Using science to explore a 60-year-old Russian mystery

Dyatlov's group on February 1st on their way to Kholat Syakhl. Courtesy of the Dyatlov Memorial Foundation - Researchers from EPFL and ETH Zurich have conducted an original scientific study that puts forth a plausible explanation for the mysterious 1959 death of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in the former Soviet Union. The tragic Dyatlov Pass Incident, as it came to be called, has spawned a number of theories, from murderous Yeti to secret military experiments. In early October 2019, when an unknown caller rang EPFL professor Johan Gaume's cell phone, he could hardly have imagined that he was about to confront one of the greatest mysteries in Soviet history. At the other end of the line, a journalist from New York asked for  his expert insight  into a tragedy that had occurred 60 years earlier in Russia's northern Ural Mountains - one that has since come to be known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Gaume, head of EPFL's  Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory  (SLAB) and visiting fellow at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, had never heard of the case, which the Russian Public Prosecutor's Office had recently resurrected from Soviet-era archives. "I asked the journalist to call me back the following day so that I could gather more information.