Mountain of the Dead (20 page)

    The next day I went near to the village of Solva. I described the unusual phenomenon I had seen to my colleagues, V.M. Yefimov and A.N. Degtyarev. A former worker of the Denezhkin Kamen nature reserve, Ye Karpusheva, asked me in detail about this unusual phenomenon.

    Soon after that, a description of this event appeared in the September 2002 issue of
Ecoved
.

    I hereby certify as true the above, as recorded from my words.

Valentin seemed anxious after recalling this event. He made a sketch of the forest quarters, the position of the light source, the movement and trajectory of the spotlights and where he lay for one and a half hours behind a tree trunk.

I saw that these memories and the story had an effect on him. I asked him some questions and he responded as follows:

– Will you show me the place where you spent the night and saw the light?

–
Sure I will if you want. Although the Mansi advised me not to go there anymore.

– Who else might have seen such a phenomenon at that time?

–
I was alone there. The next day I went to Solva and told V. Yefimov about it, and later to V. Borodyuk, and also to the senior ranger A.N. Degtyarev.

– Where can I find them, to have a talk on the issue?

–
Degtyarev has now left the nature reserve, he now lives somewhere in Cheryomukhovo; V. Borodyuk now lives near the Kalya
[a river in Karelia, in the north-west of European Russia]
, he has a house there, but I don’t know his exact address. Yefimov lived for some time in Severouralsk. It is two years now since he had left the job at the nature reserve. I have heard nothing of him since then. If you happen to see them, give my regards.

It was time to say goodbye. Valentin gave me the nature reserve quarters map so I could easily take my bearings and find quarter No. 357. We agreed to meet some time after and continue our talk. I took a picture of my hospitable friend and promised to bring him the photo. I needed some time to think over the information I had received from him.

I had absolutely no doubt that what he had seen was the same light phenomenon. There was almost a complete similarity in what he saw on 29 August 2002 and what I saw on 11 September 2002, except for a couple of conflicting details in the initial information picked from the newspaper. In
Ecoved
newspaper it was said that two rangers, V. Yefimov and V. Rudkovsky, were in the woods on that night, but then it turns out that only Rudkovsky was there. Why? The dates of the night in quarter 357 were also different: in September according to the newspaper and on 29 August 2002 as asserted by Rudkovsky. Certainly I asked Valentin about this, but he could not give a definite answer why, as so much time had passed. There was some confusion, loss of information. As he explained: ‘Girls from the Denezhkin Kamen office asked me to tell them about it. In fact that was almost a month after the event. I gave some superficial explanation, and that was all. The article in the paper appeared later.’

I needed to look into this conflict between the newspaper information and the story told by Rudkovsky. If I had met him immediately in 2002, it might have been easier, while the trail was still hot. But now, more than three years later, the task was getting more complicated.

I had to know the exact date of Rudkovsky’s night in quarter 357. This could be established by the observation diaries of Rudkovsky and Yefimov for September 2002. I wondered whether they had noted the fact of a night camp in quarter 357, and if the diaries still existed at all.

Again, I called the nature reserve director, Anna Kvashnina. I told her about my meeting with Rudkovsky and asked her to clarify the date of the event. I also asked her if I could see Rudkovsky’s diary for September 2002. Her answer was that the diaries were kept in the archives in the office in Vsevolozhsk. She said: ‘Nobody is going to search for anything for you. Get in touch with the worker for the nature reserve, Galina Neustroyeva, and go along and see for yourself.’

What an opportunity … to get hold of the observation diaries for September 2002! I decided to go to Vsevolozhsk immediately.

Galina Neustroyeva, a lab assistant, advised me on the telephone how to find the nature reserve office in Vsevolozhsk. We agreed that I would catch the first bus there, and she would find the rangers’ diaries for me.

I wanted to make sure from the diaries that V. Rudkovsky met with the ‘light set’ on 29 August 2002 and not in September 2002, as the account in
Ecoved
newspaper asserted.

It was the end of January 2006, biting frost, minus 30°C with a strong wind. As I waited at a bus stop I was frozen to the bone, despite my sheepskin coat and felt boots. Just then I thought of the members of the Dyatlov group on the side of Mount Kholat Syakhl open to winds, on that night of 1/2 February 1959, when they were left without their warm clothes, shoes, hats, mittens, far from warm houses, and without hope of help from anywhere. How long could they stand that? What was it that made them leave the tent so hastily, without clothes, without an opportunity to get back?

I found the office in Vsevolozhsk in a small house in Plaksina Street. Galina brought the observation diaries of rangers Rudkovsky and Yefimov for September 2002. I sat down and started reading. On the nature reserve map I traced their routes in every forest quarter in September. Neither Rudkovsky nor Yefimov had been to the Yelovsky Ouval in September 2002. I looked at the date: 11 September 2002, exactly the day I watched the ‘light phenomenon’ in the Ivdel district near the No. 15 pit.

Here is the record made by V. Rudkovsky, dated 11 September 2002:

t + 6 °C Small rain

r. Solva – r. Kriv

Quarter 439 – woodcock

Quarter 455 – grouse

Quarter 499 – grey hen took wing

Quarter 499 – bear’s marks

The weather on that day was the same as in the Ivdel district near the No. 15 pit, but on that day V. Rudkovsky was too far away from quarter 357. Also, in Rudkovsky’s diary for September 2002, there was no mention of a night camp in the woods. I remembered Valentin mentioning that it was his habit to make a note of every night he spent in the woods in his diaries. The September 2002 inspection routes of Rudkovsky and Yefimov were also different. Clearly, Rudkovsky’s observation of the ‘light phenomenon’ had occurred – but on 29 August 2002, not in September. He was also alone.

The date was now clear. I said goodbye to Galina and caught the next bus from Vsevolozhsk. It was now important to locate and talk to the people who met Rudkovsky after his encounter with the ‘light phenomenon’. They may add or at least clarify certain things. After some time I was lucky to find former nature reserve workers who were mentioned by Rudkovsky: A. Degtyarev in Cheryomukhovo, V. Borodyuk on the Kalya, and even V. Yefimov in Severouralsk. I talked with Degtyarev over the telephone, and personally met with the other two. All of them remembered Rudkovsky’s story of the ‘light phenomenon’ reacting to a human glance, which he had seen on the night he spent in quarter 357. All of them talked of Valentin as a knowledgeable forest ranger and a good and honest person whose words could be trusted. I gave them regards from him.

I asked Yefimov why his name was mentioned as a witness of the ‘light phenomenon’ in the
Ecoved
story, despite the fact that he had not been there at that time. He said: ‘You see, it might be that the nature reserve management gave one errand for two to perform. To make it quicker we might separate. I think this was the case that time. That is how my name got in the story, by a mere chance. Despite that, I wasn’t with him that night. Rudkovsky was alone.’

Okay, so another discrepancy was cleared up. I was told: ‘Well, well, you were really lucky to make Valentin talk about that case. He has never been too talkative.’ I replied: ‘Oh, you see this is probably because we had both had the same experience, only at different times and places, we had plenty to talk about.’

So, what had happened to the nine skiers on 1 February 1959? I tried to look at the situation, bearing in mind the results of the investigation of the Dyatlov case and the group’s diaries, and to reconstruct the tragedy in the context of the ‘light phenomenon’ observations of 29 August 2002 and 11 September 2002. What follows is how I see the events that led to a tragedy on the eastern slope of Mount Kholat Syakh.

On the fifth day of the ski trip the group decided to make camp for the night in a tent on the eastern slope of Mount Kholat Syakhl. Most probably, they wanted to start for Mount Otorten at dawn the next day.

With a view to using the remaining daylight, approximately at 5 p.m. they set up the tent with the entrance looking south, and stacked backpacks and other things inside. Someone of the group took the last photo as the tent was being set up. With them they had food for two to three days, an axe, a saw, a small camp stove that could be suspended inside the tent. The stove was filled with firewood they had brought along from the previous camp. The edge of the forest was some 1.5km away from the tent, and there was no other place to take firewood from.

The temperature was getting lower towards nightfall and a strong wind blew. According to the investigation data, the air temperature in the region on that day was minus 25–30°C, with a strong wind. A campfire and cooking a hot dinner in the open was out of the question. They did not have enough firewood for that, and the strong wind would prevent it.

Most probably Thibeaux-Brignolle, or Tibo as friends called him, was ‘on duty’ that night. The rest took their places in the tent. They took off their outer garments, footwear and hats and lay trying to make themselves warm with their breath, under blankets and their outerwear. They had no sleeping bags, just blankets. There was not much space inside the tent, so all, except for the one on duty, either sat or lay in their places.

Each member of the group in turn made records in the group diary of the trip, additionally some of them kept personal diaries, but on that night not a single entry was made. They probably planned to do so after the stove was fired and it got warmer in the tent. They were preparing for a snack: brisket was sliced, and crackers were taken out. There was some coffee in flasks left from the last camp.

Tibo, as the man on duty, stayed with his outerwear and boots on. After 6 p.m., already in almost complete darkness, Tibo leaves the tent with a flashlight ‘to do a number one’ and is surprised to see a white swinging light probably coming in the south–north direction. Like from a projector, the beam hits the slope of the mountain where the tent stands. Tibo cries to the others in the tent that he sees something very unusual. Being a realist and a materialist (and just out of curiosity) he wants to have a closer look to understand what this might be. He even points his flashlight in the direction of the light source. At this instance the source of light reacts to his glance, changes the direction of the beam and floods
Tibo and the tent with bright white light. Immediately a few torches, or projectors, separate from the source. They swing and approach, catch his glance, and while Tibo continues to look in amazement, an approaching torch sends a strong pointed shock-wave pulse with a bright light flash aimed at the man’s glance. Involuntarily, Tibo
turns his face away to the left from the dazzling flash of light, and the pointed shock wave hits him in the temple, he sustains the ‘fracture of the rh temporal bone’
.
He cries in pain and falls unconscious. He lets go of the flashlight, which lands on the tent roof (later rescuers will find this flashlight lying there).

Zolotarev and Dubinina rush to him from the tent. They bend over their friend lying on the ground and try to pull him to the tent entrance. Zolotarev is in front, Dubinina is behind. They hold Tibo and from their bent position look at the swinging torches, searching for a human glance. Maybe they see something even more horrible and inexplicable. They also get a blow of a pointed shock wave, which was probably aimed at their glance, but due to their abruptly raised heads and change of position, they receive a blow in the ribs. Zolotarev sustains ‘five broken ribs on the right side on the breast and mid-axillary line, with haemorrhage into axillary muscle’. He was in a bent position, with his right side exposed to the light and shock-wave source.

Dubinina has ‘four broken ribs at left on the mid-clavicular and mid-axillary line and six ribs at right on the mid-clavicular line’, i.e. she looks behind her at the source of light and shock wave and she gets a blow in her back. This causes her tongue to tear off.

If they were standing still at the moment of the shock-wave pulse, the blow would have hit their glance, their eyes. All three received very serious wounds, but two of them had nevertheless retained an ability to move for some time. According to the autopsy, such injuries could not have been inflicted either by a stone or a fall on stones, since the skin and the soft tissues remained undamaged. The above injuries are very much like an injury from an air-shock wave.

The possibility is not excluded that those three were not just badly injured by a shock wave, but also dazzled by a bright flash of light coming from the swinging torches or from the source of light and preceding the shock wave. Involuntarily, they reacted to this bright painful flash of light and changed their body position. In a brief moment they were hit by a pointed shock wave.

Thibeaux-Brignolle was unconscious, but he could have still shown signs of life for two to three hours. Dubinina might have lived ten to twenty minutes after being injured. She might have stayed conscious. Zolotarev, being less injured, might have lived longer. In the heat of the moment, both Dubinina and Zolotarev could have continued moving by themselves. The other six tourists, already preparing to sleep in their places in the tent, get alarmed. The light appearing from nowhere and penetrating into the tent through the curtain, the groans of their friends crying that they have been wounded by light torches … Maybe it was something even more terrible and aggressive that they saw near the tent.