one of the mysterious unsolved cases that sent people down a rabbit hole for years, but science has finally given us answers.